Serbian Easter- the most joyful day of Spring!

In most Slavic languages, the name for Easter either means "Great Day" or "Great Night" (Polish, Slovak, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, and Belarusian). In Serbian, however, the day's name reflects a particular theological connection: it is called Uskrs, meaning "Resurrection". It also explains the fact that in Serbian Easter is sometimes also called Vaskrs, a liturgical form from  Church Slavonic.

In a religious tradition, families are having their baskets of coloured eggs blessed by the parish priest. Usually, the eggs are red, symbolizing happiness, joy, rebirth and the blood of Christ. Families exchange eggs and say, Hristos Voskrese (Christ is risen). The response is Voistinu Voskrese (Indeed He has risen).

The main thing in the Serbian celebration of Easter is the egg, the symbol of a new life. Easter eggs in Western Europe can be made of chocolate and sold in supermarkets. Like here, in Spain. However, Serbs use ordinary chicken eggs at Easter, boiling them at home on Friday, which is called Big Friday.

While the Easter weekend is the climax of the celebration, for many Serbs the festivities start on Lazar’s Saturday, April 16th. On that day, church floors are covered for the afternoon liturgy with the flower known as vrbica, or in English-  purple loosestrife.

During the ceremony, the priest blesses the flowers and shares them with believers.

This day marks Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. Vrbica is a Serbian version of the palm fronds that children laid down on Jesus’ path. Believers also make corona out of vrbica flowers and place them on their front doors. The tradition is dyeing the first set of eggs in red and saving one of them aside until next Easter. That egg is called the housekeeper, referring to the belief that the egg will help to protect the home.

Although coloured dyes for the eggs can be bought in the market, most people still dye at least 10 eggs by boiling them with onion.

The onion gives eggs a nice caramel colour. And if you want to create a decoration on the egg, just draw on it with wax before boiling. But that's just one of the egg colouring tricks and technics.

Easter bunnies are becoming more popular all over the world, but the animal that truly symbolises Easter in a religious manner for Serbs is the baby chick – the natural product of the egg.

Big Friday Mass is performed in front of a replica of Jesus’ cover, symbolising the removal of the body from the cross.

Saturday is reserved for decorating homes. 

Easter Sunday starts with bells ringing in churches through the country. 

In the Orthodox tradition, believers give up certain 
foods during the 40 days up to Easter.
After morning liturgy families have breakfast together and play the game of tucanje, which involves cracking eggs against each other to see which one breaks first.

Most Serbs spend Easter on visiting friends and family. But also those Serbs which are not religious, still paint eggs on a Big Friday and for sure everybody gives gifts on a Big Sunday and play tucanje. For kids, it's always a joy to celebrate Easter because it is said that gifts are brought by Easter Bunny. It's like Santa Claus for a Christmas. Bunny usually gives toys, sweets, even money and some painted eggs in a basket. And he hides a basket in the grass so children must look for a present. Similar to Christmas socks where Santa is leaving his gifts.

Bottom line, it's a joyful holiday, especially for children, but its a Spring Christmas for all! While children are waiting to search for their gifts, parents are showing to neighbours and friends how lovely egg decoration they have this year! 

Saying THANKS to Minairons

Like people from Minairons who made a special gift to say Thank you to us, volunteers, this is a few words for saying Thank you to them.

 THANK YOU:

For all positive energy on every Wednesday that we spent together.

 For waking up a child and creativity in us.

 For remembering us even outside of the classroom.

Carnival in La Seu

In honour of the spring, let's make one article about saying Goodbye to winter in a really nice way.
The Carnival.

The Carnival is held every year in February. This festival has its origins in ancient feasts in honour of the winter, celebrating both Romans and Greeks. There are several explanations for the etymological meaning of the word carnival, from the end of eating meat, to the festivities in honour of Indo-European gods.

The carnival has become a festival full of colour and costumes where each person can embody the most colourful character. Normally, gives importance to the originality of the costumes, the more unusual the better. The carnival is celebrated in the street among people who are having diet restriction.

Apparently, for 40 days (exactly like for a Serbian Eastern ) until the arrival of Palm Sunday, you could not eat meat.

Carnival celebrations are held throughout the peninsula and has become a tradition passed from parent to child. Also in schools promote this festival making smaller disguise themselves from very early ages. As you can see on the photos! It was really a joy for me to see all those families with creative costumes walking on the street, singing and having fun. That day, I can say there was a lot of laughs sharing across the streets of La Seu.

Photography by.mARTina malesev

Workshop with kids in Espai Ermangol

Children, but adults too, this time had a meeting with dinosaurs!

They met an author of the book of stories for kids"La Laura els catasaures" who explained to us all about this extinct species. 

 The hall was full! It was really surprising how much these little ones know about animals who even not exist anymore!

The youngest ones were playing and listening an interesting speach of two narrators and later, they enjoyed drawing.

 But older kids were answering on questions about species, about parts of theirs bodies and at the
end, the best of them won a price. This man is great in drawing too, so in a short time, he made a great big sketch and impressed us all!

At the end of this  unusual promotion of the book, it was something usual-  book signing! Every kid wanted a drawing of dinosaur more than words. In the fact,  many of them still dont know how to read a words, but for sure drawing is their area :)

Photography by. mARTina malesev

Intermediate evaluation training in Molina

On February 16-20 took place Intermediate evaluation training. Around one hundred fifty people were participating in that activities, including volunteers, mentors, tutors and organizers, who is working in Spain now and are the part of Erasmus+ programme. All the trainings, seminars and events took place in the small, but nice town Molina, near Malaga.

There were five amazing and intensive days of trainings, discussions, evaluations and conclusions.We had good opportunity to express our impressions about EVS projects, to share feelings and expectations, to give advices to each other about life in Spain, and how to solve the problems, what appeared during the project and how to improve our staying here.

                                   

Except of training and seminars there was also a costume party, free night. So the participants could use this time to enjoy the town and spend time with new friends.

In accordance with our program, we spent one afternoon in Malaga, completing tasks, aimed to explore the attractions of the city.

The next week after training, the information about Intermediate evaluation training in Molina appeared in Malaga newspaper.

Training in Molina was an excellent opportunity to meet a lot of new interesting people, to get a new friends.

More information in  open facebook group:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1568794710029403/

"What is European Volunteering Service (EVS) (2014-2020)" presentation in Institut Joan Brodieu

15, 22, 29 of January and 12 of February we had a pleasure to introduce "What is European Volunteering Service (EVS) (2014-2020)" presentation in Institut Joan Brodieu, La Seu d'Urjel.

 

We discussed such key issues as budget, program countries, partner and other countries who can fully or partly participate in Erasmus+ Programme, what is Youthpass (what written in Youthpass, who and how give it, which opportunities it gives).

Children found out 8 keys in EVS:

Communication in the mother tongue, communication in foreign languages, mathematical competence and basic competences in science and technology, digital competence, learning to learn, social and civic competence, sense of initiative and entrepreneurship, cultural awareness and expression.

If someone are not ready to go to EVS, there are some other opportunities that Erasmus+ Programme gives (Youth exchanges, training, seminars, short term projects, ets.).

Also we spoke about advantages, what participation in Erasmus+ Programme gives, such as good chance to travel, learning other languages, explore the culture of other country from inside, to meet a lot of new interesting people to exchange skills and knowledge, to grow like a person. 

After we tried to imagine how should volunteer look like and drew it in a funny way all together.

They knew more about all applying, find the project, how to contact with sending and hosting organizations.

They saw the photos of ours volunteering projects, and free time, to know how EVS goes at the real life and some videos about this topic.