…the exam done… the lagguage prepared… parties finished… so what else to tell?

It was great time, full of adventures and new experience. Now we come back to our countries and our friends. The records from Italy will stay with us 4ever!

Thanks for your attention… this diary will continuous like the others things… ciaoooo!!

By K&K (Cip&Ciop)

Our last week in Italy was full of parties, meetings with friends, gifts and preparation for language exam.

In the office we worked till the last day before our leaving. The our dear colleague Dario prepared for us last work in the office – to prepare 400 letters to send. Oooh, we will miss so much this work!! Our preparation for language exam wasn’t so intensive as should be, because we had to finish our italian books which are much more interesting than gramatical exercises. In the last days of our stay here we also managed to visit film festival which is held annualy in Varese and Malnate.

Our colleagues from office invited us to the great lunch in restaurant. We found out that there are still many and many nice dishes which we didn’t taste yet. Also guis from La Finestra didn’t forget the our leaving and prepared for us nice gifts from their art work-shop. Karolina and me prepared czech cake “babovka” (which we brought to the all occasions) for them. After our small party we made some photos and had to say good bye to our friends. Also our housemate Rocio and her boyfriend Dante prepared for us nice surprise – they gave us italian cookerybook so we can improve our cooking skills.

Not only we are preparing us for our leaving, but also our families and friends are looking forward to our return. But they don’t know yet that we will listen italian music, take siesta, don’t wake up earlier the 8:30 and eat pasta, gnocchi and pizza...

O mamma mia! The last days in Italy are running so fast! We are becoming to be a little in stress… preparations to exam, last dinner and “aperitivo” with our friends, last duties at work… it’s so much to do!

The only quite moments are this of Tuesday evening… We prepare hot aromatic wine, sit comfortaby on our blu sofa and.. watch TV! RAI 1 has given us nice gift for this last weeks – a little film festival of Roberto Benigni. And so every Tuesday we can enjoy good cinema. We have already seen: “Il Mostro”, “Johny Stecchino”, “Piccolo diavolo” and the next week arrive “Non ci resta che piangere”. For us it’s not only a film but also great lesson of italian language and culture.

And then… it was a party! We invaited a bit of our colleagues from different parts to have a good fun for the last time. We spent a great time in this multi-cultural company. The arabic, spanish, polish, czech and italian music sounded in Casa Grizzetti to the late hours. Che bello!

This week seemed to be one of the last quiet, without stress connected with our language exam and departure. We continued with reading books, drinking hot cocoa and keeping away our grammar exercises.

Non expected excitement brought my service in SOS Malnate on Tuesday. As usually me and Elisa carryed containers with blood to the laboratory of the hospital. We didn’t make an accident, we didn’t break or lose containers.. we lost car key! For the by-standers it was funny to see two strange people in orange uniform ramping around closed car in the middle of the hospitals area. Unfortunately we didn’t find them and had to call for “first aid” to the SOS Malnate. They brought us new one and we continued service. Our lost key was found and gave back the next day. What relief!

Christmas is coming and we can see it everywhere. The guys from La Finestra prepare a christmas market. We made many nice christmas articles for sale. We also prepared one speciality really italian: the Christmas decorations made from many kinds of pastes. We talked about christmas customs in Italy and I read that it is a little bit different from customs in my country and also there are some differences between south and north of Italy.

People meet each other on the Midnight mass in church on 24th December. Many people bring sweets and hot wine which eat together after the mass outside of church. Italians open Christmas gifts on the morning 25th December and have grave dinner where can’t be absent typical Christmas sweet “panettone”. Still I don’t find out what is the typical Christmas dish, because everyone who I asked told me something different. So, this information we will bring later.

This week we finished with dance. We went to see our friend Francesco, who does dancing routine in club Picasso. Latin American dance is very popular in Italy and Italians are realy great dancers. We also tried to move ourselves in the Latin American rhythm and we decieded to take lessons of dance. Guys, beware of us!

…for shopping I don’t have money, any more. As it wrote Katy last week – that air-open market in Malnate ruined as! We are broke. Another pocket-money, unfortunately, will not arrive. But… it was great!

The title of this diary is provocated by series of book by Sophie Kinsella. This bellerist has enslaved our hearts! And so in the long autumn evening Casa Grizzetti looks like “bookworms club”. Of course we naively hope that this plesant activities will prepare us better for the exam than exercises of Italian grammar.

The last week starded with a little skid… And all because the All Saint’s Day was on Tuesday so Italians, like the other smart nationes decided to enjoy the long weekend. We also couldn’t miss the chance to delight one of the last trip in Itay. And so as soon as Radek arrived we went off to Liguria. Katerina instead has posponed a bit her plans and in consequence visited her EVS-mates in Bologna last weekend.

All Saint’s Day was realy time to conteplain… cloudy and gloomy with a perfet atmosphere to think about life and death.

What about work? We have just finished our corse in CESVOV. So we could be perfect administrator of “volunteering organization”! The problem is that OUR organisation does not exist yet… but… who knows..? Maybe one day you will hear about us! The Future Capital is waiting…!

Then in La Finestra we are preparing with guys “performance” for Christmas. It is a lovely story about friendship and peace. This week we did stage-design and the costumes. From next week the rehearsals will start. Everybody are so excited! What a pity that we will not see the final result…

The 700 kg of chestnuts wasn’t enough for Italians longing for the autumny pleasure. So, SOS gave them another batch and we helped them. There was a great event to sell them – open air market in Malnate. The main street was closed and there were tens of stands with many nice articles. Karolina, me and Rocio didn’t resist and each of us bouhght something nice. It was lovely to see people walking among the stands and eating our hot chestnuts.

