ERASMUS+ Youth Exchange “Our Voice – Our Choice – Our Community” 01/12/19 – 08/12/19. Errentería, Spain
When I decided to apply to the Erasmus+ Youth Exchange in Errentería, pursued by Abarka and the wonderful Clotaire Ntienou Tchiengue, I had recently discovered what Erasmus+ Youth Exchanges were. During my first adventure, I had the chance to endure one of the best experience of my life. Therefore, the only thing I wanted to do was to undergo once again all those emotions and to discover myself through this kind of opportunity. For this reason, when I was selected, I knew that I was about to live with passion, enthusiasm and strength what the future had in store for me.
The night I arrived at the hostel where the project was set, I was immediately hit by the peace and the beauty of that part of the world I was ready to live in for a week. The feeling of expectation and trepidation coddled me since the moment I fell asleep until the next, first morning. When I woke up, I was excited to start and, first of all, to know the other 36 people with whom I was going to share significant and important moments.
I can’t say I was relaxed and calm; quite the opposite, I was vivacious and motivated: the topic of this specific YE was about the Climate Change and the strategies to deal with this complex and disastrous phenomenon we are living and we contributed creating. Since the first moments in which Kirill Babichenko, our irreplaceable guide, started talking and presenting the program of the project, I was enraptured and impatient. I instantly felt and absorbed the passion and the knowledge that our Caronte was yielding to us.
While the days passed, we all share our life goals, our expectations, our purposes, our ways of life, and – most importantly – we all learned how to take advantage of any opportunity, with the ultimate aim of feeding our minds and understanding in-depth what CC is and how to fight it. Everyone had the chance to speak about what they believed important during the sessions, to partake of their experiences (e.g., Eva’s mother way of life in Africa, Mario’s practice in Burkina Faso) and to create the discussion ground around which all of us could converse.
It is surely hard to report in detail all the feelings, the teachings, the thoughts and the emotions I felt during those days spent inside that big hostel in the North of Spain. Because of this, I intensely hope to have been able to convey all the love, the passion and the gratitude I am still feeling when I think about that week in Errentería and the people I met and that are still in my life.
Thank you.
Marta La Pietra