Trip to Russia, tournaments and more activities (9-13rd of June)

 ¿Recuerdas nuestra actuación en Ruso, en el teatro JORIK, dentro de la actividad "Invitación a la poesía", dentro del marco de "Días de Letonia de la cultura Rusa"?
Pues bien, el 9 de junio fuimos a Pskov, Rusia. Hicimos la misma actuación (Con la excepción de Prokop, Anas y KArina, debido a varias circunstancias). Visitamos "La Escuela Regional de Artes",  que lleva el nombre de NA Rimsky-Korsakov. Leimos clásicos poemas en Ruso, extractos de novelas, prosa, canciones y baile. Ese día el público era especial, porque eran futuros actores que estaban miran a otros actores :)

Do you remember our Russian performance, in JORIK theatre, on the activity "Invitation to Poetry", set in the framework of "Latvian Days of Russian Culture"?
Well, on 9th of June we went to Pskov, Russia!! We did the same performance (With the exception Prokop, Anas and Karina, due to various situations). We visited "Pskov Regional College of Arts" named after NA Rimsky-Korsakov. We read Russian classics poems, excerpts from novels, prose, song and dance. That day the audience was special, because they were future actors watching to anothers actors :)

Después de la actuación fuimos a visitar el museo del colegio, un poco la ciudad y luego asistimos a algunos ensayos de baile y exámen de teatro en el mismo colegio. ¡Fue muy, muy interesante!

After the performance, we went to visit the musseum of the college, a little bit the city and then we attended some dance rehearsals and theater exam in the same school.It was very, very interesting!

 El 10, hubo torneo de Novus en JACis, organizado por Giorgi. Los ganadores consiguieron un diploma y un regalo.

On 10th, there was Novus tournament in JACis, organized by Giorgi. The winners got a diplom and a present.

El miércoles, el equipo de JACis y Zeimuls nos reunimos para darle la despedida a Linda Vanaga. Le deseamos muchísima suerte y felicidad en su nueva etapa, y por su puesto, nos volveremos a encontrar pronto :)
Como recuerdo, hice una postal con un corazón, el mapa de Letonia y en otro color la región de Latgalia.


On Wednesday, JACis team and Zeimuls, we gather for the farewell of Linda Vanaga. We wish to her luck and happiness in her new life, and of course, we will meet again soon :)
To remember, I made a postcard with a heart, map of Latvia and in another color Latgale region.



 Este mismo día los niños estuvieron pintando con Lyuci un mural relacionado con la festividad de Ligo, el resultado fue muy original y colorido :)


On Wednesday, children were painting with Lyuci a mural related with Ligo festivity, the result was really original and colorful :)


Otras actividades durante la semana fueron lecciones de Español, tocar el piano, decoración de ventanas, etc.

Anothers activities during the week were Spanish lessons, playing the piano, window decoration, etc.

2-7 June

Monday, as always, was a hard day, but this week started a little sad for us, because our friend Karina' evs project was completed. We have compiled in JACis, where we played our favorite game with karina. In the evening, we saw off Karina in Poland. At the bus station, we recalled stories and laughed a lot.J

Tuesday, I made Churchkhela - the beauty of Georgian cuisine. My friends EVS volunteers and Jacis' kids helped me in this process. Everyone liked the churchkhela and felamushi. They wrote down of churchkhela recipe. I was very happy when a local newspaper published recipe of Churchkhela in the newspaper.

On Wednesday, Lucy had a very interesting idea. We have prepared caricatures and paints for children. Two days later, our masterpieces were ready and we sticked caricatures on windows. some children were very impressed by their handmade and took  pictures at home.

On Thursday, we went to the park with the children, where we played frisbe with different rules. Our made-up rules were very interesting and funny. Finally, the children were very happy and tired.

we was in "zeimuls" we meet peoples from USE Embassy. it was very interesting. we talking about latvian life, how living peoples in Rezekne. becauses here is Russion border near Rezekne. Friday was a very busy, we have to plan night orientation trip for Polish and Latvian volunteers, who were in project - connected by rivers.

We traveled throughout the whole of the city across the bridge, took photos and prepared assignments. Two groups participated in this orientation. My assignment was to build bridges constructor. Procopius was prepared by Victoria on the Danube. Lucy painted a map of the countries of the Danube River flowing out and they have to guess which countries they were. Pilaris assignment was to paint a watercolor of the river and bridge layout rezeknes. Unfortunately our plans are disrupted severe weather of Latvia, it was rain and cold weather , and we had to change plans. We have carried out orientation of various tasks and Energizer. we were inventing Energiser. Despite the harsh weather and cold, it was a very fascinating and funny. Polish participants liked and Enjoy with us.

Our Jorik performance (26.05 )

We all waited for Monday (26. 05) to come with anticipation and a little bit of fear. The reason? On Monday we finally presented our performances in the theater Jorik for the Week of Russian culture.
We started preparing the event three weeks prior to it - choosing russian poems, learning it by heart and trying to present it to an audiance as good as possible. On this project we woked with the other EVS volunteers in Rezekne and directors from the theater - Genadi, Aivar and Andres.
The poems presented were from Puskin, Lermontov, M. Cvetaeva, Esenin, Mayakovski  to simple verses for children like "Nasha Tanja, gromko plachet..."

For some of us, who speak Russian, the task was far more easy than frm the others. Those for whom the lenguage was foreign and hard had to put extra effort in learnign the proninciation and antonation for their Russian to be understandable. On the other hand all of us worked on our performance skills so we can convey the feelings of the poems.






