My last week and a summary of September

I have been here for about two weeks now and after I came home from the Arrival training I got more familiar with the work and I started to get a better understanding of what I am supposed to do. This is my last week of and my summary of September; I went to the garden, no one had been there for a long time so there were many things I had to do like clean, pull up the weeds, organize tools, see what materials we had and what projects I want to do in the future.

I also got more introduced to the administration work, got to know important dates where we have festivals, special occasions, I learned more about the Green Friday, which is about the nature and Alexperience, which is about bringing people together. It is a lot to learn and a lot of things to memorize, but as the time goes by I will get a good hold of it. I learnt many more things this week also, more about my main focus, which is the garden, how to write the articles, the structure, the point with them and so on, and I also learnt more about the purpose of volunteering.

Some photos from the garden, the pirate ship and the dinner

Besides work, on my free days I went into the city of Thessaloniki. I walked around in the city, looked in different shops (and of course I bought fridge magnets of Thessaloniki), I also went on one of the pirate ships by the white tower, it was very hot that day so it was refreshing to sit on the deck and I felt the sea breeze. I started getting hungry in the evening so I visited an Italian restaurant and ordered a carbonara and a garlic bread and it was delicious. But I was a little disappointed with the carbonara because they used pancetta instead of guanciale, which the “real” carbonaras contain.

I didn’t do so much else the last few days of September than walking around in Thessaloniki, exploring our neighborhood, working and trying to get a good routine. 

Right now my favorite part of Greece is the stray animals, and anyone who knows me won’t be surprised at all. I have fallen in love with all of the cats and dogs that are wandering the streets and I just want to take all of them home, but that is sadly not possible. But that does not stop me from hanging out with them on the streets and feeding them.

I have been here for about two weeks now and I feel that I have been settling in very well, and I like it very much here. But I can’t deny that I miss the tap water from Sweden, it is amazingly good.