Our last days in Lithuania

My last day in Lithuania is already 2 months ago. However, in this blog entry I want to recapitulate the last days of our European Voluntary Service.

Saying goodbye to our students

The end of our school year at the Panevezio "Sviesos" Specialiojo Ugdymo Centras began with the "Last Bell" ("Paskutinis skambutis") on May 29th, a Lithuanian tradition to celebrate the high school graduation of those students who finished the 10th grade. Our school had prepared a diverse program with poems, songs, dances, and speeches which was shown in a theater near our school. It was a very emotional event, especially when Laia and Emily said thank you and goodbye to their classes and teachers for who the school year ended already one week earlier as they belonged to the younger classes of the school. 

The same day we completed our volunteer passports, the Savanoriu Pasai (maybe you remember them from our first days in Panevezys). This time we went through all the steps again and checked what had changed during the past 10 months: our weight, height, hair length and color, how far we can jump, etc. Some of the tasks, like recalling the names of a dozen students, didn't seem as challenging as at the beginning of our EVS. ;-) Many of the students had prepared drawings and cards for us to say thank you and goodbye and some of them were very sad that we would leave soon. For me, the completion of the Savanoriu Pasas was a good reminder of how the year had begun, how close we had become with all the students throughout the year, and an all in all more joyful than sad afternoon we could spent with the children and youth. 

Our official goodbye took place one day later. All the students, teachers, and other kollegues gathered in the school yard and the principal handed us over certificates. Afterwards, every class and volunteer drew or painted a film strip about their highlight of the year. The strips were all bound together and are now decorating the hallway of the dormitory building. At the end, we took a picture together with every class, holding frames, funny glasses and mustaches that we had prepared before, which was a lot of fun for everyone! 

 

Polish-Lithuanian Youth Exchange Project "Creative Passions"

From June 5th-11th the project team had organized an exchange between our school and a Polish special school. A group of Polish students came to Panevezys and with the same number of our students we spend 6 amazing days. Every volunteer, project team member, and a few more educators organized different art and sport activities, a short daily language course to learn the most important words in both languages, games, trips to Kaunas, Vilnius, Trakai and Kernave, disco and international evenings, where the Lithuanian and Polish group and every volunteer introduced their home country. From soap-bubble making, over glass painting and rugby playing, to orientation game - there was an activity for everybody's liking. I was amazed how close the students of both groups had become despite the language barrier at the end of the exchange and being able to spent all day with the students for a whole week was a lot of fun. 

 The Last Projects 

The outcome of the eco-club (Ekologijos Veikla) that I organized for the students: 

Crafting out of old magazines

An experiment about the degradation of waste

Creating a trash can out of a cardboard box, newspaper, paper rolls and plastic lids

 

The very last week of our voluntary year we created 16 different postcards to advertise the EVS. In order to do so we e.g. took and searched for photos and made up appealing sentences.

Additionally, we painted a "volunteers' tree" on the wall infront of the school's canteen, in whose circled leaves the photos of every year's volunteers can be put as a memory. 

Fine