Hiii!!! We are 6 Estonian participants Livia, Kirill, Mihhail, Lotta, Kätlin and Siim who participated in the “Recover Your Power” Erasmus+ project in Asturias, Spain. It’s a mountainous area in northern Spain with incredible views and many horses and cows. We spent 8 days there with people from 🇬🇷🇮🇹🇪🇸🇵🇹, stuck together with no mobile service and people from the outside world.
The main objectives were learning about mental health while reconnecting with nature. We did many games and activities which connected people so deeply that at the end of the project, everyone cried for the last two days because we were grown together and overcame difficulties with each other. For example, we had to answer 36 deep questions in pairs or rate ourselves/our feelings in front of everyone.
For Lotta it was mostly about 3 things: the people, nature and no social media. That’s when she realised that reaching happiness needs only 3 things mentioned above and that’s all. Even if she has all of them in her life, she understood that it can have such a big positive impact when all of these meet at the same time. “For me, it’s always more about the people than the topic itself. Talking with people while having no social media is like entering into a new phase of life. It’s difficult to explain but you just see things differently after this. Every person on the planet has to experience it for once!”
The highlight of the trip for Livia was also having this perfect opportunity to digitally disconnect, only interacting with people face to face, and having the chance to spend time with people she had never met before from all around Europe.
Since getting a smartphone the opportunity to disconnect for over a week has never come up. Here, the nearest area with service was a 20 minute walk away and everyone else was in the same situation. During that time in Asturias, any stress brought on by social media and the need to immediately respond to people melted away, and there was no pressure to be anyone other than who you are in the moment. With no outside expectations, it became easier to learn about who you are and who you want to be.
It was also the first time she had the opportunity to do a proper mountain hike, and she was surprised at both how difficult it was physically and how motivating it was to do it with such a large group. Reaching the top truly felt like an achievement, and getting to rest on the mountain top for a few hours surrounded by cows and horses was magical.
“Erasmus trips like this one feel like a dream to me, and after they have ended I'm left with this feeling of having imagined it all. Where else do you have the opportunity to leave your everyday life, and spend the next several days with people all leaving their everyday lives, where your sole focus is to connect with others and self improvement? Strangers become friends in such a short time, and the loss you feel when it's over is profound for people you haven't known for very long at all.”
"Incredible opportunities meet me in the face of different and completely different people throughout now in every moment. I am grateful that this happens and am open to it in every new moment, perhaps this is what allowed me to be in Spain and experience my full strength to see what I am capable of and what I am ready to do to achieve my goals." - says Kirill.
Before, he thought that he was weaker, but conversations with nature, conversations with people under the dome of the mountains tell the truth like never before, a sincerity that he has never heard before. Everything freezes, the world seems to stop its heartbeat here, speaks in a whisper and gives everyone the opportunity to hear their own, their own voice, motives, desires, fears. The mountains gave each of us themselves. Exactly what is real and not fake, what real strength lies in.
The moment now and immersion in it in your new present - you complement reality like never before, and it complements you and together you seem to combine a beautiful symphony. You can talk, or you can sing, you can dance or you can just be loudly silent. All this can express the delight and how deeply Kirill was able to understand himself now, to understand again, to understand in spite of. To understand. To understand.
"And the Ethos was with me. My country was with me. Different parts of the world were with me. I was seen and accepted. The world filled me and told me that it loves me, and now I whisper that I love it back."
Text: Lotta Siim, Livia Kelle, Kirill Kaslev
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