Winter in Scicli

Well my dears, I know that I didn’t write for a very long time, sadly I couldn’t really keep up this one post a month thing. Let’s see what important happened in the past months.

December – the emotional rollercoaster

This was the month when our problems started to come out, but at the end we could talk over everything so happy end.

In the work there were two important events, the christmas and new years eve what we worked over. The christmas did not meet up my expectations, there was no christmas market and there is no mulled wine in Scicli and these are important parts of my christmas mood. We made for ourselves the mulled wine – vino di glüh, this will be a say forever, Hanna! ;D True there was a small christmas market int he Casa where interesting things were sold, but not many people came, because that day was very cold. By the way there was a good feeling and we had fun that day.

We made the christmas decorations together with the guys. It was funny to cut snowflakes in Sicily.

The christmas in the Casa was not like what I imagined. There was no celebration. What was good in the christmas, that was the preparation of the food for holy night. Maybe my best day was so far int he Casa 24th December of 2016. We had such an intimate feeling cooking together that I still miss. Just us the volunteers, two friends from Marocco and Erica were in this shift. I will always remember this cozy feeling we had that day in the kitchen. At night we went to the home of Lisa and Hanna where we drank mulled wine and ate german cookies. Many of them we make regularly in Hungary too, spice-cake and stollen, so at least I had a bit of home-feeling.

Tired but happy at holy night - we finished the 14 hour long shift.

Well then in the next weeks we always ate in the hall down, what was very uncomfortable because we always had to go up and down with the pots with the warm food, and always had to go up to do the dishes. 

I never in my liiiife was so much in the kitchen like between the two holidays. Without being said, it was left to me, and I always complained about the lot of work but in reality I really enjoyed the lot of responsibility and my temporary empire. :D That time we really came home only just for sleep, that was very exhausting but the whole thing had its magic.

The next one was new years eve when a Dj was invited in the Casa who played old hits and a bit of what the guys like. It was good to see how happy the guys were for this party. Some of the operators celebrated with us that made the evening more memorable. We got a bit of champagne and I invited them to drink grappa. (Some kind of brandy made of grapes.) A question popped up in my mind at new years eve: Valentina, how do you have so much eneeergy?? :D

January – we keep up the hard work meanwhile freezing to sh*t

Really january was about that, and that we finally went to the seminar! I really waited to meet the other volunteers again, and meet with Valeria, and to see one of the most beautiful city of the world! We traveled there 17 hours with bus (not a fkin joke...), for a while I had enough of buses.. but as we arrived, we threw our stuffs down and started to explore the city. Florence is beautiful! There is no such thing someone doesn’t like it. You can find my pictures in dropbox. (If you can’t see my dropbox, throw me a mail or write me on fb and I’ll add you.) 

Besides the city tour, we talked about interesting topics. My favorite was the morning when we talked through the following four topics: expectations, roles, contribution, relations. 

So what are the expectations of your placement, what are your expectations, what are those roles you have to fulfill, what are your contributions at work, and what kind of relationships do you have in the city. We wanted to make a presentation about it in Scicli but it didn’t happen (it’s hard to find the right time), so I will talk about it here. If you already listened this, jump to the next topic.

So the first topic was – expectations

Keywords:

• ·         Language – to be better at it,
• ·         Work – every expectation connected to work,
• ·         Travelling – the chance to visit many places,
• ·         Culture – to know the italian culture,
• ·         Community – being part of the community,
• ·         Italian kitchen – we get a huge part of it for sure,
• ·         Friendship – to find new friends,
• ·         To learn about life – solving new situations, new problems,
• ·         Experiences – to get them,
• ·         Food!

Roles:

• ·         to be happier,
• ·         to help,
• ·         responsibility,
• ·         to be a good example,
• ·         to be present,
• ·         to learn

Contribution:

• ·         TO GIVE AND RECEIVE,
• ·         responsibility,
• ·         another point of view,
• ·         to develop ourselves,
• ·         motivation -> positive attitude, to be present, idő, creativity
• ·         emotional security

Relationships:

• ·         it’s difficult to find italian friends (many said that),
• ·         diversity – we are different,
• ·         to be open for a new culture,
• ·         living together in a home,
• ·         we are one family,
• ·         multiculture,
• ·         to learn,
• ·         patience

What I would light up from my part: the expectations connected to work. My hope was that I will learn well the italian social system for refugees and I will learn well the rights of the refugees in Italy, and all the laws that applies to them. We had no chance to learn this yet, I hope we can do it at some point. Our boss expectation was to be bridge between the youngsters and the operators – I think it works out very well. I said as well gaining experience, because partly I came here to see how things work out here.  From roles mostly to be present and to be available (but many times it’s annoying when they are calling us randomly), and to be responsible for our guys. At the contributions I meantioned to give and receive, in other words I am a productive person when I feel emotionally secure and it is not always so. What I see thou that if you put in a lot of work you will also receive, howewer there are people for who nothing is good or not enough. About the relationships… well this is the best. It is difficult to find italian friends. Or if you found them, it is difficult to get them to have some time off. We are multicultural family where it is possible to learn a lot of patience… aye, that’s about it.

