week of work

Well, last week was full of work. First we took care of Stelpe's Open Air Stage - there was a lot of grass to mow and a lot of weeds to pluck. We were constantly attacked by those big grey flies, but we survived. And, as American scientist say, smelling wet ground makes people happy - and we were.

Our second task was to help our long-term volunteer, Masha, prepare stands for local children's art exhibition. We got some large dirty planks and a couple of sanders to clean them. For most of us it was the first time we used this kind of carpenter tools. But we did very well and our bords are already smoothed and oiled.

Some of them are cut out into guitar shapes and will be used to display pictures of Masha's students. We can't wait to see the final effect during Connect festival in Stelpe.

brand new bikes

Yesterday was a funny day. We woke up earlier than usual and went to Skaistkalne with Agnis to get new bicycles! Skaistkalne is a town 20 km away from Stelpe, near the border with Lithuania. We were glad to bike back home from there, even though it was a little tiring.

Testing if everything works.

Girls left the country for a little while ;)

Now we have 7 new pretty bicycles. Latvia, we're coming :)

weekend adventures part 2

On Saturday second group of volunteers left Stelpe to visit Open Air Museum in Pedvale. On the way we stopped to explore smaller towns like Iecava, Jelgava and Tukums - they were all very beautiful and charming. 

We spent the night camping at the museum and we woke up surrounded by huge paintings and sculptures. The museum is set on 100 hectares territory on a hill. Pieces of art are placed on large meadows, slopes and in the valleys, sometimes they are composed into their natural surrounding, other times they stand out.

This is a one of a kind place for an art museum. It was great fun to get there.

weekend adventures part 1

We had some exciting experiences during the weekend. One group of volunteers went to Salacgrīva to take part in Positivus Festival.

It's the bigges and most popular festival in Baltic Countries. It's situated near the shoreline, so we could enjoy not only the music but also beautiful beaches. There were many good bands performong at the festival - like The Vaccines and Manic Street Preachers. Skyforger gave a crazy performance we liked and of course we saw Keane's concert too, which was awesome.

 

One of the things that we enjoyed the most was a disco party - there was a lot of cool people dancing close to the see. 

 

(last pictures' source)

We had a great time in Salacgrīva, this'll be experience we'll never forget.

on-arrival training

A new group of volunteers arrived to Stelpe for short term project. We've got Lika and Orest from Ukraine, Raquel from Portugal and Aga and Kasia from Poland among us.
Last few days we've spent in the beautiful guest house “Rāmavas muiža”, where our on-arrival training took place. Our trainters, Inese and Kaspars, gave us a lot of new informations about Youth in Action programme, clarified our concerns and answered questions about the project and Youthpass.
We were using different methods to build up a team, tried to solve potential problems and crisises, learned good ways of communicating. Overall we gained a lot of useful knowledge.
There was also place for fun and integration. We participated in city game in Riga, took part in bird watching, had a "latvian culture evening" and cooked dishes specific to our countries.

Those 4 days were very intense so we were happy to come back to Stelpe and face our new responsibilities.