I WILL MISS IT

Is our last day in the Park, and in the morning everything appear cover with thin ice. Now the forest look very different to the one that welcome us six moths ago.

When I come back to my home I know that I will miss that house in the forest.

I will miss to look by the window and try to discover the birds jumping between the leaves.

I will miss to ride the bicycle avoiding to splash on the water.

I will miss to take the train to an unknown village every weekend.

I will miss the experiments in the kitchen to try to cook the local recipes.

I will miss all the friends that I don´t know when I'm going to meet again.

I will miss to life a new experience every day.

I will miss It....

PROJECT CROSSING SEMINAR

As our last activity here in Latvia we organize a seminar in Kemeri to gather the EVS around the country and try to start initiatives about how to connect different volunteer projects. The main purpose is to help the 25 participants to find similarities in their projects and inspire to cooperate to make a more rich voluntary experience.
The last day of the seminar we prepare a visit to the Kemeri Orphan House “Spriditis”, and we have the chance practice there a lot of games and dynamics with the children.
We want to thank all the friends and volunteers that makes of this last activity an special way to say goodbye and end our time here.
Good luck with your projects!!

SPANISH WORDS

The forest has transform in a collection of naked trees, and that means that our work there is over.
On our last weeks of project we do some different task, in that occasion we went to Kuldiga to give the chance to the spanish language students to try to speak with a native.
Even when most of them are just starting to understand the language of Cervantes, they ask about the differences stile of life in a so “exotic” country, and why to left Canary Islands to go to a so cold place...

EVENING SCHOOL IN CESIS

We keep cooperating with the other volunteers, this time another Spanish EVS from Cesis has prepare an international meeting for the students of the evening high school.

A group of volunteers continue there presenting our experiences and answering their questions to try to scape to the stereotypes that every one have.

PRESENTING OUR EVS

We continue with our visits to high schools, but now we went to Bulduri, to explain to the youngsters what means that estrange idea of working in a foreign country without getting paid.

Thanks to our coordinator we give them more information about the options they have to do EVS through “Radi Vidi Pats” and the other Europe in Action initiatives.

A SEMINAR TO DISCOVER EUROPE

Our friends of Rezekne don´t stop to work. This time we organize with them a meeting of 20 NGOS from all over the world.

In this seminar we get in contact to prepare new voluntary projects and how to indicate the youngsters what possibilities of development they have in the Youth in Action program.

For that we prepare different visits to high schools and faculties. After presentations every country had his own display and every visitor could ask about more information concerning projects in every corner of the world.

Finally we work together with experienced members of NGOs, and we get new ideas to keep working in voluntary projects in future, but maybe the next time we will be the ones who prepare the project for other youngsters.

TWO WEEKS IN GAUJA

There is another EVS project related with environmental protection, and as they are similar we got the idea to make an exchange with volunteers from Gauja, the oldest and the biggest National Park in Latvia.
We were convinced that sharing experience and ideas between volunteers from different national parks will inspire us to discover new tasks in our project and improve our work.
During two weeks one of us went to Gauja, and we hosted in Kemeri another volunteer to learn and work in a different plac. During that time we participated in guided visits, kept working in statistics survey, prepared some report and proposals about the signals in Gauja, went to some high schools to speak about our experience and even celebrated the 45th anniversary of Gauja NP´s establishment. Two weeks full of new experiences and ideas.

MUSIC FOR A CLEANNIG DAY

The 13th of September, all around Latvia several organizations prepared one day of voluntary work to clean the nature. Our task was to make some activities for people taking part in this event after the cleaning was ended. We arranged for them place to drink hot tea and eat sweet cookies. As a bonus there was life concert performed by us. After a week of many rehearsals we composed 3 songs. Everything especially for this occasion.

KEMERI FESTIVAL

Every year, in August, anniversary of the foundation of Kemeri resort is being celebrated. This year the festival took place on the 23^rd of August. Chess International Open took place, exactly the way it did during the 30s. And there were also some environmental education activities prepared by KNP to complement the sports and games for children and youngsters organized in the town park. Unfortunately the global warming and this strange wet summer reduced the number of visitors, but kids had a good fun in playground despite the heavy rain.

REZEKNE THEATER FESTIVAL

After the effort, and the success of the European People Festival, some of the volunteers from Rezekne stayed longer in Latvia to organize also another festival, and they invited us to collaborate in preparations.

That time in Rezekne was a theater seminar in which 40 youngsters from five European countries took part. The aim of seminar was to get to know the art of street theater. Anyway the biggest performance was that one where all of the artists were involved together in one play.

