Gaiac preparations for Festa da Broa de Avintes

On a sunny Sunday of September, Gaiac gathered some of their members along with the volunteers to prepare the materials for Festa da Broa. From what I understood, this is an important event of the Portuguese gastronomy, which celebrates one of the national bread types called “broa”, quite wide-spread in the north of Portugal.  This event took place in one of the districts of V.N.G. named Avintes, where, they say, is the best place for broa. You have to try by yourself!!

With several initiatives at the gastronomic, musical, cultural, recreational and sports level, Gaiac was also present with all kind of activities that attracted the curiosity of the youth looking for some fun. But the preparations started with some hours before the festival, in da house, where we had some leisure activities like preparing origami flowers &butterflies, creating stencils, decorating our T-shirts with Gaiac’s logo or juggling around for the first time. These types of events, where we are all together make us feel that we belong to the same organization and as long as we are having fun the outputs no longer matters.

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6 things that I’ve learned working with kids

Tomorrow is our last day with the kids and I’m having mixed feelings about this. I don’t really know if I will miss them but saying goodbye is a hard part. Thinking backwards, it was so cool having them around and form close relationships so quickly; definitely made my stay here more enjoyable even though I had days when it was so hard to get out of the bed and make all the way to the school that the idea of facing those mini humans fully charged with energy in the early hours of the morning seemed so scary. By the time I learned to couple with their enthusiasm even after just 4 hours of sleep. Now, that is almost over, all I can say is that I care about each one of them cuz they really teach me important life lessons.

1. Don’t forget to bring your smile..each day
2. Not every time in life you get what you want
3. Who said that the rules can’t be broken?
4. Not everything has to make sense
5. Saying “I m sorry” can do magic
6. Change your mind every 5 min it’s a thing

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Shadow play

Here, the final bell is about to ring.  In about 2 weeks, the school will close its gates, leaving the summer plans in the children’s charge. But before happening that, we thought to bring some joy and amusement moments on children’s faces before the exam season starts.

The idea of creating a shadow theatre has been inspired by the work of the previous volunteers who left us great handouts. Neither I nor my colleague did this kind of performance so our engine was feed by the desire to create something different from the traditional way of storytelling and to spread some inspiration among kids. Although the performance was short, the preparations behind of it lead to some tension situations and misunderstandings that were afterwards peacefully discussed with mentors and we managed to keep them under control. The text that we were about to propose has been inspired by a story called “Cavalinho Branco”; but from the original tale we kept only the message and the thread of events but the text and some characters were completely changed.

We opted for a color shadow theatre because it s well known that the children’s attention is drawn by colors and for us was also entertaining to play with shades. The story itself has lots of meanings scattered around the plot but the message that we wanted to disseminate through the main character was the idea of pursuing your dream no matter the obstacles.

The output was the expected one; the kids enjoyed the animation as much as skipping the math class 😛  .In the end, we were the spectators so the kids formed groups of 4 and had to improvise their own shadow puppetry using the figures.

From what I have heard and seen, believe me, great puppeteers are about to show up! Stay tuned!

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The Journey

Once again, your summer breeze and bohemian scent brought me here; this time in Porto.  I missed so much this semi-chaos, with your glossy mosaic and cubic stone, narrow and extremely steep streets, crowded, agitated, cars and people walking along the street, the fresh smell of the laundry hanged on the windows. This city is a labyrinth of streets, stairs with very small hidden markets. . Just a little bit and I’m getting into the vibe.

And Even If I have had some last minute changes in the airport, somehow I managed to arrive earlier than expected. Here, the tribe is waiting for new adventures, with wide open arms under the sunlight. So far, the nest is peaceful and warmly, with late awakenings, morning rituals and lazy breakfasts. Today we are all right.  Tomorrow we are not the same. We change from day to day, from one hour to the next, as the wind blows, depends on what we hear, how we wake up that morning, or how we fell asleep the evening before, depends on who we meet and where, there are many things that make us have another thought. From now on, we must make room for the unexpected.

 

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