EVS in Pomiechówek

Cześć everyone! I’m Alice and I grew up in Padova, Italy, where I graduated in Publishing and Illustration. I am currently living in Pomiechówek and I work at the Biblioteka in the culture center. The village is a small but really pretty place by the river, surrounded by a beautiful forest; it’s so good to be able to spend time in the nature! I’m fascinated with both Art and the wonders of our planet, and I think they all need to be treasured and protected. I’m hopeful my year here will continue to be as wonderful as it’s been until now, and I will try my best to give back the joy, support and inspiration I’m receiving from everyone in the project. I'm starting to get familiar with a very basic Polish but of course I can't form a proper sentence or understand what people talk about yet. In fact my first language assessment test resulted in A1-  What can I say... it can only get better from here :') I’m so thankful to be part of this project, especially considering the curre...

The   27th of March is the International Day of Theatre. Fortunately, this dramatic art is recovering the importance it used to have in our societies, and more and more people enjoy with the different performances available nowadays. For this reason, the library decided to organize an event for children about theatre, specifically about our already famous orange box, the Kamishibai show. In case you don’t know, kamishibai is an ancient Japanese theatre art that literally means “paper play.” It consisted on wooden boards with illustrations drawn on them. The narrator would change the slides and go on telling the story. This theatre was very popular from the 30s till the popularization of the television. Therefore, Marine and I did our version on cardboard, and chose the stories of “The Ugly Duckling” and “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”, for they are tales that everyone is familiar with and we needed that since we narrate them in English. We also prepared a li...

The 8th of March is International Women’s Day. Surely, everyone remembers this date, but I discovered this year that each country celebrates it in a different way. In Spain, it is a day for the vindication of women’s rights. There is a female strike and huge demonstrations in the main cities. The number of participants keeps growing every year, reaching 370,000 in Madrid. That is why I was very shocked when, just after arriving to work, two strangers (delegates from the mayor, as I was explained later) came in the library with a bucket of tulips, gave a flower to each of us and three kisses. We also had some sweets from Mrs. Ewa. Apparently this is super common in Poland; every women is congratulated on this day and usually receives some flowers. Marine and I also decided to do our bit to contribute on this day, as part of the activities organized by the Culture Center. We did a presentation -translated by Ania- about Influential European Women, focusing on people or fac...

Not many people is totally aware of how EVS projects work.   As volunteers of the European Solidarity Corps, our main job is at our host organization, which for me is the library in Pomiechówek. However, we are part of a bigger organization that coordinates the individual projects of the volunteers, thus, every once in a while, we have the chance to take part in other events different from our own jobs. This was the case of the weekend of the Polish independence anniversary.   On the 8 th of November our team of volunteers was kindly invited to Serock – a little town close to Pomiechówek– to collaborate in the activities the social center had prepared for its users in commemoration of the 100 years of Polish independence. After a short presentation about the function of the institution and a comforting lunch the activities started. To run the workshops the participants and we were divided into three groups, so that they would have 45 minutes of each activity. Travis, vo...

July 16, 2018 Cześć ! My name is Angeline , I am 21 and I come from France. I started my EVS (aka European Voluntary Service) in the library of Pomiechówek, Poland, in September 2017 and this amazing experience will end in August 2018. 12 months in Poland... 12 months of discoveries, meetings, personal challenges and travels... 12 months with everything to learn, a culture shock and a language barrier to overcome and a new environment to adapt... But also 12 months sharing time with amazingly nice people in a place I will miss as soon as I will leave. 12 months, that's a lot to share with you, dear reader ! Let's go step by step and start with the beginning... After two years of French preparatory class focused on Humanities and a third year at the university to study English Literature and Civilization, I finally got graduated in English in 2017. Then I should have naturally kept on studying to obtain a Master and start my professional life... However, I dreamt ...

October 2017 Cześć !  What do you know about Halloween in your country ? Let me give you some short explanations from my French point of view... Halloween is a celebration that takes place on 31st October - the day before All Saints' Day. In France, it's a day when we can wear ghost, witch, pumpkin or skeleton costumes to ask for sweets in the shops and houses or attend to a party. We can also carve pumpkins to put a candle inside, tell frightening stories, watch horror movies or play divination games... This celebration is more or less popular according to the countries where you live. This year, I wanted to make Polish children discover and enjoy this tradition at the library because this celebration is generally a great source of fun and joy for them and it was really popular in my country when I was younger. However, I forgot that Poland was a very catholic country which meant we encountered some resistance from people because this tradition was seen as disr...