I’ve been here for seven months now, experiencing a lot of new and exciting things. I also learned much from my work here with FILOXENIA because the work is very diverse.
In the last summer months of 2024 we worked a lot outside, because we supported a youth exchange that had its goals in maintaining historical footpaths around the village Kryoneri. From that seminar I’ve learned a lot on how to properly use tools for gardening and farming. The seminar lasted one month so we grew close to the participants, all young adults, and made some friends there. We also supported a seminar with the topic film making, where we made our own short film. There I learned much about high quality filming equipment and the aesthetics you have to be aware of for making a good film. When the summer slowly came to an end we didn’t have seminars anymore so we switched to doing mostly office work. There my main tasks were renewing websites, designing flyers for events or preparing content for my tandem lessons with youngsters from the village. Tandem is a form of language exchange through games, conversations or small language tasks, not to be confused with real lessons. With that I learned some easy greek vocabulary and in exchange I supported the young teenagers with learning english.
Although I had some very nice tasks, it got a little bit boring over the winter months, that’s why I can’t wait for the summer season to begin where again we will have a lot of seminars and youth exchanges that we will support. Living with the other two volunteers is very nice and especially with Anais I get along very well. We did several short trips together to Athens, Patras or even Crete to visit a volunteer who’s here in Greece with us from Germany. Some of my highlights were definitely the first visits of family and friends from home and also a short skiing trip to Kalavryta. I settled myself in very fast and love the calm that life in a village offers even though there are some limitations that come with that. It’s very nice to be part of the village’s community and participate in some of the activities that are offered here, such as traditional Greek dance or pilates once a week.
All the obstacles that may have been there I was able to overcome so all in all I’m very happy here and I am very excited about what’s still to come!
Funded by the European Union
