More than 30 days flew away since we, the 6 volunteers and 2 dogs started experiencing EVS in UILDM. The first month in Rome Italy, for sure was full of learning and strong emotions. We are coming from 4 different countries with completely different personal background stories. It was more than interesting to discover how many similar manners we can have. Just an example can be the mid-summer day, which by the way is the evening of 23rd of June. To celebrate appropriately, the Latvians are preparing a lot of tasty meat, drinking beer, and they are going to look for a fern flower, which has a very special meaning to the future of the population of the country.
In Bulgaria the elder people believe that this night is magical. Early in the morning of the 24th June, the women are going in the wild, preferably high in the mountain, to pick 77 fresh herbs in order to support their and their family’s health during the next year.
Estonians also try to pack up a survival-kit consisting of beer and miscellaneous meat-products. Every one of them has a summer house or a friend with summer house and they need to visit so badly especially on this day.
The Spanish people also give their best dancing and drinking around a bonfire, pretending that they are scaring the bad spirits.
The common ritual for all of us is, that on this day we all has to jump over a bonfire. This is seen as a way of guaranteeing prosperity and avoiding bad luck.
We did not miss the chance to celebrate in the volunteers’ house. And by the way all of us were enjoying the Latvian and Estonian cuisine. Of course, we miss the ritual with fire.
There is only one thing, that we are not able to enjoy during the last month. The sweltering heat of Rome. It looks like only the Spanish guy Adrian can breathe normally during his 8/9 hour tours around the city.
Just for the clarification, the summer temperatures in Estonia and Latvia are not going up more than 20 degrees in the hottest days.
And maybe this could be the reason, why we did not miss an opportunity to go and visit the beaches around Rome. When you starting to add an Italian ice-cream in the hole picture, you easily can say, that this is a pure summer dream. And the last ingredient, which makes our EVS experience so meaningful is the opportunity to do interviews with inspiring people also with very different backgrounds, from who we can get a big amount of various viewpoints.
We are glad to share our feelings and thoughts with you!
Your EVS team.
Pancho