Poetry Slam

In the framework of the German Cultural Spring, Sarah and I organised a Multilingual Poetry Slam on Thursday, 14 April, in the Latgale Central Library. Therefore, we could convince Linda Skranda, poetry slammer from Liepaja, to come to Daugavpils. After having offered a workshop to young students of the State gymnasium of Daugavpils in the morning, Linda presented two poems in Latvian and one in English during the slam and could convince the audience which designated her as winner. Daphne Toka (2nd place), a German student who did an internship in the RFZ of the University of Daugavpils, presented her poems in German, English, Italian, Spanish, French and Greek. Willi Stieger, a German volunteer currently working in Rezekne, talked- together with his colleague Brenda Pikuma – in English about discrimination, inclusion and stereotypes and introduced the public to his project “Visi kopa” (All together). Besides these international performances from performers coming from other towns than Daugavpils, some local poets were participating as well. Vitja Kuzmin (3rd place), German Fokin (presenting some very nice, surrealistic stories) and Olesya Sobolevska (who also presented one poem in English) also contributed to a wonderful and very poetic evening.

At the end of the slam, all participants received certificates as well as presents from the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service), the German Embassy of Riga and the Goethe Institut of Latvia.

It was nice to see the young poets exchaning thoughts and ideas together and to see some new faces in the audience.

A big thanks to all the slam’s participants and spectators! And a special thanks to Nikolai and Fred for helping us to organise the event as well as to Sound Way for providing us with such a great technology (especially for this great microphone on stage) 🙂

Guest from Liepāja

Last Thurday, we had the chance to welcome the poetry slammer Linda Skranda from Liepāja in our town. As the winner of a poetry slam in Liepāja and active poetry slammer, we invited her to share her experiences in a one-hour workshop with some students of Renate Malnace in the State gymnasium of Daugavpils.

The workshop was focused on performing poetry and contained several exercises in making gestures and facial expressions, inter alia the five elements (flow, put, slam, carry and drop). The workshop was supposed to show the students the diversity of performance in slam poetry and consequently arouse interest in it. Symbolically, notebooks and pens were distributed in the end so that the participants could “start their slam poetry career” from now on.

We thank Linda for an interactive, dynamic and fun workshop as well as for her participation in the slam that took place on the same day and about which we are going to write another article soon.

All materials were paid with project money of “Service learning 5” (nr. 2014-3-LV02-KA105-000547), a project financed by the European Commission through the Erasmus+ programme.

How to make Blini

This Thursday, 10 March, a bunch of our school’s students + Sarah and I went to the Business School of Daugavpils in order to prepare the Blini we will distribute today during the “Meteņi” (English translation: Pancake Week) festivities. The pictures of as well as a report about these will be published after the spring holidays! At the Business School the students learned how to prepare the dough and how to fry the pancakes. While the preparation of the dough turned out to be very easy (mixing eggs with oil, milk, sugar and flour), the frying part challenged a lot of the young Blini makers. As the Blini are very thin, turning them over proved to be difficult. Furthermore, one very hungry student made a lot of them vanish in his maw.

The ingredients were sponsored by the EU.

Poetry Slam in April/ Поэтический слем в Апреле

Dear friends! Дорогие друзья!

We managed to find the necessary localities for our multilingual poetry slam and even have a fixed date yet! Мы нашли необходимые местности для нашего многоязычного поэтического слема и мы уже определили дату.

So, get out your pencils, read attentively and add the date to your calendar! Следовательно, вынимайте ваши карандаши, вчитывайтесь и записывайте дату в вашем календаре!

Where: Centrālā Bibliotekā of Daugavpils, 3rd floor

When: Thursday, 14 April, 17:00

More information will follow in the upcoming weeks. Больше информации будет опубликованно в ближайшие недели!

Those who want to participate in this 3-round competition can write an email until the 7 April to the following address: evs-17vidusskola@inbox.lv.

Если вы хотите принимать участие в этом конкурсе, пишите email по адресу: evs-17vidusskola@inbox.lv.

Activities in February/Активности в Фебрале

Hello everyone!

For the second half of this month we have two nice activities in preparation.

Slam poetry workshop

Those of you who like to tell stories are welcome to join our slam poetry workshops whose dates are not yet fixed as we are waiting for students manifesting their interest in it. (вы найдете текст по русский об этом форма поезии внизу, чтобы скачать). In these workshops we will introduce you to the history and characteristics of slam poetry. Some exercises in creative writing will hopefully provide you with the conviction of being able to write your own slam.

