Tuesday 25 July 2017

Tips if you want to volunteer (abroad)

English:

Tips if you want to volunteer (abroad):

Hello everybody! Welcome back to my blog! I hope you're all having a great day so far.

Today I am going to write about why you should consider volunteering, as it is something that I did for one entire year of my life and an experience that I'll never forget.

The first question you should ask yourselves when you consider volunteering is... 'Why not?'. Volunteering is a great way to discover new countries, get immersed in new cultures, learn from other people and spend a very gratifying time doing something for other people. 

When people consider volunteering, they sometimes feel scared because they don't know what to expect from the country they are going to visit and they don't know how much money they are going to spend altogether. Also, people worry a lot about health issues - How probable is it to catch an illness? What if there are no cures for certain illnesses they might catch? Should they take many medicines or shouldn't they? What if they don't like the experience? Can they come back earlier?

To be honest, these are questions that I also asked myself before I went to India, but I chose to be brave and did it. I decided that I'd rather regret what I had done than what I hadn't done. I wanted to give myself the chance of at least knowing everything that trip would entail - and so I did. 

So, here are some tips that might be useful if you'd like to volunteer:

Thursday 20 July 2017

Bratislava: when the young meets the old and mixes it with life, history and culture.

English:

Bratislava: when the young meets the old and mixes it with life, history and culture.


Let's go back, once again, to 2014, when, after a long academic year working, I decided to travel by myself to Vienna, Bratislava and Budapest for ten days.

Bratislava was my second stop, for it is located only 65 km away from Vienna. Therefore, it took me no more than one hour by train to go to a different city, in a different country. To all those who ask me, I always describe Bratislava the same way: "The capital city of Slovakia is a contrast between the ancient and the new, the lively and the historical. What surprised me the most about it was its intense past and its combination with the animation and cultural life on its streets". I said that for the first time almost three years ago and, up to this day, I still feel the same way about it.

The first thing I did once I arrived there was to find a way to reach my hotel. Well, botel. A 'botel' is a ship which has been converted into a hotel and which is located in the Danube river. The one in which I slept - and in which I ate the delicious Indian food served in its restaurant -  was called Botel Marina and it was right opposite Bratislava Castle.

As Bratislava has no Metro, I had to take the bus. For those of you interested in that specific botel, you should get off at the stop called Zochova and, from there, cross the street, climb some stairs down and walk along the river shore until you find it. 

Saturday 15 July 2017

Back to blogging!

I find it quite complicated to find the appropriate time to write lately. I sometimes feel as if my life had come to an abrupt halt when I moved to India and, now that I am back to Spain, it had resumed exactly where it was - perhaps with some obvious changes. 

When I was in India, I found it hard to write on this blog because of the vast amount of activities I had planned for every week, not to mention the fact that we, as volunteers, worked from Monday through to Saturday. Besides that, and as I have mentioned a couple of other times, the Internet connection was evidently not as good as it is in Spain, making it even harder for me to actually sit down and write. As a matter of fact, there were so many things in my mind, going on at the same time, that it was hardly impossible to focus on writing. The fact that my computer broke down some months before my volunteering programme was over did not make things easier at all - and nor did the fact that I was left without a laptop. So, I had to decide to stop writing for such a long time that I now have too many things to say to and share with whoever wants to read them - all of them being, of course, about travels. 

However, I do not want to start 'rambling' before I thank, once again, all the people who visit my blog regularly in search of some useful information to use when travelling to the destinations included (or maybe not yet) in this blog. I would also like to apologize to all of you, for I know - as a blog reader that I also am - that it is really annoying to open a blog and see that its proprietor has not written anything in the ridiculously exaggerated amount of time that seven months imply. To all of you, thank you and, above all, sorry. 

As I have said more often than is actually needed, I am currently in Spain. I had to come due to a family situation and I am going to be here for, at least, one more year. During this time, I hope to be able to find a job as a teacher (yeah, that's what I do, that's who I am) and combine it with some freelance translation tasks as well as more travelling. And, since I am a planner, I will also start planning some future adventures that I have in mind and which will allow me to work and travel at the same time. Being a professional blogger? Not yet, but I would like to keep this blog alive while travelling for the purpose of being a teacher somewhere else. I was thinking about Canada for one or two academic years, then maybe Ethiopia for one year, the Philippines for one more year and, finally, back to India for some more years. And, in between all that, volunteer in Tanzania and Peru, and travel to Bolivia and Thailand. Oh, and, of course, Mexico with my besties next year to celebrate our 30th birthday. All that besides some shorter trips to some other European countries, of course! Hahaha What do you think? Too optimistic, am I not? For now, I can only say that these are just ideas, something to think about. However, they are long-term goals that I intend to achieve - one way or another.

Before I move on to write about Bratislava, the following post that you are going to read, I will happily announce that I was interviewed by the local magazine about my experience in India (both the year that I spend volunteering and the other six months that I worked there) a couple of months ago. It was a brief explanation about some of my feelings and experiences and how those shaped me into being who I am today. 

Without further ado, let's blog! 

Have a wonderful day,
Xesca.