Our Midterm Evaluation – Marci

Time flies, as we are already halfway through our EVS here! Being near halfway also means that it was time to go for the Midterm Evaluation, a 3-day session with EVSers from all around Spain to share experiences, learn and re-energize our projects. Unlike the On-Arrival Training which was about 2 months after our arrival, this was actually halfway.

The event was in Mollina, a little village in the middle of nowhere close to Malaga, in a massive youth center called CEULAJ. Around 80 people from all of Spain arrived – there were people all the way from the north of Catalonia and down south from Malaga. The projects were just as varied, from self-sustaining ecofarms, through conducting experiments and running around in T-Rex costumes in a science museum, helping young, elderly or disabled, working with refugees, all the way to the type of work we do, implementing and preparing international projects and working on the visibility of Erasmus+.

Of course, 80 people can hardly work together in a productive fashion, so we split up into four groups. There were three Spanish-speaking groups and one English one. While Hanna and Kürsat were in the English one, I actually ended up in a Spanish one, which proved to be quite a challenge and a really awesome experience.

My Spanish is not great – while I understood pretty much everything around me, actually replying to things proved to be a bit of a challenge. I’m not great with past tenses, I could use with a greater vocabulary and overall just more language practice. Luckily that didn’t stop me from talking a lot, even if it was a sort of tarzan-Spanish, almost exclusively speaking in the present tense with lots of gestures, some English words and lots of laughing. I was scared at first that I won’t be able to be a proper part of the event this way, but it in fact it proved to be extremely empowering and motivating!

Throughout the event we did various teambuilding activities, reflection sessions and brainstormed about the future: how to improve the second half of our projects and what we will do once our projects are over. The best part of this experience was the group! While of course it’s impossible to get to know 80 people in the short period there, the group became super close in no time! There was such an amazing variety of interesting people, I would have loved if the event lasted for a whole week or more!

During the event, we had a short day-trip lined up. We spent an afternoon and evening in Malaga, running around the city, promoting Erasmus+, chilling out on the beach (I could only convince one person to go into the water to swim with me!), exploring and hanging out in a cool ruin-pub like place.

The Midterm Evaluation has definitely been an inspiring and motivational experience for all of us. Now we have more friends in all corners of Spain, I am more motivated to improve my Spanish and to try new things in my EVS. Now we just need to organize an EVS Goodbye Week for the end of our projects – it would only be fair if we have an On-Arrival and a Midterm!