Planica

On Saturday, 23rd of March we went to Planica to watch ski jumping. The atmosphere on the area was awesome; people cheering for Slovenia with flags, playing harmonika and singing, dancing - really enjoying and having fun!

Unfortunately Finnish ski jumpers didn't make it to the final competition but never mind - we were cheering for Slovenia of course! The competition was really worth for seeing.

http://www.planica.si/home

Finnish ski jump on Facebook: Ski Jumping Team Finland

EVS on-arrival training

EVS European Voluntary Service is a part of Youth in Action -project of European Union. It offers you to have unpaid and full-time voluntary activities in a foreign country within or outside the EU. Projects take usually from 3 to 12 months and they're for people aged 18 to 30. 
You can read more about EVS here.

On January 20.-24. all EVS-volunteers gathered together to have on-arrival training in Hotel Krek in Lesce. We had a group of 21 people from all around Europe; Belorussia, Bulgaria, Germany, Finland, France, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and Ukraine. For this group we had two trainers, Alenka Oblak and Henk Persyn and besides them also EVS-coordinator Jerneja Modic.

During the training we had different activities and tasks to do. For example teambuilding, information about volunteer's rights and responsibilites and what can you learn during the EVS project. We were also talking about how to get into a whole new culture with new people and environment around. One of the biggest tasks was the project day. In a group of 4-5 people we had to make a team project what was somehow connected to Slovenia and local people and something what no one of the group had never done before. Our group envented kind of survival kit with humour and big smile for EVS volunteers  - "How to get married in sLOVEnia". We had the idea because we have heard that many long-term volunteers have found a boy- or girlfriend from Slovenia and after EVS stayed here. Project was a lot of fun and we also learned very much about working as a team.

It was really awesome to meet all the volunteers in Slovenia. After on-arrival training we will keep in touch on freetime and propably even have some working projects together!

From Oulu to Ajdovscina

On the way to Slovenia! January 3rd I traveled from Oulu to Helsinki by plane. I chose to go by plane because Finland is quite big country (actually almost 17 times bigger than Slovenia) and the distance to Helsinki is about 600 kilometers. So by train it would take around 9 hours and by bus something between 9 and 13. And if the weather is bad on winter, they might be also late "a bit" :) In Helsinki I spend the night by my good friend Lotta.

Next morning I went to Helsinki-Vantaa airport. My flights went by route Helsinki-Berlin-Venice. And then from Venice to Ajdovscina by car. Mateja (one of the volunteers in our organisation) picked me from airport with a sign written "HELI from FINLAND WELCOME"!

Finnair in co-operation with Air Berlin