Hello again!

This week in the donkey sanctuary we have been mostly alone the two of us, without other volunteers, because we know already what to do in our daily job. Apart from clean and feed the donkeys we have to explain to the tourist the donkeys’ history on the island, and we do a small tour around the different stables with the babies and old or sick donkeys. After the tour, they can buy some pellets to feed them, donkey souvenirs or drinks (it is really hot there).

Moreover, we have been on the 11th Coastal Clean Up as volunteers. Dos Playa was assigned to us, a beach inside Arikok National Park, where we were given a pair of gloves, bags, a couple of drinks, some snacks and really good company. Many local people was with us and the atmosphere was great! Even the rangers of the park were having fun driving us through the difficult roads where we couldn’t go with our cars. To be honest, instead of driving they were doing a rally, but it was really fun!!

When we finished the Coastal Clean Up, we took advantage of being in the park for free and we visited the rest of it. We entered in two different caves with some paintings and many bats due to its darkness. It was great to discover the park in this way and we enjoyed a lot.

As we said in our previous testimony, we are doing the open water scuba diver course. This week we will finish and we will get a certificate to dive all over the world! We are loving this experience and we recommend everybody to do it as it’s an amazing experience!

Video of Adrian and Eva in their first scuba diving

Adrián & Eva, Short Term Leonardo Trainees

Project part of Empowered From Within
and supported by ECORYS UK
and the Lifelong Learning Programme
of the European Commission.

Hello everybody! We are back again with our adventures from the Caribbean!

This week in our project we have been taking care of our lovely donkeys, the same as last week but unfortunately, Faith, a female donkey has been sick so we have been assisting the veterinary on his job.

However, our job have been focused into Philips Animal Garden, where we have been making a lot of progress with the animals there. Our routine during this week has eventually become much easier than last week, as we are more confident feeding and cleaning the water pots. That is one of the most difficult tasks we have been assigned due to the risk of being bitted by a huge parrot, for example. Also this week we fed a Piton snake (with an alive chicken, in a box) longer than 18 feet . Overall, the job on Philips is very hard although we are doing pretty well following the instructions of our trainer Juan Pablo aka “Chiquito”.

Even waking up every day during the week at 6:30 am, we still had energy to do something else after working. Every afternoon we come to the apartment to prepare our lunch, as Aruban restaurants are usually expensive and we are trying to save some money. This does not mean we had not tried local food few times, but the everyday meals we do this way. For instance, we were in a fisherman’s restaurant called Zee Rover, where you can enjoy the freshest fish on the island. This is an unusual place, where they offer you what they have fished that day. Then you buy it by weight and they prepare it deliciously with fried banana, chips or spicy onion.

During our free time, we continued exploring the island and discovering new amazing places. Last days, we have been snorkeling in some of the reefs and beaches around the island, what it is a unique sensation due to the diversity of the sea life and the dreamy views under the ocean. We were so impressed with it that we have decided to make the Open Water scuba course to fully enjoy the Aruban sea views. Another great part of the trip, is to be delighted by the sunset on the beach, something we do everyday.

Also, this weekend we went to discover the nightlife of the island, as the previous weekend we were so tired to do it. Aruba has two different ambiences, the touristic and local ones. The first one is in big clubs with lots of foreign people and commercial music, and the second ones are smaller pubs (and cheaper as well) where you can find many Aruban people really nice and talkative. Both ambiences are really good but also very different which give you a wide range to choose.

We forgot to mention that Aruban mosquitos are in love with our blood… they are not dangerous but neither nice at all! Anyway, we will survive! They don’t bite you under the sea!

Adrián and Eva, short term Leonardo Trainees

Project part of Empowered From Within
and supported by ECORYS UK
and the Lifelong Learning Programme
of the European Commission.

Hello, we are Adrián and Eva (26 and 24 years-old) and this is our first week as Leonardo trainees in Aruba. We are both Spanish but we are living in Leeds where Everything is Possible has given us the chance to do this project.

