S. goes to Braga and to Portugal Participa.

Welcome @Braga.

I like to think that one thing leads to another,so if you take action, other actions follows. So this what happened with me when i got the offer to travel to Braga for the weekend seminar of Youth Participation. Since i returned from Slovenia trip, these last two weeks, I have managed to meet bunch of portuguese speaking people, either going out for the party with friends of friend, later on joining the youth round table done by IPDJ or after all finally managing myself to join the Toastmasters meetings. The busy week with portuguese culture lead to get invited to join National Youth Council organized seminar in Braga which was about Youth Participation. For me having the chance to actually experience and see how the youth acts and reacts in Portugal, how they think and if they are any different by taking actions than in Latvia seemed to be a perfect match for my weekend. And more over I had the opportunity to travel to north of Portugal, to visit the European Youth Capital 2012 aka Braga.

A morning view of my hotel room.

My trip there started great, as I did not have to travel alone, but I had the chance to travel with an awesome girl, ex EVS volunteer, who`s now super excited about everything regarding the youth and non-formal education matters. So yeah, we both represented Dinamo and we both went to Braga for the Portugal Participa seminar. Great company killed the time and the five hours in the bus run as nothing. Yes, yes, Braga is more north than Porto, and it means more further to go. nevertheless, we survived, and arrived in the destination earlier than most of the participants, and also later than the program were supposed to start. yes, I am still learning the portuguese understanding of the times.

If usually i skip certain places, then this time I have to point out that the Basic Hotel Braga was a great experience for me. If at first they did not find me in the list of participants and put me in a single room, then just like twenty minutes later, when i already managed to unpack most of the stuff, the receptionist comes up and says, that they want to move me to other room, as after all i as in the participant list. So yeah, i am going to have the roommate after all. I was sent to upper floor, with much bigger room, with an amazing view over the Braga city...and have to say, that till very last day of my stay there, i still did not meet my roommate. But thank you very much for the amazing view of over Braga, i very much enjoyed it.

The conference itself for me was indeed a learning experience. First of all, was fun to practice my Portuguese language skills, as it turns out, i actually am able to make some conversations. And I also had some fun, people thinking that i don`t really understand of what they are talking.

I already noticed before of how small is Portugal, and this time, I crossed all way to Braga, I took the first seat at the dinner table...and guess what, i manage to meet not only other EVS volunteers, who are there for their projects, living in Braga, but even more funny, I manage to meet a girl from Lisbon, who have just finished her EVS project in Latvia. So yeah, fun, fun, fun.

My two first times happened this time in Braga, I had the opportunity to see the Theater of Oppressed, which is another type of theater play, engaging public as warm up for the play, later on also giving the chance for the audience to be actors themselves. So far in Latvia I had not seen something this way... Other one of two new experiences was the encounter with TUNAŠ ( I am sorry, i don`t know how to spell the name correctly) which are student ensembles that plays, sings and sometimes dances. For me the most amazing part of the Tunaš was that they each of them have their own instrument to play...and with combination of around 15 to 20 people the music turns out to be amazing. I very much enjoyed. And as well, some of the groups have developed cool shows. If you manage to be around Portugal when is the study semester, it may be worth giving a try to find a tunaš performance.
See you some other time Braga, hopefully sooner than I can think of.
S.