EVS in Alūksne, Latvia

I'm the new volunteer at ABJC: a 24-year-old Portuguese girl called Clarissa. After finishing my master's degree I wanted a little change so I applied to the EVS program. I wasn't counting on being selected, for there were 6 candidates. When they selected me I packed my bags to move soon to Alūksne:). Because of Ilze and Levan I must say I felt welcome here before actually arrived ;).

I left my home in Válega (Portugal) at 8h45am and I arrived at Alūksne last Wednesday at 3 in the morning. It was supposed to arrive at 1am but I spent over an hour inside of the plain in Zurich's Airport, due to snow :|.

Ilze was already waiting for me at Riga's airport, then we came by car to this town. I wore a few layers of clothing so I didn't feel cold. That was the first time my feet experienced the sensation of walking in the snow. I paid attention to the sound of it, it was brand new!

So far I realized some things:

- people don't greet each other with a kiss in each cheek as where I come from;

- when it snows people don't use an umbrella and I wondered about that, so Liga told me that's because they already have a lot of things to carry (we always have one when it's raining, where I live we have no snow);

- it's possible to be kind of amazed with not understanding almost anything of a language. In this situation the use of gestures while asking for directions really works for me and for the ones I ask;

- there's snow everywhere, it's almost like a big brush painting the landscape.

For now my main goals here are to learn the basics of Latvian language as well as the culture of the country, and to develop some projects within the community by combining different backgrounds. Probably the biggest challenge will be to discover how to engage people. ^^

Clarissa