Unbelievable :)

You will never believe what happened to me. Come on I am still not believing it even i live through it :) I received a present from my hosting organization for my good work through my project. When they told me that they have a present for me I told about something simple like T Shirt, pen, cup or something like this, but not I was totally wrong.

You won’t believe what was my present. It is a trip to another island that I couldn’t see. Trip for 3 days for me and one of my friends that I choose. Can you believe it, this is not happening even in the movies - present trip :) Well from this moment I am with this enormous smile on my face and nothing can’t erase it :)

So It was kind of hard to find 3 days to do my trip as you can see that I had kind of busy schedule lately :) I just can’t say goodbye to my personal paradise and to my friends here. Well in the end we went 30, 31 and 1 so on 3 is my plane for home.

It was the most amazing place that I have ever seen. La Gomera is really peace of the paradise. In its woods you are expecting every moment to appear some fairy :) It was really great. In the end we were three girls and we had the greatest time ever. We saw the whole island and we had time for everything that we wanted. Thank you Macu and Claudia to share my adventure. Thank you AURI to give me the greatest present ever and make my dream come true :)

The end of the cooking workshop

As everything the end of my project is also came. Yesterday I had to close officially the cooking workshop. Everybody was really disappointed that last week was the last cooking. For closing it and also popularizing it we participated in this week event “Cocinarte”. This is a forum organized by the University and whole week are elaborated different cooking shows, lectures and etc.

We participated in exposition of food in the central square in La Laguna. We were there to present the workshop, what we did and we learned, and of course some of our favorite dishes. We presented the Bulgarian Banitsa, the Austrian Apfelstrudel and the Italian Tiramisu. Just before we went there I received a phone call that TVE will come and make an interview with us. Well it was exciting to speak on live on the Spanish National Television, even on show seen on local level. After the interview and making our workshop even more popular we gave the food that we prepared and I was really pleased once again that everybody loves my Bulgarian Banitsa.

As a conclusion from my international cooking experience I can say just that almost everybody eats the same and pretends that it is their most typical and original food. Examples for these are the meatballs, the rice with milk, filled paprika, etc. But nevertheless I am highly recommending that you have to try the others cuisine because this is one of the best ways to get to know better other culture – how sweet or salty it is.

The exhibition

My last week here started and it is appearing to be really full of nice experience and positive emotions, or maybe a little bit melancholic, but let’s see it.

Today we just opened an exhibition with our pictures and also pictures of the Canary Islands volunteers in other countries. The exhibition is our photos with short description of our projects and something smart that according to us describes the EVS.

Mine one is telling the trues story, something that I think I will remember always and you also have to know. One day I was staying next to the ocean with one of my friends from here. I asked her what she sees and thinks when she is watching the ocean and she answered me that everything is so, so far away. Hearing this words I recognize that filing whole Europe and staying here last 9 months I am seeing exactly the opposite - that the world actually is not so big and you can be everywhere you would like to, and this is the thought that comes to my mind when I watch the ocean.

This exhibition was inaugurated today because today starts the week of the european youth and after this it will go throughout all of the Canary Islands and Spain to promote the EVS. I really hope that it will inspire more people to get this chance and discover the world throughout the eyes of the others and for themselves.

Youth for diversity

You kind of know me already. I am curious and want to know as many new things as I could. If it is connected with different people, culture and points of view well of course I am there. This was the case how I understand from one of my friends that exists a youth group for multiculturalism.

Actually this is one project that helps to different age groups to organize and start working about the sensibility of Tenerife’s community about the treasure multicultural diversity on the island.

Well of course I went in to the youth group and they are still in the beginning when they are planning how to organize their objectives, what kind of activities they will make and which one is their target group.

“Juventud por la diversidad” (Youth for diversity) is a group of young people from almost everywhere on the world. Their target group will be the young people on Tenerife and to sesnibilise them throughout different intercultural activities and events.

I love their ideas and the friends that I made there. I really would like to help them even from my country as I am going home in two weeks. That’s why I will help at least with this interesting Facebook page “Otros puntos de vista” and everything else that I could. Thanks guys for everything that I learned with you.

Gran Canaria

Yuhuuu we visited Gran Canaria, my third island from the 7 Canary Islands. We went again with organized group by AURI the Association where is my EVS project. This time we were 18 people - compact and really friendly group. It wasn’t really funny that we had to wake up at 4 o’clock in the morning so we can catch the boat at 7, but this the way we started our adventure. Well I really can say that it worthed to see the sunrise in the ocean and the playing whales in the water. This was really amazing.

