7/1/2019 – 28/1/2019
Work to do
Before going to the Netherlands, me and my friends were planning to make dinner with all of us for “Georgian Christmas”. Georgian Christmas happens on the 7th of January. This is because the Georgian Orthodox Church (like the Orthodox Churches in Russia, Ethiopia and other countries) use the old ‘Julian’ calendar for their festivals. So when I came back to Georgia I was planning to get everyone to my “new” apartment. Everyone made some dish (some of them made something from their own country, others just what they liked), so we had a table filled with tasty food. I made a Dutch dish, which was not a special or highly tasty dish but still people ate it.
2 days after, and the following 3 days we had a training course in the Caynex office. During this training we talked about what a “perfect caynex” looks like for us, what we want to achieve in 2019 and talked about upcoming projects. During this training we also had some creative sessions, like designing a t-shirt for each other. Like you would’ve guessed: they made a shirt with Khinkali for me! Even though I suck at planning, I noticed that I am really missing some kind of agenda in the office. We were talking about this during the training and made a big calendar after, to know when are projects happening and when there are deadlines. Furthermore, we talked about future projects and future work. I noticed and discussed that we needed a lot of design work (posters, stickers etc) and that I wanted to do these things. So after this training I got a big list of work to do. Which gets me really excited. I love working on the things I love to work on and it keeps me going. We were also discussing the upcoming Erasmus+ deadline (5th of February), and everybody seemed to be really enthusiastic about it. Now everyone will try to write a project for the next deadline and try to submit it. Since I’ve already been working on my own method for a training course I felt really comfortable doing this. But then it hit me, I don’t want to apply for this project just yet. So now I have to find a new topic for a Erasmus+ project.
A few days after the training, Michael found a fund for a project in the Baltic sea region. Everybody wanted to apply for this project and after a brainstorm session we found an idea to work out. We were talking about making a poster for an open call and since I am interested in making that I opened my mouth. Which at that moment kind of freaked me out, because all of the sudden I was the person responsible for finding a partner for this project. This was one of the things that were such a mystery for me. To find a partner for a project and make them interested. After editing a nice infographic and poster I put it online and we found some email addresses for this project. The next day I got a response and I was so amazed by how easy it was to find a partner! It makes me more sure about my future projects.
These last few weeks I noticed that I was kind of losing track on working and focusing on myself. I was doing so much that I forgot to eat healthy and get a decent amount of sleep, and that did not help me with anything. Hanging out with people all the time made me more focused on others than me. So next to working on a lot of stuff at caynex, I also started to focus on myself a lot.
Some days later we had a meeting at the Dutch embassy with the ambassador, to talk about our future project “creative twinning”. It was amazing to see a real Dutch person again and always fun to see the difference between culture. The difference in how the Georgians were talking to how the Dutch were talking was a real difference and it was amazing to me to see this.
Then, on the 19th of January the first part of my EVS came to an end. My roommate Gerardo was leaving back to Mexico. Because I wanted him to remember Georgia and his experience here, I arranged a party. A “Mexican surprise goodbye party”, with tequila, Mexican mustachos and nachos. He did not suspect anything and we came into the house and there was everybody standing like “surprise!”. It was a good party, but at the end Gerardo left to the airport. After living together for more than 4 months and almost hanging out together 24/7 you really get to know someone, and it was sad to see him leave.
The upcoming weeks I have to work on some design work and projects but for sure there will be happening more than that for next months blog!
