Hi there, it‘s Fabian from Germany. I am here in Lecce for the ESC Volunteer Project „Connecting the CommUNITY“ 2.0 of Vulcanicamente. My Co-Volunteers Iliana, Kalli, Genesis and I arrived on the 18th of May after a more or less long journey from our home countries to step in the footsteps of the previous volunteers Josi, Eliisa, Kiriaki and Kevin. Our focus of work will be to get to know the Community of San Cesario di Lecce and hopefully making an impact for a better connection in San Cesario. The excitement before arriving in Lecce was big for me, due to the circumstances of living in a flat with three persons I never met in person before, all coming from different cultures and backgrounds. Given the language barrier of speaking English with each other, not being able taking the „easy“ way of your mother tongue, I really wondered how the cohabitate will work out. Now after one week I am able to say, that it works even better than I expected. In my opinion all of us living in the flat in Lecce are very open to adapt and learn, as well as being considerate about individual needs and habits. Thankful of having the possibility of being part of that intercultural flat, I am very excited of how things are gonna evolve in the two months of our stay! Getting to know Lecce and his beautiful alleys and piazzas, was made very easy for us thanks to our neighbours Anaïs, Pille and Carlos from the ESC project „The World we have“. Being in Lecce for now more than 8 months, they shared with us their favourite places to drink an espressino or getting a calzone for small money. Despite of that they are helping with a lot of little questions we may have (for me it was quite a thing to find bread I like), and are so great in integrating us in the life of Lecce, giving us a feeling of being welcome. Anyway, I am quite overwhelmed how nice and interesting everybody I get to know here appears. In Germany I always lived in quite big cities, being maybe used to a more anonymous and reserved attitude. It will be interesting for me to see, in which ways I will be able to adapt to that spirit. I try my best (usually). On Tuesday we’ve been the first time to San Cesario, our main place of work, and were able to get to know Sara. She is our coordinator for San Cesario, being very well connected to the community there. Together with our other Coordinator Ilenia, who picked us up from the train station and will teach us Italian (my main saying will probably stay „non ho capito“ I am afraid), we had to fulfill a few interactive and non formal tasks, in terms of speaking with citizens of San Cesario. For example asking individuals what may be missing in the community was a great and approachable start to get to know the community of San Cesario and I believe on our way we already made some interesting connections to some residents. All of us are excited about what to come in the next weeks. In this sense till the next time ragazze, ragazzi and all the non-binary human beings <3 ~Fabian
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Anaïs from the world we have here :) What you do not immediately think about when signing up for a solidarity corps opportunity are all the people you will meet during this opportunity and consequently will have to leave as well. These past few weeks have been quite eventful, both in the positive way and in the negative.
I would think that, because I have had so many goodbyes I would be used to it by now, but if anything it might even be harder. It is difficult finding people you truly feel comfortable with and who feel like a little home away from home. When you find those people and they have to leave, it will keep being hard saying bye. BUT we did not only have to say bye! We also got to meet four amazing new humans who arrived for Connecting the CommUNITY 2.0. It is really exciting getting to know new people and different dynamics of their group. It is exciting to see their amazement for this beautiful city, which makes you appreciate it all over again. Being a social person I like to get to know people, their views and ideas and learn about them as a person. Genesis, Kalli, Iliana, Leo and I actually went to Ostuni yesterday which was a great opportunity to get to know them better! I am excited for the two months to come. It is crazy how I talked about how short two months are but I am slowly approaching my last two months of this opportunity as well which feels so weird to think about. With Lecce being a yellow zone I have the opportunity to fully enjoy both Lecce and Puglia without too many Covid restrictions which is so exciting:)) Let’s see how these last two months and a bit will go <3
Xxxx Anaïs |
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