2. Mafia (Monday, 22 February, 14:15)

Small changes in the planned activity on Monday. Instead of Durak, we will now play Mafia together with everybody who wants to participate in this thrilling group activity. The room will be communicated at the end of this week.

Слам-в-Латвии

Let’s go picnicking in the forest!

On last Friday, 5 February, we spent a great lunch time in the forest together with the pupils of the school’s parliament and Marina Pučka. The weather was rather cold, but this did not take away our energies. Not at all! We had so much fun playing some games with the children, such as “Dragon, Prince, Princess” or “Stopmachine”. And for lunch, we cooked some big pelmeni in a wok over the fire. After this delicious meal, everyone had to fulfil some more or less amusing tasks, e.g. jumping around a tree like a rabbit, eating konfekt that was dipped in sour cream or crawling under the picnic table. Of course everyone made every effort taking as many photos and videos of these embarrassing activities as possible. In the end, we fried some sausages and also marshmallows over the fire, managing to burn at least half of them 😉 Nevertheless, this was an amazing day in the forest! We enjoyed it a lot and hope the others did, too! Большое спасибо ♥

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Baking workshops 3 + 10 December

On the 3^rd and on the 10^th of December we were able to host a baking workshop with our students. It was great for us to work together with so motivated and so talented pupils. We didn’t face any difficulties during the workshop but the children baked so fast that we were really challenged to put the biscuits in/out of the oven. The biscuits will be used for the Christmas bazar in our School on Friday the 11 December during the breaks. When you come there you will have the opportunity to taste the students biscuits. Yummy !!!

Handmade Adventskalenders

On the 12th and on the 19th of November we welcomed our fellow students to a nice little workshop how to make ones own Adventskalender. Although we only had one lesson (which is not enough to complete a hole kalender), the children were so interested and motivated in crafting their kalenders that it was such a pleasant time for us, too.

You want to make one, too? Give a little present for a person close to you? Get in Christmas mood?

Why don’t you try it yourself!!

Here is an amazing video for doing so:

Project „Old paintings, new pictures“

At the end of September, Christoph, an Austrian fellow volunteer working for „Erfolg“, came towards us with the idea of starting a photo project, depicting old and famous paintings in a modern way. In a matter of fact, we worked the whole month of October on this project, conceiving ideas for the locations and the actions we would like to show in our pictures and trying to find people ready to act in our photos. Of course, we also got active as photo models and so you can admire my naked back, Jakob’s desperate face and Sarah’s addictive mobile phone consumption. If you would like to see these photos as well as many other interesting and funny pictures, you can go to the computer and magazine room on the second floor the central library of Daugavpils (Centrāla bibliotēkā) where the exhibition is located until Monday. Afterwards, you will find them in the University of Daugavpils from November 16 until November 22. I’ll write the exact spot where the exhibition will take place as soon we have this information.

German Rally in Rainis house

On the 23th of October we returned to Rainis house, this time to join a team/leader building meeting of the 9-12 classes. Our job there was to prepare some German rally to not only give the pupils a better insight in German everyday live but to also to learn some interesting things. During our preparation for this event we faced several difficulties in terms of when and how to host the workshop and as Claudia, our beloved organisator, had become ill the day before. But everything turned out to be fine as Claudi nevertheless prepared her part so we didn’t face any difficulties in our rally. Sarah and I, this time together with my fellow flatmates Louisa and Lydia travelled together with the pupils to Rainis home by bus.

While Sarah made some quiz about some general questions about strange Germany Lydia baked delicious “Obatzda” and “Brezeln”(No Joke I feel she is not honoured enough for her result). In the mean time Louisa gave some interesting interactive insight in German language and got in return some Russian tongue twister she is learning until the present day (probably still takes some time but when she figures it out it will be crazy).

I on the other hand showed some German music and tried my best to teach some simple dances as disco fox and Walzer. I consider this quite successful as the people are amazing dancing talents 😉

Still they really have their own mind as in some point I found myself between the students dancing from their full heart the танец маленьких утят (German: Ententanz). In the rest of the time Jelena the school psychologist gave some interesting insight in what a good leader is/ has to be. All in all we had a really great time because the people were nothing but awesome and its always our pleasure to spend time with them. Special thanks once again to Jelena and Marina, who always organize a very special day where everything works perfectly out and is not only informative but a lot of fun.

See you soon

Jakob