I notice it’s been a while since I gave any news…my silence was due to a series of projects which kept me out of the office. I will share with you some of the moments I experienced in the past weeks in activities which made use of the great weather and offered me the chance to have lots of fun while making myself useful for the organisation.
Superpapa Dag
Although not part of my core project, Superpapa dag consisted in a day in Plopsaland, an amusement park in De Panne. My task there was more than pleasant: I gave presents to children and their daddy 
. It was lovely to see all these happy families enjoying their Saturday afternoon at the seaside.
Dagje Ostende
A couple of weeks ago, all the volunteers from Joetz (not only Brussels, but also from the regional offices) had the chance to take part in a super-game ‘Spel zonder grenzen’ at the Belgian coast (this time in Ostende). I had the chance to meet volunteers from Gent, Hasselt a.o. and to feel like i’m taking part in a real celebration of voluntary work at Joetz. And it felt good
Rock Werchter
And now, my favourite!! The biggest, most crowded and craziest festival I’ve seen: 80.000 people were present every day on the festival side in a small town called Werchter.
Day 1- June 30th- The Condomobiel team (Hannes, Wannes, Sofie, Tine, Jonas and myself) drove to Werchter one day before the kick-off of the festival, in order to prepare for the 4 days of selling condoms and offering information about healthy and safe sex . Everything looked huge and empty, there were barely any tents on the crew camping, the grass was green and the sun was burning
Day 2- July 1st- Already from the previous night, more and more tents landed on the camp. Due to some fortunate mistake of the Werchter staff, we had free drinks and food 
. Fridges were filled. After lunch, the visitors started to appear. By the evening, from a couple of hundreds of staff members (on the previous day), the festival area was happily hosting 80.000 visitors and god knows how many staff members. I went to my first Werchter concert: Kyteman’s Hiphop Orchestra. The evening was on fire with Muse and Faithless, who made it all worth it right from the first evening.
Day 3- July 2nd- Hottest day in the history of the festival!! With 35 degrees in the shadow and possibly 1000 degrees in the sun (at least that’s how I felt it), we had to make quite some efforts to stay fresh, energetic, smily and fun. But we made it, and, even though less people visited our stand, we managed to sell some good thousands of condoms. From the musical perspective, Green Day impressed me with their concert: taking their fans on the stage, offering their guitar to a lucky one, plenty of fireworks…What an atmosphere!!
Day 4- July 2nd- Although the number of visitors was the same-80.000, this day felt even more busy. Everybody seemed to be twice as active after one hour of well-deserved rain, and one could not walk 2 meter in a straight line, without bumping into 5 people. The Condomobiel got its first moments of fame, with a visit from Studio Brussel. In the evening, I held Pink in my arms as she was rolling in a giant plastic ball above the crowd.
Day 5- July 4th- The last festival day…and busiest hours for the Condomobiel. By now, we learned which were the best sandwiches, we thought each-other how to cheat at the shower-qeue, and we made a lot of friends. We sold over 3000 condoms that day, and, at six o’clock, we had our own moment of show when we decided to make it rain with condoms for a few minutes. Many people gathered around the van and we had the chance to interract with a lot of happy drunky festivalians . Here is the video with the interview taken by Studio Brussels.
Day 6- July 5th- Waking up at 8.00 A.M. with the sound of rain on my tent. Clearly time to go home! Beforehand, though, we took a ride on the festival area to see what’s left from the beautiful grass of Werchter. As you can imagine, the place looked terrible, and the excitement from day 1 was replaced by fatigue, nostalgy and a spicy smell of garbage. All in all, on the way home, I realised that festivals are indeed something unique and worth experiencing, but with a lot of preparation and responsibility.
On the downside of everything, I saw a lot of people passing by the Red Cross stand or having some ‘fun’ moments with the police. I saw the way the visitors’ campings looked after 4 days of madness (and you don’t have to be an environmental activist to realise how bad that is).
On the bright side of things: we sold around 15.000 condoms and gave another couple of thousands for free. So at least the sex was safe on Rock Werchter!
P.S. For pictures and latest news on the tour of the Condomobiel, check out the Condomobiel page on Facebook.
There’s a new EVS at Joetz
Before I start telling you about my EVS experience in Belgium I think I should briefly introduce myself to all of you. Well, my name is Laura, I am 24 years old and I am the new Spanish volunteer that Joetz is hosting this year. I could say that I am a Psychologist but I prefer just saying that I graduated from Psychology one year ago. I arrived to Belgium already a month ago, so by now I have a lot of things to tell you about what happened since my arrival, but today I will try to make it short, just as an introduction for the coming posts. I should tell you too that this is not the first time I am in Belgium, as I was already in Gent three years ago, doing my Erasmus. , but…first lesson: EVS is not an Erasmus, or at least for me it means something completely different. My purpose with this blog is to use it as a tool for my reflection on the things that are going on around here and the things that I am doing at Joetz. At the same time, I want to make it useful for all the potential readers, so you can get something too from this huge experience that I’m living.
First weeks = First impressions
To describe my first weeks in Belgium and at the Joetz I think I should say that everything has been happening very fast. As Ioana said in her posts, summer is a busy time here and there were already a lot of things going on in the first weeks. Probably you consider that chaos and organization cannot fit together, but well I can tell you that they do! I had the feeling that my life was a complete chaos by that time because I couldn’t find the time to settle. However, I could see that everybody around me knew what was going on and they where guiding me towards the right steps and helped me organize my new life. Second lesson: support and patience are essential at this point. I can say that I was very lucky to have very good supporters around me!
As I said that I didn’t want to make this first post too long …..I will leave it like this and soon I will give you some news. I think next week I’ll have a lot more to say as I’m going for my first big festival: de Gentse Feesten are expecting the Condomobiel and its volunteers!!!!!!!