Let's talk about Christmas holidays!Arne: When people asked me during my first months in Arenas if I'd visit my family for Christmas I always said no. But at one moment in November I just got the spontaneous thought that it maybe might not be a bad idea to go to Germany to see my family and friends etc. So I decided to start my Journey to my hometown Essen on the 16th of December so that I could participate in the christmas concert of my Orchestra the next day. When people asked me during my first months in Arenas if I'd visit my family for Christmas I always said no. But at one moment in November I just got the spontaneous thought that it maybe might not be a bad idea to go to Germany to see my family and friends etc. So I decided to start my Journey to my hometown Essen on the 16th of December so that I could participate in the christmas concert of my Orchestra the next day. Dunja: For the Christmas holidays I didn't go back home to my country. I celebrate Christmas on different dates as Spanish people so this year I have had two Christmas. First one on 24-25th of December I celebrated with Irina in Monia's house with her family. Iryna: Also we said "Hallo" to Arne and his family via skype. We were always in contact even we were far away from each other. I remeber, when we recieved messages at 4am from Arne, knowing that he had party:D Dunja: We were cooking and preparing food all day and in the evening with the appearance of first stars we had dinner and there was a lot of food so it had to be eaten for few days. Dunja: After the dinner we played a game where at the end we all get presents. Meeting up with friends on Christmas eve is not a traditional thing but when those friends are like your family then it's okay. :) Iryna: We want to say "thank you" to Monia once again. Thas was my first celebrating of Christmas out of the home, and I didn't feel alone even for a while! Dunja: Than in the night we went to a friend's house and spent more time together playing and enjoying in each other's company. It was one of the best Christmas eve's ever! Arne: When I was in the Bus to Madrid I could see some snow in the mountains and I already felt bad for leaving my new home. Not only, because I would not see many of my spanisch Friends for almost a month but also because I absolutely love snow. When I arrived with my 22kg heavy bag full of spanish Christmas presents (I borrowed a scale from Monia to check if it was exceeding the allowed 23kg), I was picked up at Düsseldorf Airport from my mum and a friend who, thinking along, had the glorious idea of bringing a cold, refreshing drink that you can actually call beer, not the Pißwasser (who gets the reference?) they sell in Spain as Beer. The next days with my Orchestra I had the dose of the good old "Stauder"-Bier I needed and could focus on the coming-up Family ceremonies of Christmas. Like every year we visited our friends and family in Berlin and of course had some nice food. Finally, there was the New Year's Eve Party with my friends, nothing special, but I really needed a good party without Reggaeton! On the 2nd of January my flight back to Madrid was early in the morning, and of course mother nature seemed to find her satisfaction into trolling me. It was snowing the whole night but because my flight was quite early and we were in a bit of a rush, I got the opportunity to enjoy this white magic for not more than maybe five minutes... Anyway, back at Madrid Barajas Airport I met a Belgian group of youngsters, accompanied by ex-volunteer Sara, who were part of my next adventure. Monia was kind enough to offer me a spot at the "Academy of Dreamers", a youth camp in Ciudad Rodrigo with roughly 50 young and fun people from Italy, Belgium, Morocco and, of course Spain. As AJS was the organizer of this exchange. I didn't go as a participant though, I was declared some sort of mixture between Participant and Organizer or leader or at-not-behaving-people-shouter or whatever. I think not only Monia knew what I was. The funky part was, that every participant expected me to know everything about the organizational stuff which I had no idea of obviously because the leaders expected me to be a participant (or so). I've started a three year therapy to defeat this personality disorder and we'll see if I can overcome that trauma. But seriously these eight days were a ton of fun and the amount of sleep I missed due to crazy people making weird noises in the boys' dormitory basically throughout the whole night was reimbursed by all the friends I made. It was actually a really unique experience seeing this kind of camps from a very different perspective. After one month of abscence from Arenas I was honestly pretty happy to be back, although that christmas break did me quite well! Finally there's only left to say that I'm definately pumped to see what kind of adventures 2017 will bring! Dunja: My Christmas present was my boyfriend who came from Serbia to visit me on 25th of December, right on Christmas. He stayed in Spain for almost ten days and in that period we explored Arenas together, he met my Spanish friends and we went to Madrid. For the New year's eve we were on the square Puerta de Sol in Madrid waiting for the bells at midnight to eat 12 grains of grapes which is the Spanish tradition. Normaly people almost choke eating grains but we started accedently a little bit before first bells so we managed to eat everything on time and we survived. When my boyfriend went back to Serbia I went again to Madrid to meet with my friends that I met in Spain in Miranda de Ebro on our arrival training, Mike, Martina and her sister so we went out together. When I came home we had to do some activities with our organization so we prepared the presents for Reyes Magos and gave it to the kids. Iryna: In Ukraine we celebrate Christmas on 7th of January, so after celebrating Christmas in Spain, I went to visit my sister in Italy to spend Christmas also with her. I started my trip on 28th of December from Milan. Than I went to Bologna, that has the oldest university in the world! I stayed there with my friend and on the New Year's Eve we went to Florence, the city is fascinating! We had there international dinner with couchsurfers from Brazil, Portugal, Ukraine and Italy. And It was really interesting to break stereotypes between our countries and get to know even much more! I was also proud of myself, that after learning Spanish I could understand at least something in Italian!:)
On 2nd of January I finally came to my sister. We enjoyed one week together and on 10th of January I already came home to Arenas, getting inspired and ready to new challenges! ;) |
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