We had a bus that was waiting for us and we followed the already prepared program to visit the most important places on the island as we have only three days. The weather wasn’t in our favor but we spend the whole vacation really nice. Thank you guys for listening my “guide explications” all the time on the microphone :D

The parts that I like the most were the dunas in the South part and Roque Nublo in the mountain. The truth is that each one of the islands here is different and each one has its own charm, but definitely my heart will be always staying here on Tenerife.

9 of May the Day of Europe

9 of day is celebrated as the Day of Europe in all of the countries but unfortunately here on the Canary Islands there was nothing about it. So Zsofi went out with the idea that we can make some event and start the tradition also here. Working together with the other EVS volunteers on Tenerife and the local administration we could do it.

Yesterday we were whole day on the square in front of the town hall with tends with games and specific information for the opportunities in Europe for children, youths, adults and of course one language tend. Unfortunately in this day there was big strike of all of the schools and un and the university so not so many people visited our event , but we hope that it was wrong to start the tradition of celebrating the European day here in La Laguna.

Bulgarian Easter cake

Ok let´s continue with the Easter story. As you know the Catholic and Orthodox Easter are always at least with one week difference, but this year it was whole month. As we were pretty busy last month I tried to make workshop for decorating Easter eggs this week but as everybody here thinks that Easter was one month ago almost no one inscribed so we had to cancel it. It was really pity.

Well I didn't give out and we make a Saturday - a small workshop for Bulgarian traditions :) In the Great Saturday, the day before Easter, as it is the tradition we made a Bulgarian Easter Bred - Kozunak. As it needs a lot of time, work and love to become good one we spend the meanwhile time sharing stories and traditions. I also show them how to make Martenitsas as they wasn't available for other Martenitsas workshop and we painted few eggs with the Bulgarian Technics and make a eggs fight as it is the tradition.

It was one really nice afternoon that I shared with very close for me friends my own culture and keep the tradition of preparing Kozunak for Easter. Thank you Macu, Marie and Jony.

Seville

This weekend I could go to Seville and visit one of my friends who is living there. I met her on the 17th Balkan Youth Festival. Well actually she was one of the PYP volunteers preparing it. So spending 1 month in Bulgaria she welcomed me with the few bulgarian words that she knows. 

We make a really fast but fully seeing of Seville. Just for two days we could visit all of the important touristic places and eat and drink in the really typical places for the sevillians youngsters. Also we made tarator - the bulgarian yogurt soup that my friend was missing so much. This was one weekend that I will never forget.

Well I really love Seville, thank you Mayte for showing me your city.

My friends come to visit me in my paradise

As you already know I had the chance to come and do my EVS in the paradise or with its popular name Tenerife. So when my friends from my spanish course understand this they started to collect money so they can come here to visit me and practice their spanish for a few days.

So they came here after a long and tiring journey and understood how cold it could be on 18 degrees. But they were really happy, it was only one day kind of bad weather and all of the others great. Unfortunately these 6 days passed so fast that we didn't feel them at all.

We could see one small part of my paradise and the greatest thing was that they love it. None of them expected to have so many and different things on such a small island. So much that even I couldn't see all of them since 8 months. All of them were charmed by the Masca. The nature there, as one one of my friends said this is the way she imagine the tropical forests. We also hike up Teide and conquered it. Well I really can't express in this post all of the great moment that we spent here. You can see just part of it from the photos.

I hope that this is just the first of our common adventures.

Easter traditions around Europe

Well staying during Easter here and living with people from all over the Europe was really interesting experience. We shared the way everybody are celebrating in home. There is a lot of things that are the same but also a lot interesting differences. For example the painting of easter eggs. The easter bunny and so on. So we just decided to share our diversity and make couple of workshops for painting eggs explaining our traditions as here they are not used to paint eggs at all. We had a lot of fun doing this and also whole week eating eggs.

The really interesting thing for me was that here on Tenerife each family has their own way to celebrate the festival and it is not so generally accepted that it is a family festival like in Bulgaria. They have the tradition to eat fish at Thursday and generally the Holy week is more important than the Easter by itself. And in Bulgaria is the other way around. This was the strange thing for me. But it is really nice that not everyone are staying home and you always have company for going to the beach.

Easter's processions

Ester in Spain is really famous with the processions the biggest of which are made in South of Spain - Andalucia. Well here on Tenerife also there is processions whole week every day. So I was really interested to see them. On the first moment I was totally shocked from the costumes of the brotherhoods they are literally looks like the Ku Klux Klan ones. But you can judge by yourself be this photos here.

So I started to ask here and there why exactly they are wearing this scary for me costumes. The answer of everybody was that it is not scary for them because they are used to it and they neither have idea why they are wearing these costumes it is just really old tradition and they don't know where it is coming from.

I am happy that I could see the processions even if I don't really understand them I really respect the catholic tradition their way of celebrating Easter.