Winter and Christmas are coming closer. It gets colder here, which also means bringing our winter jackets and hats out of wardrobes and of course seeing many beautiful Christmas decorations at the outside of houses. It brings a calming atmosphere. You automatically get in a Christmas vibe. However, due to many cases of COVID-19 in Greece, the government of Greece has decided to arrange a lockdown all over Greece for a couple of weeks. The government also locked down social activities to protect the people. We are only allowed to leave the house for a specific reason like shopping or going to a pharmacy. Therefore, there is basically no other choice than staying home. Moreover, most of the shops and intuitions like schools and universities have been closed. The teacher must give lessons to the children via computer. This doesn’t allow us to go to school as usual. However, some of us still have the opportunity to continue their work on certain things in their primary schools as well as Kindergarten.
On the schoolyard of the third primary school of Vrontados, there are some small games painted on the ground. Unfortunately, humidity and time destroyed most of the colours of the games. Accordantly, you weren’t able to clearly see most of them with your eyes anymore. Therefore, it allowed us to repaint the games on the schoolyards which we also finished with a lot of pleasure. Although we didn’t have a lot of experience in painting before, we enjoyed becoming a part of bringing the games “alive” again. We are looking forward to seeing the students of the primary school playing the games recurrently. In the school library, we also had many different things to do. We checked the books on the shelves if they are in the correct order. In the library of the school, we have an excel sheet where we had to change the letters of the book titles from small to big. Some of the new books had to be registered in the excel sheet.
In the school library of the second primary school of Vrontados were some new and old books which had to be registered in the school system as well.
Also, the children of the kindergarten have to stay at home. However, they can do lovely handicrafts. To make this happen, two of our volunteers prepared bags with different materials for handicrafts. They also cut some papers. We as volunteers helped on a website for the kindergarten. Now the parents, teachers, and children can enter the website and read some books online.
The current situation and weather led us to spend most of our free time at home. In general, the lockdown brings a calming atmosphere into the village. It feels like somebody just pushed on a “break button”. Streets are mainly empty and specific areas are not crowded anymore. It brings a lot of quietness here in this village.
Instead of just chilling inside and doing nothing we tried to bring the best out of it. We play backgammon a lot, a traditional Greek board game. We even have started a tournament in this game. So, everybody has to play against each other. Although of course, you need a lot of luck in this game, everybody could improve his tactics to beat someone. After a while, you also find some new things in this house like a puzzle with 1000 pieces! But it is not just a normal puzzle, it is a puzzle with puzzle design.
Before the lockdown, we were lucky to buy a guitar. The new situation allowed us to share some wonderful musical moments with the group in our house. Suddenly, there was even time for personal interests and projects. Some of us even have started learning this instrument.
In general, the virus has been a big part of our daily life. However, we try to do the best out of it. We have had a great time so far and the lockdown even brought us more together as a group!
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