There are some reasons why I decided to do this short-term EVS. First of all, I was looking for new challenges, and for that, I should get out of my comfort zone, which means leaving my country for a while in order to share my experience and develop my competencies. So, I found this program that allows me to discover another culture, know its traditions and history, and meet new people.

The challenge began at the bus station, when we arrived in Skopje, with me and another two Portuguese volunteers—Beatriz Viegas and Diva Carvalho—whom I didn’t know before. We realize that our mobile phones don’t work here in Macedonia, and we didn’t have internet there. As a consequence, we didn’t know how to inform the organization that we had arrived and that we were going to Bitola. It was a bad experience in the beginning because there were only a few people speaking English in this country and, besides that, no one was available to help us. The Portuguese would never do this, so we were truly shocked! Fortunately, I never gave up and tried one more time to ask a girl inside the bus who had assisted us. First lesson: good people exist even outside of my beautiful country. God bless her!

When we finally arrived in Bitola, the second-biggest Macedonian city, it received us dressed in white and with negative degrees (and I had been so warm in Madeira Island…). But I was happy because I finally felt the snow, and we did it together for the first time, our gentleman snowmen called Zé Tuga.

Here, in SFERA – Macedonia, a non-profit organization, our tasks are: to organize workshops, give Portuguese lessons, promote events and activities with the local population, and help SFERA in preparation and carrying out youth projects (Erasmus+). Plus, we are trying to learn the Macedonian language (at this moment, we are all able to draw those beautiful Cyrillic characters and read them).

A month later, the weather is better. Here, in this small and nice city, the food is good and cheap, but they don’t have a lot of typical dishes from Macedonia. Regarding cultural activities, Bitola is the opposite of Europe, which is richer, and the few monuments that they have here look abandoned. In terms of culture, except for the coffee (they can spend all afternoon at the café! ), they are completely different from us: less open-minded and more closed. However, I met some Macedonians, and I can say that they are really kind and good-hearted.

In terms of the short-term EVS, I’m enjoying this experience, and I will strongly recommend it to my friends. I’m looking forward to being able to do some basic conversation in Macedonian because when we are teaching Portuguese to our two classes, they are so good, and I feel ashamed during my Macedonian classes. So, maybe I could write a sentence in the next report (I hope!).

Bitola, 01.03.2017
Belinda Sá