Hellooo! Anastasiia here. Today I want to tell you about our impressions on project after two weeks of adaptation.
Firstly, what’s an adaptation week and what’s the purpose of this? Basically it’s our time to adapt: to get to know the city and our neighborhood, get used to our new lifestyle, to meet coworkers, to connect with each other and much much more. So we, the group of IntegrART 6, had 2 weeks for all of this.
All of us were so grateful to have this free time. We went of walks, enjoyed the last warm days, bought necessities for our home, dealt with documents, explored the neighborhood. We even made some traditions, like cooking our national food for dinner and playing games after. We had time to know each other, to understand each other and have fun together. It’s like meeting 5 new friends at once, and you could feel our bond getting stronger every day.
As a group, we visited each cultural club and the school, basically workplace of each volunteer. We had great time exploring buildings of Dworek Białoprądnicki, the exhibitions and it’s big rooms for the amazing events they organize. I personally loved the room of radio Jasskultura with all microphones and music instruments and it inspired me to start my project there someday. Dworek is the workplace of Marta from Italy.
We had a very warm welcome at Liceum Ogólnokształcące nr XXVII im. dr. H. Jordana. The students prepared food for us and also drew our portraits, which was an amazing surprise. At some point we felt like celebrities, everybody knew that we were coming. It was especially cool for Zoe from Austria, who is working at this school. During our visit we also learnt more about Polish school system and participated in the quiz about Poland!
During adaptation we also had a big intercultural breakfast at cultural club Przegorzały, where we tasted food from different countries and also learnt more about them through activities! While eating some tasty food, we had a quiz about Italy and Ukraine, went to the imaginary excursion in Vienna, played french board game and even learnt traditional greek dance! It was a great start to the day.
Later we visited cultural club Wola, the workplace of Roger from France. We explored the place and also had an art class with Ronda Bautista, who is an amazing spanish artist living in Krakow. With Ronda, we created artbooks to collects our memories throughout the project. We really liked the idea because we can use this diary to express our creativity in any way that we want and save moments and memorable things, like tickets, brochures and other small things we collect during this year.
But it wasn’t the end of our art workshops. At cultural club Łokietek we learnt about a technique called cyanotype and even made tote bags with personalised pattern! It was something very new for us but we were happy with the results. Generally the club has a very nice creative atmosphere, which in my opinion is very fitting for Tereza from Slovakia, who is working there.
Our last visit was to the biggest branch of Dworek – cultural club Mydlniki, a workplace of Avgoustis from Greece. That day we really got to discover more about polish culture, particularly about cracovian folk culture. We dressed in the national clothes head to toe, danced krakowiak and learnt the art technique called batik. So much new experience!
As you can see, we had a very productive and positive start of our project. These two weeks gave us comfort, happy memories and some understanding about what’s ahead. And we hope it has set the tendency for the whole project. Stay with us for all the updates about our volunteering work and everything in between.
All the best,
Anastasiia
