Never underestimate the power of a great story

Hi everybody, here I am, back after one month with some more new. This last month, my adaptation period, has been important for me. Normally, when you start to live in another country it‘s always hard at the beginning. New people, weather, another language, in fact, many things that are different if I have to compare with my home country. For myself, the adaptation was not so complicated or difficult. Because  Belgian and Latvian cultures- traditions and people  are similar. After two months here I feel that I am managing my life as I want to and that my period of adaptation is finished. Of course I still have to learn a lot of things about Belgian culture but everything will come with the time.

In this month I managed to do lot of things: 

• I was in “on arrival training” in Groot - Bijgaarden near Brussels. Together we were 30 people and we have an initiation seminar. In general those 5 days I spent with them were great, everybody was friendly and tried to get to know each other better.

   

There we presented our projects

Of course sport activities in free time :)

The activities were ok, sometimes we spent too much time just talking or doing something a bit boring, but other time we were doing really interesting things, especially when we had to do our own project. 

We went to Leuven and asked to people some questions about Belgian culture and we learned a lot of new facts and information. Gathering information from people is more interesting than reading brochures that consists only of facts that you can read in all information papers. And Leuven is very beautiful town. I hope that I will have a time to visit this town again.

Our group :) It was very fun trip

• In school ¨De Koepel¨ with children we had a puppet show and cake decoration event of sugar glaze. It was very funny not only for children but also for me. Also I was happy to do something relaxing and fun :) Because this was Halloween week all children were making pumpkins, bats, eyes, cats, mummies etc.   

That we made together. Looks very good :)

Afterwards we had to present puppets that we made. Smallest children were scared to speak in big audience and they forgot what they needed to tell. But they tried and at the end they said everything we talked about.  They were like heroes and they did it. Also I made puppet and I told about myself in Dutch language. It wasn’t so easy but every day I learn more and more.

It is me. Of course I also was scared to speak Dutch :)

That puppet I made myself :)

I did quite a lot of other things, for example, I had meetings about different projects, visited museums  and cinema in Hasselt or with my host family we went to the ¨Open  Door Day¨ in ¨Dingens¨  (they made barometers and clocks) and ¨Machiels Building solutions¨ companies (house building) etc. Believe me I was very busy all this EVS time to discover Belgium culture and amazing places. I forgot to tell you - I passed my language exam and I was the best in my group. Sometimes the time what you spent to learning it pays back in good way. Congrats for myself. :)