The italian film director Roberto Begnini made a new film La tigre e la neve which we didn’t miss. As ever it was very nice and we liked very much the story about love, neverending optimism and absurd war.

Also in CESVOV everybody work hard. They made an usefull book with contacts of all NGOs in region of Varese (Volontariato ed Associazionismo in Provincia di Varese) Last week we organised presentation of the book in the nice seat of Government of Province of Varese. The guests were numerous and the meating was successful.

The good news arrived from the Italian National agency.. they approved our EVS project for the next year and the two new volunteers that we chose will arrive on January.

And our language exam? .. draws near and near. We just have made application, so it is coming to be serious.

The chestnuts once more.. do you know that they taste very nice also sweet?

Full of enrgy after our MTE we could cope with new challenges.

First of all: the school. First lesson with our new group and the teacher made as a little atack of panic… our italian exam is coming soon! We have only 8 weeks to prepare! And it’s not funny… this “boost” coused us to spent more time studing our lovely books. I wonder how long…?

Secondly: the courses. Just now has started two very interesting courses. One in CESVOV (“La gestione di un’organizzazione di volontariato”) which is focused on administration of “volunteering organization” (special tipe of NGO). In the big part it is some kind of repetiton of our course obout Third Sector that we did with Massimiliano, but this one is more complex. We are talking about legal, financial, administrative and organisational-normative aspects of organization.

And then we also partecipate course in “La Finestra” (“Io e l’altro: atteggiamento e comunicazione nella relazione d’aiuto”). There are work-shops for people who are working or would like working with peope in any kind of need. On the first meeting we were working about motivation and signification of volunter. It was very “active” – include simulations and so on.

Thirdly: CASTAGNE! Maybe not all of you know (Katerina and I didn’t know;) that Italy is a kingdom of the chestnuts. Italian are realy crazy about them. They prepare them in different ways but the most popular are roasted with pinch of salt and red wine. The last weekend was carried on the marvelous FESTA delle CASTAGNE organized by SOS Malnate. The weather was lovely and a lot of people came. We had very responsible duty to cut “some” kilograms of this brown balls. At the and they sold them about 700kg!

Futhermore we spend a couple of days in our home-towns! I went to Poland for the reason of wedding one of my best friend Iza (it was admirable!). And Katy visited her friend and family in Czech Republic.

Finally! The time of our mid-term evaluation work shop arrived and today we are back with new energy, motivation and many many new contacts and e-mail adressess of very interesting people from all of Europe. This time we met with other volunteers in sport centre Sportilia near Forlì. It wasn’t small meeting of 25 volunteers as our first meeting a Bore. This time it was totally different. To Sprotilia arrived 75 young people, (also there was group of Italians who were doing their pre-departure training) and the main language just wasn’t English but Italian. For us it was very interesting and useful week, because we exchanged our experience, improved our motivation and also discovered some possibilities what to do after EVS. And the whole week we enjoyed confortable accommodation and delicious italian dishes.

The meeting finished on Friday and me and Karolina continued in our trip. She with her boyfriend visited our friend Zsolt in Firenze and I stayed in Forli’ with other friends. So, when we saw each other at home on Sunday evening, we were full of possitive impressions.

This week was on one hand very similar to the others. Duties in the office, work in SOS and La Finestra. Everything rather calm and quiet. On the other hand some new light has became in our evs-work and all because appearance of Claudia, our new Italian candidate to be “send” on EVS. She is very nice a has a lot ideas. We slowly started working with her on choosing the project, writing CV and so on. Let’s hope that we will manage to prepare all for 1st. November date-line.

And this week for sure could be also called week of sport! We started form Thursday with pleasure presentation of “shiatsu”. This strange name is has one of the type of Chinese massages. One of the girls in SOS is attending the course and has to do some practice and so almost all her friends and colleagues are given this nice present from her. It is extremely relaxing and enjoyable. Highly recommended!

Then Katerina with Stania (who is arrived for couple of days) did they favorite trekking in mountains, near Monte Rosa. The weather was wonderful so they spent unforgettable time and, like always, brought a lot of photos with amazing views.

And in the end the Sunday! It was a day from a long time await by Radek and me. The day of half-marathon of V.C.O in Gravellona Toce (www.maratoninavco.it)! It was really lovely time between people with great passion! There was over thousand of participations! In one word: great fun and great competition.

Next week we are going with Katerina for the mid-term evaluation work-shops with the other evs-volunteers. Can’t wait!

Also this week is a little bit hard and full of activities. We spend 5 hours in SOS every day. The last week we trained the basic life support and everithing what is connected with it. In these days we tried to help injured people, dress a wound, put the wounded person on the stretcher and many, many other useful things. Not least we talked about the relationships among the rescue workers and about the “burn out” syndrom. Alessandra gave us to do the psichological test to get to know more oneself. And in the end of week… the exam! Everybody was a little bit nervous because we had to write a test and do a practical exam. Everybody studied hard, for me and Karolina it was like to prepare for language exam from health topic.. :) In the end everybody made the exam without serious problems. So, now we can go to save lifes with ambulance .:)

 This week we received nice present: Antonella from La Finestra gave us an bycicle. So from now we are faster. :)

 Also the language school waked up after holidays. We received invitation for info meeting which we couldn’t miss. We met our “old” teacher Caterina and some of our schoolmates on Monday. Nothing is changed! We begin to attend school on the beginning of October.

The other important event of this week was the Festa Sociale of SOS. Unfortunately the weather didn’t improve. Sunday morning welcomed us with little rain and totally clouded sky . Instead of it we marched with the other “orange” volunteers along the streets of Malnate to the church. The organizers did a very good job, the lunch was delicious and in the end everybody spent nice day full of entertainment and games.