Experiencia de Jona: BRIDGE seminar

"I started my EVS project here in Madrid at the 3th of September. I was chosen by Belén to work at the office of AFAIJ to do office-work and also to do media promotion. I just got into my working routine when Belén told me about a project near Madrid in Garaldea, Leadership vs. Eldership.

At first I didn´t even understand what that project was about and I was curious to know it. Moreover at that point I didn´t had much Spanish in my mind and was a little bit lost with the whole new situation. All of this isn´t very helpful if you have to be responsible for picking up some of the people from the airport and taking them safely to Garaldea and also have to pretend like professionals like you would do that every day. But Jenni (another EVS) and I managed it without any problems.

Finally everybody arrived, and the first question was asked, what´s for dinner?

The “Garaldeans” are living a very alternative lifestyle. Those of them who live there all the year are working all together on their fields or feeding their chickens, so they produce their own food but definitely don´t eat meat. For me it was like a paradise because I also stopped eating meat a time ago, so for me it was a perfect menu. For others however it was a reason to despair (however after the second day everybody got used to it and started enjoying the alternative way of eating).

It didn´t need a long time till everybody knew each other. The people were coming from many different countries, there were some from Italy, France, Czech Republic, Portugal and Poland. The age also was very varied, from young to old. It appeared to work out very well and everybody was in a good mood. Very quickly I found some friends at the polish group, there were some very interesting characters and all in all a very nice group to have fun with. But I also went on well with all of the participants and we had a very great time together. But I couldn´t say that anybody didn´t like anybody. The atmosphere was fantastic.

¡Vamos a Chinhón!

Our two coaches taught us the content in a very nice way and also the two were very lovely persons. We always did some relaxation exercises between the learning and discussion units, which was very advantageous. Finally I understood what the project was about. It was about group dynamics and the difference between a leader and an elder. I´ve learned a lot new things about that topic. Also the language difficulties were managed very nicely even if there were spoken so many different languages and some of the participants couldn´t even speak English. There always was somebody who could translate, or even without translation the understanding worked out very well.

On the last evening we went to a little city near Garaldea, Chinchón a very beautiful town. Our dinner was waiting there too with a lot of very appetizing tapas and delicious wine. It was a very entertaining and pleasant evening. But however the farewell was very hard. Because many of the people had to get a very early flight and everybody knew maybe you wouldn´t see each other on the next day.

We learned many things on this weekend, we learned about group dynamics and also something about ourselves. New friendships were build.

All in all it was an amazing time with very friendly people and with lovely hosts.

Thank you very much!"

Jona