Aruba is a small island in the caribbean sea, very close to Venezuela. As it is part of the Netherlands, they speak Dutch and their native creole language called Papiamento. However, most of the people also speak Spanish because of the strong geographical influence and English because of the tourism. The national currency is the Aruban Florin, although they accept US Dollars everywhere. In Aruba, everything is really different to Europe; First of all, the weather is really humid and very hot, completely different to the cold autumn of West Yorkshire. Secondly, the nature is  green but it seems like a dessert, as everything is full of cactuses, lizards and iguanas for instance.

During the first week, we were supported by Clair, who came with us to discover the project and the island. As we have been the pioneers of this adventure, we are developing the project for trainees that will come in the future to the island.

Our main job is in Aruba Donkey Sanctuary, where we clean and feed the 72 donkeys living there, as well as guide the tourists that come everyday to visit the sanctuary. In addition, we work as shop assistant and bartender when necessary to provide full support to the organisation.

Furthermore we are also trying more projects, as Philips Animal Garden, an organisation that takes care of exotic animals that have been abandoned along the years in Aruba. There, we take care of animals as monkeys, horses, goats, ponies, snakes, a huge variety of birds, caimans, turtles, pigs, kangaroos, camels…

Our location is in the north-west of the island where we are living in a small but complete apartment, even with a swimming pool to refresh ourselves after a long working day. However, there are so many mosquitoes at night, so it makes very difficult to sleep without some bites everyday.

Last but not least, during our free time we usually go to the beach, one of the most attractive parts of the island as well as visiting the different beautiful spots that it offers. We have already been at California Lighthouse, a natural bridge of rocks formed above the sea, an ostrich farm, Oranjestad (the capital of the island), San Nicolas and some typical restaurants where we have enjoyed the local cuisine.

Even though the island is pretty small, we have not had the time to explore it completely. We will keep you informed about this happy island and our adventures by next week.

Adrian and Eva, short term Leonardo Trainees

Project part of Empowered From Within
and supported by ECORYS UK
and the Lifelong Learning Programme
of the European Commission.

This is the story of the life of eight volunteers that, more or less, have never experienced life outside of the British isles. We have been sent out from our home country to experience the culture and  become enriched by it as well at the same time helping out a local scout headquarters with their project.

Week one went the fastest In my personal opinion, there was a lot of anticipation to go everywhere and see everything at once, but we needed to balance our wanderlust with our responsibility of working at the project.

Our first day was spent with out mentor getting to know the city, traveling with us from our home to the project and Semper Avanti, our hosting organization for our stay in Poland. We then toured the main town, seeing the sights such as the town hall, the market square, the cathedrals, a big park and many more.  It was at this point we thought we knew our way around, how wrong we’d turn out to be!

For the next few days we worked at the project, painting the first few rooms, two teams one painting a room yellow and one painting a room green. We resigned ourselves to the fact our painting clothes would see better days and had fun with it, myself having a rather large yellow smiley face on my pants to prove it.

It was at this point we thought It’d be a really good idea to see how we’d fair going out at night time and dared it all to see a late night screening in the main square. Getting the last bus from our home proved a bit wrong as we ended up in what we knew at the time was the middle of nowhere with only a glowing divine McDonalds sign in the sky for guidance.. Which in turn proved fruitful as praise be McRonald they gave us directions in English! We arrived at the square in time for the show, there was an airing of a silent movie with subtitles .. in Polish. Gah. There was still a vibrant night life however and we took the opportunity to check out places we could visit. We even made a  friend who spoke in English and gave us a tour of the locales that we could visit.

Getting home turned out to be a whole different ball game however. Wrocław has transport at all hours of the night in every direction. We hopped on the right bus.. in the wrong direction and ended up by the airport. Helped by an English speaking passerby we were rescued by a pair of taxis, home at last!

These were the events of our first week more or less, getting to grips with living together, living in Poland and managing for ourselves.

Liam Rooke

EVS Volunteer.

Project part of YOUth In Europe

and supported by the British Council

and the Youth In Action programme

of the European Commission.