Atā (See you later) Latvia!
After my on-arrival post and mid-term post, here I am writing my final post about my 9-month EVS project in Alūksne, Latvia. It is quite hard for me to summarize this Baltic experience, because 9 months are not 9 days, therefore I'll always forget something worthy of mentioning.
When I arrived there, the Latvian language sounded weird to me, as I could not relate it with any other known language. After a while, it is hard to believe that hearing Latvian was really pleasant and not weird at all!
Every time I think about Latvia I smile. It is a country with only 2 million of inhabitants (only 62% Latvians), proud of their language and heritage. Nowadays Latvia is struggling with citizenship issues, one of them is their language as there are, for example, a lot of people that have the Russian language as their mother tongue. One thing about Latvian people, is that they may not greet each other like we do, but are always ready to help, even when they don't know any English whatsoever (this is similar to Portugal).
 |
| A weekend visit to my flat in Alūksne. |
Furthermore in Latvia I had opportunity to see pure nature,untouched landscapes, and they are beautiful, they transmit both a feeling of belonging and peace. Since I can remember I always enjoyed noticing life details, but sometimes I was so busy with all my must-to-do stuff, that I hardly paid attention to little things. Alūksne is all about that: a little town welcoming you in every corner, and inviting you to take a closer look at it. In relation to my favourite things in the town, they are the little train (Bānītis), the Aiolos Temple (picture below) and the Aluksne's Lake.
 |
| The Aiolos Temple – front view |
Specifically in my EVS project I had the chance to go beyond the assigned tasks. I did several cultural events, related with cinema, animation and music, to name a few. The posts about those events are in this blog (mine are all with “| clari”). I guess the most important thing I did there was the show “EVS pagalmā Tas viss ir par cilvēkiem It's all about people” at Alūksne's New Castle Museum. In this show there were 6 collaborative projects I developed with the local community, namely:
(1) Alūksnes mīļākā lieta | The Aluksne favourite thing
(3) Nevizuāls eksperiments | Non-visual experiment
(4) Acumirkļa grāmatas no Alūksnes | Instant books from Aluksne
(5) No Al līdz Gmr | From Al to Gmr
In general I'd recommend EVS to everyone, because despite of all the difficulties and problems I encountered on the way, I always focused myself on the good things. All I did there, I did it for and with the people, in order to offer them brand new experiences. Of course I made mistakes, while trying to achieve that. The must-to-do though is to keep motivated no matter what. EVS makes every individual grow as a person and it is healthy to leave the comfort zone. To do that is a big step, it can be hard, but life itself in not easy at all ^^
p.s. Recently I did this about section in the blog, if you are an EVS, feel free to do the same :) also I did the methods of some projects/activities using diagrams with apples and apple trees.
Clarissa
0 comentários:
Enviar um comentário