Why is Jaime in Polichni?

Hellooo, it’s Jaime again!

I’ll try to explain why I’m participating in the ESC with Esai En Roi this summer :) Because it´s so funny and random that I ended in Polichni!

This year, I took part in my first youth exchange in Bremen, Germany. It was a really nice experience, and while I was there, I started looking for an ESC opportunity for this summer. I came across the “Eco-Architect Volunteering” project with the preconception that it would be one of those opportunities without much of an interesting meaning behind it. So well… they say you shouldn’t be prejudiced, and it’s true ;)

Why am I in Greece?

In the offer, they talked about a park that needed to be “improved”, and that’s basically what I’m studying for, so it made sense to me to look into it a bit more. Once I started learning about Karatasiou Park, something clicked inside me.

A park that used to be a military settlement, nowadays pixelated on Google Maps, located in a critical point in the middle of an extremely dense city in need of green spaces, with such a huge surface… It’s a really interesting place with so much potential that, sadly, is being marginalized.

That made the project really interesting to me, making it the first and only ESC opportunity I applied for. And fortunately, I was accepted! It felt like a sign. A little while after applying, I was accepted and had the interview. I remember that the day I had the Zoom meeting was exactly the day I was returning from Bremen, and my brain just wasn’t braining (as always AHAH), so I was scared that they might have had a negative impression of me. But luckily, they didn’t.

If I’m honest, I never expected to end up in Greece. It all felt a bit like a dream, but I’m so happy that this dream came true:)