Francophonie's celebration in Gymnasium

Hello everybody!

Today I would like to write about the "Francophonie", a huge festival in France but mostly in Francophone countries.

This festival promote French culture, it means to promote the language, the music, youth development and ideas, but also the democracy, the education, the sustainable development.

It takes place on 20th March, for this occasion, Leslie (one of the 2 other French volunteers) were invited in a Gymnasuim who diffrent schools join to celebrate the Francophonie together.
There were 4 classes from different gymnasium and everybody were learning French with different classes level.

Leslie and me were the firstto open the celebration by singing. For this event, she brings her guitar and we sung"Kyo - "Derniere danse" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU_TQcyGkvY)

Afterwards, the different schools had some presentation about France. The older sung "Aux Champs Elysees" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9V-zUlrhEE) and a couple were dancing in the middle of the stage.
The 2nd group sung a nursery rythm with choregraphy of "1,2,3 nous irons au bois" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpUNmriaiz4).

The 3rd group recite a poem of Jacques Prevert, "La familiale", about the 2nd world war (http://www.bacfrancais.com/commentaire/24-prevert-familiale-commentaire.php).
The last group, I didn't understand why but they dance on Gangnam stylefrench version). It was quite weird because it is a Korean pop music, but anyway...

After those different show we sung a 2nd time with Leslie : "Il est libre Max from Hervé Christiani" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dx3rktr4Ls).

Then, with Regina, the French teacher of the gymnasuim, we read a passage of "Le petit prince", I read first in French and then she read in Lithuanian.
The children had a work relating with "Le petit prince'", they watched a short film "Le Petit Prince et la Planete du temps" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxKP9smSLP4), according to this short movie, they had to paint something related to Le Petit Prince. We were the jury and we chose 3 paintings and the pupils who painted them received a diploma. There were some really interesting paints, and some were more vague, abstract...

We took a Picture all together :

We finally eat (cantine food, not French food XD) and we came back!


It was a good day, I was afraid to sing in front such a lot of pupils, but it was okay... :)


Ačiū for reading :)

Have a good day, iki!


Emily

Monika’s and Fine’s Midterm-Training – Halftime

From the 10^th to the 14^th of March, Monika and me had our midterm training together with 16 other volunteers (many of whom I hadn’t talked to a lot before, so it was great to get to know them more) near Vilnius, this time at Bebrūsų Dvaras. The natural surroundings were enchanting: a lake, a forest, and the next town quite some ways away. 

View onto the lake

The midterm training is -similar to the on-arrival training- mandatory for all long-term EVS volunteers and takes place at about half of the time spent in the host country. During our 5 days there we dealt with topics as

• Review of the time since our arrival, creating a graph of our feelings during the EVS
• Dreaming about and planning our future (after EVS and up to a time span of 7 years), also creating a collage
• Lithuanian mentalities, through talking about topics as “role of men and women in society” or “working habits” from our own experiences
•  “Pushing our borders”: exercises as running blindfolded into a wall of people or letting us fall from a table and catch by other people, to help us to deal with situations in which we are outside of our “comfort zone”. (During the EVS every volunteer most likely faces situations in which he or she does not feel comfortable e.g. while being confronted with different traditions and habits, a new field of work and responsibilities, etc. During the year one might learn to deal with or get used to those situations and in that can expand his/her comfort zone.)

Even though our midterm training was calmer than the on-arrival training –probably because we knew each other and already lived in Lithuania for a while- we did a lot of fun activities besides the “project-related” tasks: sauna evening with jumping into the still half-frozen lake, bike riding, setting up a "Lithuanian flag" (it was actually a casual scarf) for the Independence Day on March 11th (independence of 1990), making candles, shooting with bows and arrows, playing board games and dancing in the evenings, and –one of the highlights- having an international dinner for which almost every represented country cooked a dish. As you can guess, there was a lot of delicious food and a lot of new tastes. The countries represented were Romania, Austria, Ukraine, Macedonia, Serbia, Spain, Bulgaria, Latvia, France, and Germany. We also visited the only etnocosmological museum in Lithuania.

