Vores første måned i Danmark

Marie (Italy):
I have been in Nykøbing Falster for almost a month now and everybody has been nothing but nice to me.

It has been really easy to adjust to a new city thanks to the warm welcome by everybody around me. 

Eliza (Latvia): First month has passed and it’s been an incredible and emotional journey into richness of kindness, creativeness, exploring, creating, friendships and new experiences. I still need time to put thoughts and feelings into place but I feel lucky for coming to this country, this city and for meeting these people – my colegues, my flatmate from Italy (she’s really nice) and some new parts of myself as well. Nykobing is very cozy and people are kind, talkative and smiling a lot. I celebrated my 28th birthday here and I heard the great and very special Danish birthday song and I received surprise flowers from my mom – so that was a nice birthday 😊 So Thank You!

Marie: I have been working at the café at Kulturfabrikken, organizing workshops at the Youth Club, working backstage during concerts and helping out at Billedfabrikken.
The youth club has been quite challenging because it was my first time organizing a cooking workshop for so many people, but it was really rewarding to see kids just loving my activities. I think they were really proud of themselves for making something tasty with their own hands in a short amount of time. 

First they learned how to make “bruschetta”. Today we consider it an appetizer but originally it was created out of the need to preserve old bread. 

Bruschetta comes from the verb “bruscare”, which means to toast bread.

Eliza: Youth Club workshop on 21st   and 29th of March. This week we had our 1st workshop at Nykobings Youth Club.

We decided to split the evening in two parts. One part was cooking Italian food and the other part was creative work on collages. I took part in collages. Youngsters made collages about things they like and what makes them feel good and we made one big collage as well – that was very beautiful team work and at the end one of the boys wrote on the collage that art doesn’t need to be perfect and I wrote that nothing needs to be perfect and with that we finished our beautiful collage. At the second workshop we continued to make collages with a little extra creativeness. 

Marie: During the second workshop I taught them how to make belgian crêpes, known in Danish as pancakes.
This recipe was more complicated but the youngsters aced it and were really satisfied with themselves .

It was wonderful to be able to share part of my cultures (belgian and italian) and see the kids' warm response. I look forward to making these kinds of workshops with the youngsters at Kulturfabrikken too, hopefully it will encourage them to explore different types of cuisine and start cooking by themselves!

Eliza: Juice workshop on 22nd of March.

This week at Kulturfabrikken we created a juice workshop. We bought a lot of beautiful fruits and vegetables, prepared a little poster and welcomed youngsters to participate. It turned out as a very fun and unifying experience. Youngsters were very happy about the chance to make their own juices. Boys picked out ingredients by themselves, prepared them for juicing and tried out their recipes. It was very joyful and tasty experience for all of us! Main part of the recipes turned out great and youngsters were happy about tasty and healthy drinks and I were happy about this wonderful workshop. We talked about that we should arrange juicing workshop again sometimes and in summer we should make frozen juice popsicles 😊 So thanks to Kulturfabrikken and youngsters for this great event! 

Marie: Another thing we did was organize a juice workshop at Kultur. To be fair it was all Eliza’s doing, I was just assisting her. 

She was on a juice cleanse and had the cool idea of sharing it with everybody. The youngsters loved taking part in it and already asked for a second one! They had so much fun by just trying new combinations of fruits and vegetables. 

We can safely say that it was a success and that we will be doing it again.

Marie: Eliza and I also helped with putting up a background made by the children at the Picture factory in a protestant church.

Thanks to this activity I met my first woman priest and it was really refreshing to see a woman in what was for so long only a man’s job. 

The kids did such amazing work. The church had a welcoming aurea after we were done installing everything.

Next thing we did was help out during a concert. It can be quite chaotic at times but it’s really interesting what goes in organizing an event and taking part in it.

I actually met another Italian who was in a band!  It was really refreshing to talk in Italian again and feel closer to home after a month away.

Eliza: Putting up an art work in Church – beautiful experience, kids created decorations and we helped to put it all to together 😊  

At this point I’ve also experienced two concerts – 1st one was kids concert and I enjoyed it so much – I loved how enthusiastic were the artists and how happy were the kids. And the 2nd concert was Jazz concert – that was quite nice experience and in both concerts I took part in taking photos which is very nice because I love taking pictures with my phone but now I got opportunity to start to learn how to use a proper camera.  Waiting for the next concert 😊
That´s it for now!
 - Eliza 

Marie: I can’t believe that a month has already passed by! We’ve already done so much and I’m eager to do more in the future 8 months that I have here.

Personally, I’m looking forward to starting language school so that I can communicate more with the children at the Picture Factory. Hopefully I will have the basics to organize a workshop with them.

In the next blog posts you will find out if I managed to learn some Danish! 

Till next time!

- Marie