V tretjem poglavju svojega bloga, Charlotte piše o tem kako je epidemija vplivala na njeno življenje v zadnjih treh mesecih in katerih spretnosti za samostojno življenje se je v tem času naučila. Vabljeni k branju.
Chapter 3 – Or how Corona messed up our plans
Hey everyone!
I wanted to give an update on what I´ve been up to in the last months after the on-arrival training.
Right after the on-arrival training, we went to Ljubljana over the weekend to visit some other volunteers. Since Slovenia is a rather small country, it’s really easy to travel around and go to another city over the weekend. For example, Ljubljana is only a 1.5 hour drive from Lucija. So normally, you can visit volunteers in other places quite easily but unfortunately, after our weekend in Ljubljana, travel between regions got restricted.
In September, Borut´s ESC ended and my new flatmate Ilse arrived. Naturally, I had planned to introduce her to everyone and show her around in her first few days so she could settle in. Unfortunately though, I was sick during her whole first week and we couldn’t do anything. Also, my parents, who were planning on visiting me during autumn break, had to cancel their visit because of Corona. I didn’t have the best time during these two weeks but luckily I’m working with really nice people who checked on me and brought me food and cold medicine. Hvala for that again! I think it’s important to be honest about the lows of your experience as well because obviously there will be difficult times, too.
When my body finally decided to get well again and I went back to work, I noticed that compared to when I had just arrived, I really became more comfortable around the kids and I also feel like I became better at doing German Club because I knew better how to help. Matjaž, Ilse and I also did some team building activities. It was a nice change to our usual routine to complete the tasks Varja had set us. If you wanna see what kind of activities we did, you can watch the “ESC volunteer” Storyhighlight on Epi´s Instagram page!
In October, two new volunteers, Alastair from the UK and Sijon from Belgium, arrived in Koper. We visited the Koper-volunteers a lot in October and went on little trips together. Unfortunately though, the slovenian government restricted movement between municipalities in order to slow the spread of Covid, so Ilse and I haven’t been able to go to Koper since the end of October. Also, Epi had to mostly shut down so we started to work from home.
Our life in Lockdown mostly consisted of home-office, meetings and going on hikes in Piran municipality. Fortunately, Ilse and I didn´t try to kill each other after a few weeks and we tried to keep in contact with the volunteers by playing online Skribble (like… a lot). At some point, I´m pretty sure we knew most of the terms by heart. We also binge-watched Harry Potter and made some traditional dishes for each other. I tried to pick up some dutch from Ilse which resulted in us questioning why we even speak English with each other. I mean, ik spreek nu ook perfect Nederlands. Just classic lockdown things.
Since things didn’t seem to improve and it was really starting to affect our mood to be inside all the time, we decided to go home for christmas early.
Before driving home though, my dad wanted me to check on some things in my car. I was terrified to put oil into the wrong opening or whatever else could go wrong. I did almost use ad blue as coolant and had to ask Simon to put one hubcap back on, but I guess I got one more check on the adulting bucket list.
We survived the 13-hour car drive back to Bielefeld quite well but the Deutsche Bahn didn´t offer Ilse the same comfort (she was stuck in a trainstation for a few hours with announcements only being made in German) but at least she got the authentic experience and arrived home eventually.
It feels really weird to be home again but I’m glad to be spending Christmas with my family.
Charlotte Jung, ESE prostovoljka