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Ciao, cześć, hallo, hola, olá, salut, szia, tere and terve!

Ciao! It's Louise and Emma.

Today we would like to share a wonderful experience with you, which we have made last Saturday. But first, we need to go back in time a bit…

About 4 months ago, I (Louise) was called for my "On Arrival Training" (if you're wondering what is the OAT, go see our blog post on this topic). There, I was lucky to meet other ESC volunteers who have the same coordinating organisation as us (Vicolocorto), and also live in the Marche region. I particularly bonded with Laura, a finnish girl who is doing her service at the Red Cross of Cingoli, and Madalena from Portugal, who is volunteering in Caritas Senigallia. After the training, we kept in touch and decided to see each other again... which we did. We visited the Frasassi caves, Ancona, and -more important for our story- at the end of August, we organised an ESC lunch at our appartment in Jesi, where we all cooked traditionnal dishes from our home countries. From that day, we had the idea to do something similar again, in Senigallia, on the beach.

Madalena, Laura and I at the Frasassi caves

On the last weekend of September, the time had finally come. Just like Emma, a lot of new volunteers had arrived in the beginning of September and that lunch had become a great opportunity to get to know each other.

There were 10 of us: Laura, Madalena and I, Louise (the original trio) plus Emma (of course!), Ema (Spain/Colombia), Iris (Austria), Liisa (Estonia), Lucille (France), Lotte (Hungary) and Wojciech (Poland).


For us, the meeting started at the train station where we first encountered Laura, Iris, Ema, Liisa and Wojciech. All of them are volunteers at the Red Cross of Cingoli, a little town near Jesi. In their project, they get the opportunity to contribute to the ambulance service and thus get in touch with a wide range of people (volunteers and patients). They also have other tasks, but their schedule isn't regular like ours, and they are often told very last-minute what their day is gonna be like.

On the train, we realised that we were not on the same page about what was going to happen during the day: we had prepared dishes to share with everyone whereas most of them didn't even know we were having a picnic. According to them, Laura had forgotten to mention this aspect, but maybe this is just "Italian spontaneity" that has gotten into her after 5 months of volunteering here! 😅 
Luckily, this wasn't a problem a 5-minute visit to Eurospin couldn't solve!

Madalena, Lucille and Lotte joined us at the train station of Senigallia, the city where they are doing their service. The project of Caritas Senigallia is divided in two. Lotte is doing her service in a vegetable garden managed by Caritas, while Madalena and Lucille work in the shelter for homeless people, in a project similar to ours (preparing the food, serving the beneficiaries, talking to them, …).

Meeting all these other volunteers gave us a great chance to learn more about the diversity of volunteering experiences here in Italy. It's always fascinating to exchange stories and compare our day-to-day routines.
For Emma, it was great to meet other volunteers who had just arrived as they shared their first impressions of arriving in a new country. It was also nice to meet new people outside of Jesi and start building connections here in Italy.
As for Louise, she was very happy to see Laura and Madalena again, but it was also bittersweet as we had to say goodbye to Madalena on that day! But that's part of the beauty of international volunteering: Portugal has just got added to our travel list! 😉

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