Pakri Island, Estonia

Two panoramic pictures taken during my mid-term training when we went to Pakri Island, 

at about 60km from Tallinn, next to Padilski.

Media review: in the press (english version)

    Finally thanks to a estonian friend, I managed to translate the article a journalist wrote about me and Katerina the other wolunteers in Nooruse Maja. Now for all my fanbase, here is the article published in Pärnu Postimees by Karin Klaus on March 10th for the week-end edition. The original article in Estonian with a photo of the newspaper article is here.

Volunteer are bringing fresh air to Rääma

    In Nooruse Maja there has been already volunteers from EVS already for 3 years. During the past, the volunteers have been from France and this year they are from France and Macedonia.

    Pierre-Marie Brianceau and Katarina Petreska arrived in Pärnu on a freezing cold february day and so far they are quite pleased.

    Katerina states that she could’ve choosen between Greece, Romania and Estonia and comparing to other Eastern European countries, it seemed exotic enough. Katerina did volunteer work already back home while being a mentor in an ecology project. In the future she likes to work with young people or create her own organisation because she has always liked helping people.

    Pierre-Marie who studied international business management at home said that he joined EVS because he was looking for a new challenge, wanted to find and meet new interesting people. In the future he would like to work with European international projects and EVS experience will definitely become useful. In summer he would like to organise something with the current volunteers in Estonia because that would help to increase the co-operating and it would help solve problems.

    During the month the volunteers have lived in Pärnu they have already participated in the Ice Festival, helped to organise the Theatre festival and also have gotten to travel around Estonia and participate in a volunteer seminar in Viljandi.

Pierre is helping to the students who are learning french and he has plans to start organising theme nights to introduce chinese language and culture. Both of the volunteers have just started the Estonian classes.

    On the free time Katerina loves walking, reading and shopping. Pierre is looking for a place to play volleyball and currently he’s also keeping the blog fromparnuwithlove.blogspot.com in where he writes stories about Pärnu, including funny moments such as eating vastlakukkel (traditional estonian brioches made on Shrove day), sledging, walking across the Pärnu river on first time and so on. All that illustrating it with plenty of photos.

    To get more acquainted with Pierre, people can join the French day on 24th of March and the macedonian day will be on the 14th of April.

„Hard working and educated people“ stated the manager of Nooruse Maja Uudo Laane who said that Pierre and Katerina are assisting Nooruse Maja with current European projects, helping to organise events and do some advertising. The main purpose is to use the young people’s ideas as much as possible to get some extra value to Nooruse Maja.

During those couple of weeks they have lived here, they have already both found lots of new friends, learned how to walk on ice and etc. They also stated that though they are coming from warmer climate, with open-minded society, even though people on the street don’t kiss or hug and seems rather distant, they are very nice and kind people once you get to know them.

    Katerina was touched by the movie about the Estonian Singing revolution and she said that it was so touching that people just come together and sing. She also thinks that Estonia is much calmer and nicer than Macedonia because there is less cars and people are not rushing everywhere.

    The volunteers are gonna be in Pärnu until September and already Uudo Laane is looking for other volunteers. He says that he gets multiple applications every day and so he has plenty of people to choose from. He also states that it’s irrelevant which country the person is from but rather the ideas, initiative, creativity that are what are important for him.

On-Arrival EVS Training – Day 5

    For the last day, Kasia, Siiri and Kristina, our trainers left us with another person who explained us project management. I think this last workshop will be the most essential part to help us with the majority of the 8 key competencies of the Youthpass. Project Management is not only related to the working world but to any kind of activities that need to be planned. Anna, our trainer, showed us the different steps with an orientation towards the characteristics of our projects which could involve working with difficult population. We bounced back on the different steps she was talking about using our own experience. We managed to see some videos made by current or former volunteers. What I would remember from all this is the will we have to go through our projects is the keystone to our success. Even if we don’t know exactly how to achieve our project (two Ukrainian volunteers decided to renovate a room for their youth center even though they never did anything close to that, including in their spare time), our enthusiasm will give or help us find the means to complete our projects. 

