Hello!
We are Christel and Ilva and we are writing this post during our second week in Rome, Italy. We are doing our short-term EVS in Rome at the organization called UILDM. Who are we and what is EVS and how have we managed our lives in our volunteer house during these first two weeks, you will find out when you continue reading.
Well… We are here doing EVS, what is short for European Voluntary Service. The Moving out of Circles project is financed by Erasmus+ Programme of the European Comission. Here are Adrian, Christel, Ilva, Maksim, Pancho and Toms. We are coming from Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia and Spain.
Oh and i almost forgot! We have two other very cute four-legged companions from Bulgaria and Estoni, with us. They are two guide dogs named Ebony and Jan.
So now get your imagination ready and start imagining our neighbourhood! We live in an area, where there are lots and lots of traffic, you know it is nothing surprising for Rome but at the same time if you walk into the neighbourhood from the large streets you walk in the area, there are people living in appartment buildings, where first floors have little verandas and plants growing. They are not just ordinary pushes and flowers but in the first floors there are lemon trees, orange trees, plum trees and even beach ones. If you come to this kind of country from countries like Estonia or Latvia, where it is very green but also very rainy and cold than it makes you see the beauty.
Close to our house there´s a school and when you walk pass it you can see a large building with very beautyful streetart. Few kilometres from us is located a streetart street, where there are many and very beautiful drawings. We have heard that many monasteries are located near us also. Probably we don’t have to mention all the pizzarias and coffee places at the streets after every hundred or two hundred meters, it’s Italy and it’s so normal. But i have to tell you about the Chineese shops and bakeries. All the sweet pastries with different chocolates, peanuts, jams and they are so amazing. Chineese shops is a different story, there are all kinds of things, even pink bags for cleaning up after dogs!
So our home for next two months is a three-bedroom flat with two bathrooms, one kitchen and a hall that is about 5 square meters. Definitely we can’t forget our veranda with our “Grandpa“ who is always executing The Big Brothers commands to watch over us from the next door building. We consider him as part of us already J.
At the house we live two persons in a room and share the common areas. When we came here we got to know each other and each others capabilities.
Every one of us have our own assigments, what we have to do for the whole team.
We have shared obligations like cooking, shoping for all, cleaning and other things for example walking with dogs.
We all have an obligation to keep ourselves and the house safe. So one day when we went happy to Uildm after we have locked all the doors and all the windows. Every team member was counted for and even the bus came exactly on time. We did merrily our work at the office and started to go back home.
As we finished early on that day, Adrian and Toms desided to go to the city center and take a culture trip. Maksim had to stay for some time longer and me –Ilva– and Christel with Pancho and the dogs came home. –Remember, everything was locked perfectly? Well… When we turned to our street than Christel asked: “Who has the keys?“ Probably you know the answer- nobody.
Maksim came soon, about hour later and we really hoped that he had keys. Well no.
We are very lucky that we have so good mentors, Eda and Eva here, who came and let us into our flat. That was our lesson for working as a team and be responsible ;).
Our voluntary service theme is “mobility“ and we are going to reflect this theme through different interviews. So we were thinking that we should start out our trial period and our first victim is Toms, who comes from Latvia.
We asked him, what are the good and bad parts living together with six people and two dogs? Also we wanted to know, what has he learned so far about mobility considering that he lives with two blind people and their guide dogs and we wanted to know, what would he like to say to people, who are thinking about European Voluntary Service right now, reading this blogpost. What are the things that they have to take into account?
So Toms answered us like that:
“I really like to live with many people. It is never lonely and it is always possible to ask questions and discuss different topics. I also very much love to sit at the veranda have a cold drink and play boardgames with others. But these are also the bad reasons. It is very hard to find personal time and personal space. For me I feel very responsible also cause I’m almost the oldest here and I feel that I need to check if everything is going okay and if everybody is doing their tasks.
I think that for us it is good that we talk a lot and we manage the situations calmly as we need.
About the dogs… I like the dogs, I have a dog at home also and I really like to walk with them sometimes.
If I think about the part of living together with two blind persons then I think I am very lucky or unlucky- depends, what side you look at. I have learned so much from Christel and Pancho, they are very capable and now I understand that they will ask, when they need help.
What I meant by being lucky or unlucky is that they are very capable and if there would be blind people, who would need much more attention then I would see the other side of the scale also.
For people, who are reading this post and are thinking of EVS, I would suggest you to analyse yourself. Cause if you live with others you need to tailor your expectations and your “corners“ that you may have. Living with others in a foreign country and not at home with your usual things, schedule and comfort zone is something totaly different and you can’t get it in EVS. And if you have no wishes or you really are not capable of living with others then you need to think about EVS, what is for one person, not to do a group EVS like we are doing here.
But like I sayd it is a very good experience right now here, in Rome. We all are learning and if we would not be learning then there would be no point to do an EVS.“
So this is the post for today.
We wish you a nice day full of different mobility related activities and write to you soon!
Christel, Ilva and Ebony 😉