The other big eperience was that we could meet with the new volunteers. Two came from India, a girl from Argentina and Uruguay, and there was someone from Portugal too. Few days are not enough to know someone well. I like the indians because there is some untouchable peace coming from them and they have a positive view of everything. 

I hang out more with the south-americans, they are totally energy bombs. 

They jump in to everything with a big energy and happyness, they are kind of middle of the party personalities. Because their language is quite similar, they somehow learn italian quickly, and they could speak just fine with us.

February – We breath again

After we returned from the seminar, things got a bit slower, in work at least. True that Beni tried the night shift, but I didn’t want to try this fun, so hopefully I don’t have to go in the future.

I had to change rooms, so my snail life form was changed to the let's do everything together circle. What is good because I don’t have time for daydreaming but sometimes would be good to have a little nest.

Two american volunteers came, so at the moment we are full. This is great, because the girls are cool, we don’t have communication problems and we spend a lot of time together out of the work too. Because noone has their own nest, we spend more time in the living room, where we just talk, drink (apple juice, of course), or watch series together. At the beginning of our volunteer year we spoke about that we maybe get a tv but then this topic wore off and I think we will not get it. But now we have Netflix, that worth much as a tv, and more! It’s better than that.

In February, we celebrated more birthdays: Beni, Nora and Lisa. Carefully saying we celebrated a bit too much, I couldn’t do all of it. I’m getting old! I think the best was the little hiking we planned for Beni’s birthday. We went up to a hill where is a nice view of Scicli and we had picnic there. 

If you are visiting Scicli, you definitely have to visit a hill nearby. There is a beautiful meadow up there with flowers and there were familiar trees on the road. That kind of trees we can see in northern Europe, so I had a bit of home feeling. The little holes you see on the last pictures, those are old flats, that's how people lived here a long time ago.

Excursion – Siracusa and Noto

When finally the weather became better, we went for a one day excursion with the refugees. At the morning we were in Siracusa and at the afternoon in Noto. Siracusa was wonderful, at least as much we saw from it. As always, I liked the sea the most but that’s me. Besides that, beautiful buildings, churches, really mediterran feeling there too, so everything good you can imagine. 

small oranges on the street

huge mediterran tree

my love, the sea :)

shoes drying on the street - ???

At the afternoon we went to Noto, that I never heard about, but when we got there, I couldn’t say a word. I never saw so much beauty in such a small place! Every building worth a photo, the church is simply wonderful (totally renovated!), and the feeling of the city just took me. It reminded me on Torre Pellice, at least I had the similar feeling. That endless calm, the beauty and the view of the city… take it on your bucket list. Maybe I could say it’s similar to Sopron, I have similar feelings in the calmer parts of the old city. So if you make Sicily your goal, make sure to check out these places. Whole Noto is part of the world heritage – this probably tells you about its worth.

In the dome we could find these installations that an artist made in memoriam the refugees who died on the dangerous road to Europe. These are the pieces of the boat they came with. "Who cries for these dead?"

Group photo from Siracusa :)

Carnival

The last attraction of February was the carnival. We prepared for it a lot because we organized one of the programs. This was a traditional game for children with the pignattas. The pignatta is a painted paper mache ball. We hid confetti, flour and candies in them. We hang them on ropes between the windows and the children had to hit them off in 10 seconds with their eyes covered. It was a big entertainment for the children but was fun for us too. We made the pignattas together with the refugees. It was a good chance to show for the locals: the refugees help us to keep the traditions living, they don’t close themselves away from working with us, and they have fun with us.

Making the last round of pignattas

everyone wants to play

The other program we participated at was the carnival marching. We made a huge banner that was entertaining itself. Had to step with painted feet on the sheet. 

The other preparation was the shirt coloring, we made that together too with the guys. To be exact, we didn’t paint, we did batique. We put the intense color shirts into diluent and we created the patterns like that. This was the first warmer spring day (the spring started here already in february) when we worked outside on the roof. My only sadness connecting this day was that I saw last time a refugee boy that day, because next day he escaped.

The marching was a lot of fun. There was a music band and we had front of us many children in costumes. 

We danced to all the music. 

I didn’t do make up for the marching but I did some for the pignatta game. I wanted to make it funny but it rather turned out scary. 

Italians take very seriously the carnival, they have school holiday these days. They have longer holiday for carnival than we for Easter!

I mentioned this here before, we have to become friendly with the feeling, when the refugees we like, will be taken away in other center, so called transfer. This can be a bad feeling, because we have to keep a distance, but we still like them, and it is difficult to imagine our every day life without them. I think that I can handle this feeling very well, what is worser, when I can’t say goodbye. For example when we were at the seminar, twelve guys, whoops, were transfered. The worst is not that I don’t see them anymore, because I already knew that it will be so, effective I am mentally prepared for this, but that, I couldn’t say farewell in person, that was very bad. Psychologically we don’t have that closing part, what is so important for us in this work. So I think of them as I think of my lost relatives: I cannot do anything with the feeling that someone is not there anymore, I just think that the person traveled somewhere, and once we will meet again. It is the same with the guys: they traveled for a better life! :) And anyways… this is the circle of life.