    After that, the least pleasant moment of the week: going back to Parnu and leave those people, those friends. We were very close to each others. We all had lots of fun and promised to see each other again in a near future, why not organising some short trips around Estonia or even to Saint Petersburg. Our suitcases were done in a surprisingly short amount of time, in about 20 minutes. I pushed everybody a little since I was the first one with Katerina to leave and wanted to eat before taking my bus. And I found nothing to eat, except some weird hot dogs at the bus station newsagent. Of course, Heli reminded me our deal and I won’t be able to pass on this lunch I owe her. We were told students wouldn’t go as early as 2pm back home but unfortunately for me, it wasn’t true for our bus. It was packed and we had the last remaining seats in the back, of course not next to the window where it is easier to sleep after a short night. 

On-Arrival EVS Training – Day 4

   The last with the three trainers was dedicated to the Youthpass, how to learn from everything we will be doing, how we saw the future during our EVS.

   As a European Volunteer, the European commission decided to create this diploma, the Youthpass. The EVS is all about non-formal learning, meaning we learn outside any school structures while doing preparing projects and doing activities. We won’t add to the 8 key competencies exactly the activities we did but more how we did it, how we managed to get it completed and the means we used to achieve our goals. The Youthpass is recognised throughout the European Union, it is just more used in some countries. Germany almost considers it as another diploma equivalent to university ones whereas in France, it is still pretty anonymous. Talking about future, some of us already took in account the Youthpass when they decided to join the program. 

   Our trainers had a good idea. As we were all actives and willing to do more than just sitting in one room during four days, they let us go outside to talk our plan for the projects in our EVs and outside our activities. I think they got this idea after we talked with one them while going back to our hotel. It was good they adapted to our ideas, like when they asked Sean and Heli to do some energising activities when the latter mentioned it during informal talks. After our lunch, we had a lesson of Estonian but it wasn’t a lecture. They gave us a list of 7 subjects and let us choose the words we wanted to know like colours, food (asking for some good food that exclude potatoes is pretty important), etc. After that, we made the balance of our week with them what we thought about the training. I gave two words to resume it, Communication and Connection. Communication as we talked about ourselves, between each other. We also had to interact with some local people on Tuesday afternoon. With communication, we sit back and thought about our own actions and shared our ideas on projects. Connection, since the EVs is based on that. We couldn’t do this training without relations with other volunteers, our trainers, and the local community where we are working or during our leisure time. All of us gave similar answers with their own words. It proves we were really closed together, shared some strong bonds during this short period of time. 

   The climax of the week, or better said what everybody was anxiously waiting, was the sauna moment On Thursday night. Some of us never went to a sauna since they had arrived in Estonia. To do like locals, we went downtown to buy nice liquids while buying our return tickets for the next day. We took advantage to go back to the castle while we could still see it in broad day light. The longest part was the waiting time after the dinner. I used this time to recharge my batteries with a little nap. When it was time to go downstairs, I changed to go not to the sauna but the saunas. The hotel prepared the two saunas, the dry one or finish sauna and the wet one or steam room. The latter wasn’t so hot was we used to open the door too much, hence the steam needed time to get back to a normal temperature for this room. We used our breaks during the sauna session to play poker while drinking (with moderation) our beers and cider. Those two hours went pretty fast and we had to go play billiards if we didn’t wanted to go to bed too early. After a few games and a lost bet to Heli (sigh, I have to pay her a lunch), I went to bed to rest and try to sleep a few hours before the last session of our training.

On-Arrival EVS Training – Day 3

    This third day was orientated towards the culture of the country, how to learn from the point of view of the stereotypes, how to improve self management by resolving our problems and the unplanned event.

    We should have talked about Estonian culture during the first part of the day but we continued our talks about the movie The Singing Revolution, the consequences for the country, how it was seen from different perspectives, from Estonian politicians, the Russian minority and some events that happened a few years after the rebirth of the country as Estonians call this day of August 20th, 1991. I don’t think it was the way they planned to talk about Estonian culture but since we were older (>24yo, except for little Sean who was 20) than the average group they usually had, we could talked longer and get into details, something that could not have been possible if the group was younger. After we had to make a list of the possible problems we could face during our activities projects as volunteer and rate them by probability and importance if they happen. I only thought about four problems and without deciding before hand to make a ranking, the results reflected my thoughts. It was interesting I rated it that way since it wasn’t planned at all.

    An important part of the EVS is to learn from others. Our trainers went for a different approach by using stereotypes. They made a list of the countries we were from and told us to write what we thought about any of those. Surprisingly, all countries got a lot of stereotypes and not only Italy, France or Ireland. Since we couldn’t talk about everything written on the board, they decided to go for some unusual ones. Like for me, although people wrote a lot about food and how we enjoy it, I had to talk about our character and some aspect of our nature. It was better not to go for the obvious. 