Needen't to say we were very nervous to finally present it.
It all begun with a very beutiful song from Nastq (a volunteer from Russia).

 

Mine (Lyusi) and Pilar's performance was third. We had prepared a scene inspired from Puskin's Evgeni Onegin - with three girls as Tatjana and one boy (the spanish volunteer from the theater) as Onegin. After the scene we read one poem from Pushkin in our native lenguages.








 Later on Prokop read a poem in both Russian and Slovakian. It was "Jdi menq" (Wait for me) from Konstantin Simonov. Georgi on the other side read a poem from Lermontov. The two of them along with Genadi and Nastq performed also a song.



The whole even ended with a Russian dance.
Maybe it wasn't perfect, out Russian was not always understandble and the dance was clumsy at times, but we were all happy thst we were able to prepare this for the people of Rezekne. For sure during the preparation we learnt not only about Russian lenguage and the skill of theater performance but also about Russian culture, litarature, authors and poems.


 

Giorgi aicina!

Preparing for the russian culture (19-23rd of May)

The main focus of the 3rd week of May was on practise of our russian cultural performances for the final show on the Day of russian culture on Monday 26th of May. This was a project that we were approached with by our local russian theatre JORIK. The aim was to gather some international people living in Rezekne and make them (us) perform something from russian culture. The  initial idea was to have us learn some poems of russian authors and perform these poems in our native languages. However this has soon evolved and in the end our performance included a traditional russian group dance, short acts in russian, singing russian songs and of course, performing poems in both russian and several other languages.

And so we practised... Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday (dance) AND Friday. Plus we added an extra rehearsal on Sunday just to be sure our acts are in TOP shape. We would have also rehearsed on Thursday but we decided to make a JACis team and take part in a KROKA orientation run around Rezekne organized by the local HEI Student Council. What a crazy idea, running all around Rezekne for almost 3 hours, performing tasks and all that in 30 Celzia temperatures. 

Our Friday JORIK practise was however after work so before that we managed to spend a few sunny hours in the park, playing frisbee games, inventing some ourselves and a game or two of petanque. Friday was also a day when Prokop had a final English lesson with one of our regulars, Karina, who was to write a final English exam the following week and guess what... she got the best score from her school! Congratz Karina.

5-11rd of may

I'd like to tell you what happened the first week of May  and how volunteers worked in JACis.

The first week of May started very interestingly. Prominent Russian theater actor Anders came and offered us to participate in a poetry evening.

Zeimulis volunteers - Anna and Carmen, Polish school volunteer - Karina, theater volunteers - Nastya and Enrique, Erasmus student – Gulish, together with JACis volunteers got involved in the project. Rehearsals were very interesting and entertaining.

At first during rehearsals there were too many faults, but in the end the actor's commitment and our hard work yielded good results.

On May 5, we went to the theater, where they divided as into groups and hended Russian poets’ works. I chose a very famous poem “Morning Caucasus” by Mikhail Lermontov.

On May 8, we attended the art day, which took place in Rezekne Central Park. Pilars and Lucy had

different costumes of birds, which was sewn from fabric and papers. Unfortunately, a lot of nice and interesting costumes were spoiled by latvian rain.

On May 9, we were rezeknes at Rezekne’s third high school, where we held our last lesson. As always, there were an interesting

JACis organized another charity trip to Lepu Kaiak. We had prepared a variety of entertainment for children. Games were very interesting for the children. 

We did perfomance  cartoon "Shrek" characters and the childrenhad fun. We planted trees together with bavshvetb.

We overlooked from the tallest tower of  Latgalia and I can essure you that there was a very nice view. It was ver interesting for us.

The three days before the hollidays

This week was one of the shortest we had in JACis - only three days. On the other hand however we tried to make the days we have as good as possible.

On Monday we busied ourselves and a few kids in JACis with a game I like to call Comics Jam and learned in Bulgaria. It's a process if making different comics but instead of creating one alone the people have to work together -drawing one picture of the story and giving the pepper to somebody else. This way the stories become even more interesting and funny.






This Monday the Jam was rather small but I have plans to make it into a bigger event.

On the other day, Tuseday, Prokop did his workshop - how to make a flowerpot out of used stuff, in particular - used plastic bottles, coffee beans, pepper, etc. I think the flowerpots turned to be pretty interesting and the kids liked doing it. What do you think?






The same day we collaborated yet again with 'Angels with us' and went to Zeimuls to work with disabled children. This events are always interesting and even a little bit emotional for us, as working with this kind of children is difficult but educational with the same time and definitely can fill you up with humbleness.

Friday was anticipated they from the volunteers of the project "Connected by rivers". Why? Because this was the day four Polish people, two volunteers and two leaders, from the project come to Rezekne for a meeting.


I asked Agita, a Latvian volunteer to the project, to tell me a little bit about her feelings to the meeting.
' I really liked meeting with the Polish people who worked on the project ‘Connected by rivers’. To this day the only contact we had with them was through the internet and it was interesting to see them in person and to be able to talk about the project. Together we walked around the Rezekne town and we were really pleased that they liked it and appreciated the new cultural centers.
I could tell they are really nice people and we all hope to meet again in the future – trough the project and not.'

We, the EVS volunteers in JACis however, after meeting with the Polish guests decided we have to still work with the JACis kids and, leaded by Georgi and Prokop, take them out to for a play of football. Where we do this event all the children really enjoy it we can see how passionate they are for the game. The competition between the two teams was great.
Let just say that in the end our team won ;)