My incredible January, Anna

Queridos compañeros:

Going back for the last days of December: I spent Christmas with my sister in the sunny island of Malta where she has been living for the past few years. In Malta we spent two days of preparing food for our Finnish Christmas dinner and got the chance to celebrate our Christmas Eve surrounded by my sister’s friends and colleagues. Because Finnish people abroad always carry with them a proper stash of salmiakki, Fazer chocolate and rye bread, we missed absolutely nothing. After a great week in Malta I came back to celebrate New Year here in Mallorca. New Year has always been kind of a moment of truth for me. It’s the night when I start thinking about the past year, achievements, expectations, adventures and challenges... This time I decided that sometimes it’s just better to skip the thinking part, eat something good, fill your mouth with grapes and go to Magaluf to bailabaila the night away. Good choice.

And so arrived January along the exciting feeling of approaching mid-term training. Finally we will meet all The Others. Together with almost 100 people I bet we have some good time ahead! And the training is going to be held near Málaga! Perfect! We have also continued our adventures to know Spain a bit better. I have seen so many great places so far that it will be hard to leave Spain when March gets closer.

Talking about my projects:

Part of our program is to cooperate with local escoletas here in Calvià. Each Tuesday everyone of us spent their day in one of the surrounding kindergartens helping the escoleta teachers with some daily tasks. In the beginning my escoleta was in Santa Ponsa, from where I changed to Magaluf, since my original escoleta was closed in December for a complete renovation. In the beginning of October I was slightly concerned, how is my Tuesdays going to be with so many little human beings around. Turns out that Tuesdays are more than great. Tuesdays are awesome. Sometimes I have some fish soup in my eye, platano behind my ears and strange little bruises in my legs, suspiciously the same shape of their wooden toys. I have also started to store inhumane amounts of tissues in my pockets, always ready to clean some drooping mocos when they suddenly appear on their stage under a nose. Kids in my group are around one-year-old and it’s been incredible to get the chance to see them growing and learning so much just in few months. Recently some of the kids have also started to say few words during our classes. Among some previously unknown language I have recognized words “mamá”, “papá”, “caca” and finally “Anna”. My escoleta teacher asked me, do I understand what it means, that my name is among the few first words their little mouths have started to pronounce. My heart cracked again, I don’t think my smile is going to fade for a week.

¡Hasta febrero!


- Anna