A GOOD GOODBYE

The summer is the time when the EVS projects flourish everywhere, and now that the leaves begin to fall, most of the projects are over, and the volunteers have to harvest their experiences and return back home.
During last three months we were helping each other in our projects, discovered the country together and transformed our flats into improvised hostels.
Meeting all these great people is the best part of being here, and now that they have to go, nobody likes saying good bye, but even with the taste of some tears, we met last time to say, not “good-bye” but, “Uzredzesanos, draugi!”

GAUJA NATIONAL PARK BATS NIGHT

The volunteers working in Gauja National Park, now had to prepare their own bats night. As they had come to help with the KNP Bats Night, they took some of the ideas to add to their own projects.
Now we were the ones who went to help them, and to take some ideas, maybe for the volunteers of the coming years. Like the bat costume to play with the kids, that scared more than one, and brought smile to all of us.

FIRST GUIDED TOURS

Finally, after long expectation and successfully passed test on our knowledge about the park, we had our first guided trips on bikes with visitors and not only with friends. It seems that the advertisement does not work so well, as our only “clients” had got the information nowhere else but at the KNP info center itself. For that reason we modified the leaflets, and spread them in more places, not only in Jurmala. But the fact is that with this premature autumn, the touristic season seems to be already over.

QUESTIONS IN THE FOREST

During this moth, and up to the end of September, we have to make statistics about the number of visitors that go to the Great Bog.

We have to stay in the forest for six hours asking visitors some basic questions. When there is no rain, we can choose between enjoying the silence of the place, or having a conversation with a local woman who lives alone in an old house, former meteorological station near the Great Bog. She doesn’t speak English, so we can improve our communication skills in Latvian and Russian, especially because she likes to speak a lot, despite the fact we don´t understand so much.

EUROPEAN PEOPLE FESTIVAL

Following the idea of cooperation with other EVS projects during our time here in Latvia, we helped other volunteers with the organization of the European People Festival. It is an annual meeting of 15 countries that compete in several activities like different sports, dancing, singing, cooking. The idea is to connect small villages from all over Europe with these activities.

All the volunteers were divided in couples, each of them being in charge of one of these delegations. This meant informing the guests about all activities, place and time of the competitions, arranging accommodation and food services, managing all tools and equipment they needed for tasks.

During all the week we had no time to rest. We were supposed to spend all the time with our delegations, including the time for party, so if they did not go sleep, then we did not go too.

After one week of festival, we finished completely exhausted, but happy about the great time we had spent there!

BAT NIGHT

Each year Kemeri National Park organizes a special day to learn more about the bats. The Bat Night is full of activities including presentations by leading bat experts and also an excursion together with them during the night in the nearby forest to hear and see these mysterious animals.
In the end there was a barbecue for all participants, where everybody could share personal impressions about the Bat Night with others, including local people and foreign guests like us.
With the help of other EVS volunteers we took part in preparations to that event, by arranging some activities for children like handcrafts, and games, of course, always in some relation to bats.

Giving support to each other

We were visited by a group of EVS volunteers from different projects and they helped us with the hardest part of our job, bringing the heavy wooden planks up to the end of the boardwalk of Kemeri Raised Bog, around 3 km far and then coming back.
Thus we have finally finished this task and shared our backache with others.
Liels Paldies Meitenes!!

Latvian Lessons

Once or two times per week we have Latvian language lessons, it is not easy because it seems to have nothing in common with Spanish or Polish, but we need to improve our communication skills. It is necessary if we want to do more activities with local people, especially with children.

For now our lessons give us some survival skills to be able to do shopping in small local shops, and keep a short dialog with the visitors, however we still need a lot of practice.

Guided Routes for Bicycles

Keeping on the idea to offer more activities to the Park´s administration, we proposed a new activity for the visitors - guided routes on bicycles for free. The idea is to offer small groups of visitors the option to go with one of us, and visit the most interesting places of the park, with some information in English about the nature and some concepts of environmental education.
We proposed three different routes – two, three, and five hours long, and we printed an advertisement and spread it all over the nearby hotels and information points.

The Others

Since the on arrival training seminar, we keep in contact with the other volunteers working in different projects all around Latvia.
We can say that there is even an EVS community in the country, and we met and visited some cities together. This is not only a great way to spend the free time, but also a good way to keep a network and we are starting to prepare some ideas to enrich our projects.

Song and Dance Festival

Just once in five years there is the time for the most important festival of Latvian culture – the Song and Dance Festival, that has also been included in the list of non-material cultural heritage of UNESCO.
Thanks to our Latvian friends we had the chance to find some tickets to some of the concerts and even be at the final concert, that gathered about 18.000 singers from all over the country, just to this special event.
Being there in the middle of the public, that was also singing, was just an amazing experience.