 How to sing about stereotypes

   During the last activities in the morning, Kristina asked us about what we wanted to for the evening. We knew it was supposed to be the sauna moment but she wanted to propose something else. She talked about a concert given by a local group of jazz from the 1930 and 40’s. As soon as she said the word jazz, I raised my hand like Kristina did. I didn’t hesitate since I love this kind of music. She didn’t know if we would agree to pay the entrance fee since it wasn’t free. But for 150 cents, it was nothing. We had the Thursday night to go to the sauna so we opted for the concert that night. It resulted in a good choice. The band was great and I appreciated they announced their songs in English for all the audience. They alternated fast and slow songs, known ones and their own compositions. At one point, the leader tried to imitate a Frenchie talking about music in the Latin Corner in Paris thinking no French would be in the room but nope, I was here. He as so confused and was ashamed to have done it but I actually found it very funny. After, we went to see the old castle ruins. As it was already night time, we couldn’t see much of it but we found on the way back home a nice big swing. We were all grown-ups but it was nice to be a little child again!

On-Arrival EVS Training - Day 2

       After a (short) night sleep, we started our second day of training. This day was focused on the idea of volunteering, our rights and duties as an EVS, the impact on communities.

     The reason why we were all here was obviously the will to be a volunteer in a community or a group where they need someone to help them out. During those two hours we thought about ideas or obvious facts that were normal or just logical for us like Organisations choose to host an EVS a cheap employee. We had to think about it and find a common ground in our duo and then show and explain it to the rest of the group. We had to position ourselves on a line drawn on the floor depending if we agree or not. With Alicja, we agree on almost everything and we didn’t have to talk much about the common point of view we had to adopt and then show to the rest. The only time when I decided not to step on the line was when I had to answer a question when I couldn’t agree on the statement. After, we talked about what the EVS was really about, its definition, objectives and some question we had like for our insurance.

      One of the main objectives is to interact with our local communities. Our main exercise was to go on the streets, find someone to needed help and then find someone who could help that person. We couldn’t be the latter as it would have been too easy. With Simone, we decided to go to a supermarket where we could find an elderly person and may be a teenager who could help the former. It wasn’t that easy as all elderly women we saw were pretty active or didn’t have much to carry with them. We finally succeeded in finding a girl teenager who could help someone just a bit younger than the person we thought about at first. As we were in a supermarket, we decided to offer a chocolate bar to the girl to thank her for the help. Two last things: we completely forget to ask for her name and we met a local celebrity who was doing a show sharing the same objectives as us.

     We finished this day by watching a movie about the 2^nd independence of Estonia, in august 1991. It was very fascinating to watch it, see how 30 000 people singing in a single voice. When I think about this, I still have goosebumps. Without going into too many details not to spoil the movie, The Singing Revolution, You can see how people can change the face of history with their only arm available, their songs, without shedding a single drop of blood. After the movie ended, we couldn’t speak or say anything. We were so impressed by the intensity of it we stayed in the room talking about the movie, the consequences of what happened and some clarifications about how it really happened by asking our Estonian trainers.

Trailer of the Documentary, The Singing Revolution

for more information, visit http://www.singingrevolution.com

On-arrival EVS training - Day 1

        I'm just writting this short message to let my readers know I'm now in my EVS training in a small city called Viljandi (pronounce it Vilyandi). When you start an EVS, You will have two trainings you have to attend. The first one is after you arrive, no later than one month after your arrival. They explain you what is you should expect for your EVS, they give you more information about how you can use your experience or simply about the country you're in. The 2nd is the mid-term training. As I just arrived I don't know for sure what we will do but the trainers told us we will share our experience so far, give and take feedback from what we did so far in our organisation.

        This week, we are a group of 8 people: Alicja and Dominik from Poland, Heli from Czech Republic, Simone from Italy, Sean and Daire (sorry guy, I thought you were a girl ;) ) from Ireland and of course Katerina and me. This  just  afternoon we get to know each other, our background, our project and organisation. We had fun with some games to "break the ice". 

            I will try to keep you posted this week but as I might be a bit busy with the training and have fun too with the other volunteers, I don't know if I will post much. Pictures will also be a bit late as I will have to check them all. Just stay tuned to knwo my adventures in Viljandi.