September

These weeks I was travelling to Iceland and the Netherlands and via Vienna back to Slovakia. This was a nice adventure and I made Worldwide Friends (name of the organisation) during the camp. I started to understand the Icelandic culture a bit better. I saw the northern lights, beautiful sunsets. Sunsets in the airplane where clouds playing with the sun. The sunset at the glacier lagoon where the sun played with the icebergs. And there were seals playing with the icebergs. 

While we were driving through huge lava fields I saw from the car in sky northern lights, it was pretty dark. As someone said; Northern lights are like a green snake moving in the sky. I haven’t seen it very clearly, but in real life you can’t see it as clear as in the pictures, because it has a very slow shutter speed. So you see a longer time in one picture.     

I think Icelandic people are more creative, because in dark times when the sun doesn’t rise they make music, knit woolen sweaters, express themselves in arts or fantasize about elves. 

After the camp I went snorkeling in ice-cold glacier water. In between the tectonic plates there’s a river were you can snorkel or dive with a dry suit. I rode a horse, Dager (meaning daylight); all horses are Icelandic horses, coming from Norway in the 9th century. They have their own gaits. Not only step, trot and gallop, but also tölt and flying Pace

In the health and rehabilitation clinic I learned more about healthy food. I learned how to grow tomatoes, how to thief them and more about bumblebees. They had one greenhouse with cucumbers as well and I worked there a few times, it was very hot in this one.  

Iceland was an amazing experience for me. To educate other people I will give a tea meeting about it at the Inex office.

I visited my new house in the Netherlands on my way back from Iceland to Bratislava. I’m looking forward to being home again in our new house, to make it cosy and comfortable. I am happy that other people already warmth up the house a bit. I feel grateful as well that since I traveled, there are more places that I can call my home. Because of all the friends I made and the time I spent. 

In the first weekend when I was back from travelling, I traveled again. I went to Prague to see an illustration festival with Elianne.  She’s my only Dutch EVS friend near Bratislava. It’s always relieving to talk Dutch again and we both love arts. We spent almost the whole weekend together. I stayed in a hostel and had many nice conversations about India and America. From the festival I got lots of inspiration for my comic book which I’m making to evaluate my EVS-year. We drunk the best tea in a tiny little tea house with amazing interior. 

I was back at the office for only one day when I got the invitation to go on a Midterm-meeting. It started already the next day, they were a bit late, but I was very happy. It was a chance to meet new people and to have a different view on my project. This is part of my EVS. It’s about evaluating the project, meeting other EVS-people and making plans for the future. It was in the High Tatras, the greatest mountains of Slovakia. Now it’s autumn it was beautiful calm and sunny there. From other volunteers I learned how to make a bee house for wild bees. I gave my workshop about gratitude; I think it’s getting better every time. I also spoke with the trainers how to open up a teahouse; they have a coffee place in Czech Republic in a small village. So I could learn from them. I may want to start up a tea house when I am back in Amersfoort. From this training I got fresh energy to finish my project, it’s already less than three months.