Setting up the Lithuanian flag

For me it was good to make a stop, take time to think about the time that passed, and get new ideas for the time that’s left. For many of us it is hard to believe that half of our EVS is already over. The past 6 months went by so fast, a lot of things have happened, we met many new people, went on trips and gained a huge range of new experiences already. For Monika, Laia, Emily, and me three months are left till the end of our project. That doesn’t sound like a lot but I’m sure they will be as eventful as our EVS has been so far.

Fine

all about bocce

Labas visiems,

It‘s early in the morning and I feel how my brain is still taking some more time to work than usual. The rainy weather also doesn‘t really help to make me feel more awake. But well, nevertheless it‘s finally time to tell you a bit about my afternoon initiative, as I had already promised you ages ago. So, let‘s get this started.

I had decided to organize frequent Bocce trainings in the afternoon after being to the Lithuanian championship in autumn in Vilnius. Remember, our team had won there. I told you that I had been working as a Bocce referee from time to time before at home in Austria, which was why I got so excited about getting in touch with it here too. Seeing that competition in Vilnius really got me motivated to work with this sport again and I could not wait to get started. Since December, I am now organizing two trainings per week, on Wednesdays and Thursdays.  In the first group, there are all children and youths from developmental classes, since the competitions around can only be attended by these kids. The second date I left open for whoever wants to come and it happened that it’s now only attended by youths from the special classes. The days are of course quite different from each other, and both of them have their difficulties and challenges to learn from.

team and trainer at the competition :)

I realized quickly that there is quite some difference between being a referee and being a trainer and that this new role was more difficult to fulfil than I had thought in the beginning. I got quite nervous because of the language too, since despite all preparation by learning certain sentences and expressions there kept appearing things that I just could not explain when I wanted it so badly. It was quite exhausting for me to just speak Lithuanian for a whole lesson, and It cost me a lot of concentration to try to do so. You see, the start was quite a challenge. But if there is one thing that I learned from my EVS time so far then it is that it’s the challenges from which you learn the most. By the time I got more relaxed and accepted the circumstances I have to work in, with all their ups and downs. And it made me feel a lot better. Now I can really focus on the fun parts of the trainings and there is actually quite a lot of them. I like watching the excitement of some of the players about each well-thrown ball and cheering with them when they won a round. Of course, losing on the other hand isn’t always easy for them but I even see there a bit of progress in them. I mean, you can’t always win, that’s normal, and I feel like they also start to accept that. The best feeling as a trainer of course is to watch how some of the players get better by the time and to get simply amazed by some really smart moves they can make. It’s great to see the joy they can have whilst playing and in the end it was this joy that I had seen first at this competition in Vilnius that got me into the idea of doing the trainings and it is this joy that keeps me motivated.

Last week we also got the chance to test the results of our trainings in a competition. The road led again to Vilnius where the Vilnius Open Tournament took place, in which we could take part because our school is friends with the organizing school. It was less teams taking part in the competition than that first time in autumn but nevertheless going there caused a lot of excitement amongst my players. I had decided to give some players the chance of making the experience of the competition who had not been at one before. It was already quite a big deal to make this long journey to Vilnius and I guess the atmosphere in the sports hall with all the other competing teams was also quite impressive. Our team played once against each single other team and I found that watching these matches was a completely different feeling for me than at that first time in autumn. Of course I had also been fevering with the team back then, but this time I felt clearly more under suspense. In the end it was now my team that was playing. So I was clearly more affected by my players’ emotions, I shared their excitement about each win and suffered with them through each loss. In the end we did not win the competition but that was no matter of importance. It was about sharing this experience together, for my players being at such a tournament for the first time and for me the feeling of taking part in it as a trainer. It was a good day and I enjoyed it a lot. As well as I will keep enjoying our weekly trainings.

Iki pasimatymo,

Monika