From bike crashes to piano lessons

It has been only two months that the nine of us moved in De Vierslag and we already feel at home here. So many things have happened during these last two months that it is hard to choose which one to share.

Hi, let’s get to know each other. My name is Astghik, but some of the other volunteers find my name hard to pronounce, so they call me Armenia and I don’t mind it at all. As you can guess I come from Armenia.  For the coming 8 months I, Paul and Hadi will be taking you along our journey in the Netherlands. Why the three of us? Because we are the members of the promotion team of the Atlantic Bridge. Paul is from London, England and he studies in Oxford. At the moment he is gone for jogging as it is his New Year’s resolution. And Hadi is back to Israel for couple of weeks. That’s why I’m the first one to write our blog. And actually they expect me to write it well, because I have worked in a magazine an editor, but it is my first time writing about my life experiences instead of Hollywood celebrities and fashion. As you read along, we will introduce ourselves and the others.

When I found out that I was coming to the Netherlands, I kind of panicked, because maybe it is embarrassing to say but I didn’t know how to ride a bicycle. So the first thing I did to get prepared for my journey was to ask some of my friends to teach me to cycle. But still I was not very good at it, when I got here, and the first month was full of bicycle accidents and I was always involved in them. That was the main difference of the lifestyle between here and Armenia.

The next big change was to come to live in such a small village from the capital of Armenia. Sometimes I feel like me and the other volunteers are the only citizens of this village because it is so quiet. But eventually I started liking it. I love living with the others in the same house, they really became a big part of my life. We were here for only one and a half month, and then we had two weeks of Christmas holidays. Some went home, some went to travel in different parts of Europe, I myself went to travel in Germany, and during this time I realized that I miss these guys even more than I miss my friends back home.

De Vierslag is a like a world house and we created our own world in it, sharing everyday life with each other. Sometimes we realize that we have done nothing but studying Dutch, watching movies, chatting and cooking together during the previous few days. We have already celebrated two birthdays together and the third one is Diego’s. Diego lives in Canary Islands, Spain, and I wish the Netherlands had the same weather. The thing is that when we were sharing the dates of our birth during the first week, we realized that he is the only one that didn’t have his birthday during these ten months, so we chose to celebrate his fake birthday in February as we had none in that month.

Now I need to go to my second piano lesson, I actually started learning it here. Matt, my teacher, is a music teacher from Canada living with us in De Vierslag. He is an intern in Atlantic Bridge unlike the other 8 of us being EVS volunteers. And he volunteers to teach me to play the piano. Hope to share more stories with you soon.