Dear diary | My first week of April

Dear diary | My first week of April

Dear diary | My first week of April

Dear diary | My first week of April

Dear diary | My first week of April

So, it's beginning of June, which means it’s time for me to tell you about my first week of this month!

The month started really well, with my birthday! On April 1st I turned 27, which means actually, it doesn’t mean anything. It just triggered some thoughts about existence and other philosophical reflections in my head. I received gifts in the form of bank transfers from friends and family relatives, but not only that. It was really nice when my local friend came all the way from the other side of the city after a long, exhausting evening shift at work just to visit me!

As for work, everything was more or less the same as the previous week, but there were some nice exceptions. For example, on April 2nd we had an event called “Omans Hand.” Teachers from a local school in Polichni came to Karatasou Park in the morning so we could organize different activities with them. It was a bit hard for me to focus on understanding what the others were doing, so I can mainly talk about my own task. I asked the teachers to draw birds on a wooden circle, which can later be used as a stage. They did their best the result was quite unique, since they’re not artists, so I’ll probably need to improve those illustrations later.

At Karatasou Park I also did a photoshoot with Alexis, inspired by Ancient Greece. He was the model, and I was the photographer, and later I’ll work on editing the photos. It should turn out pretty cool, I really hope we’ll get the chance to print them and create a small gallery. That would be amazing!!!

During the first week, I also visited a school for children with special needs. Just like during “Omans Hand,” I didn’t really have the energy to dive into everyone else’s tasks, so I stayed fully focused on my own. The kids had to pick a card with a premade figure and draw it on a large shared canvas, with the theme being water. So the idea was to create something that would collectively represent water… Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work out. We assumed the kids would be able to handle this creative task, but it turned out to be too difficult. In the end, we decided to give them full freedom, they could draw whatever they wanted, without sticking to the theme. During the activity, one of the kids drew me as Jesus on the cross on one hand, it’s kind of cool to receive such a “gift,” but on the other hand… I’m in a pretty unfortunate situation in that drawing, hahaha.

My article about the last week of March came out a week ago, so there’s no need to go into detail about work (or personal stuff, really). Everything is moving along steadily.

Something I didn’t mention is Erasmus projects. Unfortunately, I still haven’t received a response from the National Agency in Greece regarding my KA1 and KA2 projects, but I’m still hoping for a positive outcome!

This month I also managed to apply for funding for our project idea for 2027. This project is not related to Erasmus, but it’s still very important from a social perspective. My idea is to continue working on helping stray animals. We already worked on this topic in December, so this is a great chance to return to it. If we get selected, we’ll be able to visit around 15 villages or towns in Central Macedonia and talk to children, school staff, and parents about the importance of helping animals, how to do it, and also promote shelters located near the areas where we’ll be presenting.

Remember I mentioned working on a comic? The work is still ongoing. Honestly, it turned out to be harder than I expected. I thought I could make a simple comic in a month, but now I realize that my inner cynic and perfectionist won’t let me finish it quickly. Still, I’m not upset about it, the comic will turn out better, which means it will be more valuable!

On a more personal note, I managed to organize a weekend trip to a nearby town, Perea. It was really nice to walk somewhere outside of Thessaloniki and Polichni, since those two places have started to feel a bit repetitive. I didn’t fully explore Perea, as I mostly walked along the seaside promenade, but it was still great! So yeah, that’s pretty much it for now.Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Let’s see what the next week bring and hopefully I’ll have some good news about the projects I’m waiting on. See you in the next entry!

by @lev_me_vision