First days of Agata's EVS

They say that once you come to Lisbon you fall in love with the city and you will definitely come back. In my case it turned out to be true.

My name is Agata and I am Polish. I have started my EVS at Spin on the 1st of November, leaving colorful Polish Autumn and coming to Portugal right in the middle of something that looks like the end of the Summer - all sunny and warm. I have been to Lisbon last year, visiting my friend who was on her Erasmus scholarship here. I found this city unbelievably charming, beautiful and full of good vibes. I knew that I would like to come back here one day for a little bit longer and to get to know Portugal better. So here I am!

On the first days of my EVS I got some time to adapt to the new place. I like my apartment, which I share with other young people from Italy, Spain and Belgium. It is a really nice place with character and everyone is very welcoming. I was walking a lot, coming back to my favourite spots in Lisbon and discovering the new ones as well. It is still hard to believe that I am going to live here for the next nine months and that I will have time to become more familiar with at least some of the hypnotizing pictures and tastes of the city.

I came to Lisbon on the same day as Maurizio, with whom I will be working at Spin. A couple days later a group of fifteen volunteers from Romania came here for their short-term EVS. On my first day at Spin we had our welcome dinner together, which was absolutely delicious (applause for the chef!). And I think I should tell you - they made us cry at the very beginning of our EVS. But happily just while cutting onions for the dinner. :)

Slowly I am getting to know people, my workplace and my duties. For sure there will be many challenges and I can already see that I will have an opportunity to learn a lot of different things, both in proffesional and interpersonal fields.

For now the main obstacle for me is the language. I do not know portuguese well enough yet so it is not easy to go out with other people when I can not understand the conversations' topics. This motivates me to study even harder now and I hope that soon I will be able to have a grammatically correct chat in portuguese. :)