Ena izmed nalog, ki so del mojega prostovoljnega dela tu v Cartageni, je tudi EVS dnevnik. Tega naj bi pisal približno enkrat mesečno. Prvih nekaj zapisov bo v angleščini, kasneje, ko se izboljšam v moji Španščini, pa upam, da bom lahko kaj napisal tudi v španskem jeziku.
Tu je torej prvi od teh zapisov:
First week on my EVS was comfortably slow. I arrived to Cartagena on Sunday, 8th of February, late in the evening. I met one of my co-volunteers, as the second was not yet in the city. I settled into my new room and than we went out to see the city and have our first caña y tapas.
The day after my second coworker arrived. During the week we got familiar with the neighborhood that we live in, learned a little bit about Amigos de la Vela Latina, the organization that we’ll be working for and had a tour of the city.
We also had our first working experiences within the project. On Wednesday afternoon we drove to Los nientos, where our organization has some of it’s boats moored. One of them is an old fishing boat that was donated to the organization. It used to be a motor boat, but now it’s being renovated and turned into a lateen sail boat by the members of the organization. The plan is to go north with it sometime in the early spring, so it has to be ready by then. This requires some basic maintenance, like painting all parts of the boat, but also some more serious modifications. The opening where the propeller used to be has to be closed, the keel has to be lowered and strengthened, the motor and the opening that it sat in has to be closed, the mast has to be prepared and set in place … The volunteers were working on the simpler part of the operation. We had to paint the mast, the boom, the rudder and some other parts. As the whole boat is made from wood, protection against strong sun and salty watter is crucial.
On Friday, we got the second taste of our work here. We went to a local school, where we had presentations of our home countries to the kids studying there. The school is in poorer part of the city, so some of the kids there don’t have as many opportunities as the rest of us. They might not be able to afford to travel around and meet people from other nations, so this was one of the rare opportunities for them to hear about our countries directly from their citizens. It was very lovely when one of the girls came to us after presentation. She told us that she moved here from Ukraine and was thrilled about listening about our countries. This kind of feedback was a great reward for the hours spend preparing the talk.
