EVS Experience in Maribor (Slovenia) – May 2018

Maribor, you are such a lovely city. Every day in this small place it is beautiful and worth it. I will start this blog being a bit negative and talking about problems. I have a huge struggle with time. It flies, too fast. It is scary. Almost four months have passed since I arrived to Slovenia and it seems it was yesterday when I arrive to Infopeka for the first time. I was very nervous at that time, but nowadays I feel home.

I am truly enjoying this beautiful country and this small but cozy city. Summer is around the corner and I can feel it: crowed city, green everywhere, sun, hot days and happiness everywhere, although it has been raining for some days in the past weeks. In my last blog, I was quite sad because I didn’t have my bike yet, but FINALLY I have it and I am SO happy. Since Maribor is not very big, I can go by bike wherever I want in almost 10 minutes! It was very nice learning how to fix bikes with Esme, she is such an expertise!

The best thing of this month was the trip we made to Bosnia, Croatia and Montenegro. We rented a car and we travelled around these three countries. I will always remember all the CD’s of Balkan music we bought, all the amazing landscapes we saw, the nice people we met (including the Bosnian police and the 10 euros fine they gave us), the delicious food we tasted (Ćevapčići and pita are the best food ever) and all the incredible and funny moments we lived and experienced!

In May, I also loved and enjoyed small details and moments that always count! I really like being with the kids of Brezmenji Svet, they give us such a lot of love and affection. I also like going out with Infopeka team and just being for hours in Living Room drinking and having fun! In May we started going to the Maribor elderly home and do you know what does it mean? To try to understand and speak in Slovene almost all the time: what a difficult mission! I tried and I am still trying to do my best with Jesus’s drawing lessons and with the production of some animations with Brina! For me it was also very interesting learning about the Gaelic language with Esme and I am loving teaching Portuguese at Pekarna. I have to thank everyone that came to our Eurovision event and made this night just an amazing one, I was missing Lisbon so hard and they made me feel at home. Without any doubt, Maribor is already in my heart!

In the end of this month I will leave Slovenia for a couple of days, but don’t worry, it is for a great reason: I will tell you more in my next blog, stay tuned!

Great things are coming, a lot of ideas are flying around and I have good company. I couldn’t ask for more!

Hvala lepa, Slovenija.

Rafa