7th day- pancakes, video making and Happy Bee party !

7th day

This day was the most awesome *in Jurate’s opinion*. Firstly, we had pancackes in the morning for beakfast *Thank you, Kaisa*. After this good start it was getting even better. We had a picture hunt game. Every team had to find hidden tasks and complete them and then make some pictures using our creativity. It was a great way to communicate more with foreigners and to connect with nature. There was even a song writing task, we had to write songs with Spanish, Lithuanian, English and Estonian words. It was fun and useful as well.

Later on we had some more fun activities to do. Of course, we made a circle at first and we were splitted into 5 teams. Each team was given a certain topic which they had to make a video about. All of the topics were related to bees and their problems and what will happen if they extinct. In Sarunas` opinion, video making was one of the funniest tasks in this youth exchange. We had so much fun making our costumes, because we had to be creative if we wanted to have some good costumes for our characters. We think that all groups did a wonderful job and all the videos turned out great. 

After dinner, we started our pizza night, probably the best moment in that day *in Alex´s opinion, because Alex determines himself as a big boned boy*. The evening started with the Award Ceremony where the jury decided what the best pictures were and later there was some other nominees as well. The winners had some delicious presents and then we saw our group video from the movie making activity, which we will later spread all over Internet to raise awareness about this topic. Afterwards the real fun began — we started our real pizza night, we baked vegan pizzas. We had a lot of ingredients to choose from. That was such a wonderful way to end that wonderful day.

—Alex, Jurate and Sarunas

6th day- In search for the beavers, hike in the bog and watching the movie “More Than Honey”

Today, we have dedicate a big part of the day to know more about Estonian nature.

Before having breakfast (05:45!!!), some people went to look for the beavers with canoes. Finally we didn’t find the beavers, but we saw the “beaver hill”, a lot of interesting birds, and we also enjoyed very beautiful views on the river: so a perfect way to say good morning!:)

After the breakfast, we played games to know some wild animals: we formed our groups by following the sounds of different animals that we had to imitate, and then we did a game about searching footprints and try to guess to what animal these belong.

Then we watched a video about Estonian bogs and a funny clip about Estonian tourism. After that we started our 10 km long hike around the forest and the bog. We saw a lot of butterflies, lizards, and plants (like little carnivore plants -Drosera Rotundifolia-, Ledum Palustre, Eriophorum vaginatum, Sphagnum, Oxycoccus Palustris, Calluna Vulgaris, Betula Nana, Pinus…). For the spanish people it was amazing, because the landscape was very different to their common landscapes:)

In the afternoon we had a chance to paint our own T-shirts, writing “To Bee or Not to Bee”, it was a nice activity to have a good souvenir reminding the exchange.

And after dinner, we watched a very interesting movie about the bees, their importance and the problems that they have. The film was called “More Than Honey”.

Then we prepared us to go to sleep (some of us in the tepee), after a fantastic day!!!:))

Esperanza Sancho (Spain), Kaarel Eensoo (Estonia), Martin Kisand (Estonia)

 

 

Day 5

 

Day 5
Day five began awefully early, because we wanted to go to Tartu. But the bus came 30 minutes too late (Estonia…) so we could actually have slept thrity minutes longer. Still we were all curious and happy about our trip to town, because the Spanish and Lithuanian people wanted to know if there really was civilisation outside of our village.

We actually found a real town and in Tartu we visited the „Loodusmaja“ Nature House. We were guided around by two handsome guys who told us some smart things. Interesting! The thing that impressed us most was the exihibition about music and nature, all the shown instruments were handmade and only from natural materials, like wood, horns, animal hair…

After that we had some free time, some of us went shopping and some were guided around by the locals. The spanish people were amazed to finally see something similar to a hill. We even „climbed“ to the top and enjoyed the impressive view on the ten houses and the forest. Of course we visited the beautiful oldtown and took a lot of pictures of the sights (buildings, the statue of the kissing students and estonian girls). By the way, estonian icecream is delicious!!

Lunch was in Vilde Tervisekohvik, a vegetarian restaurant, where we ate a very tasty soup and we were able to connect to the wi-fi (yaaai!!). After that, we went to visit the beefarm.
There we met Alan, a beekeeper that talked about the process of honey extraction, the hives, the pollen collection by the bees,and we made a little walk around the farm to see the flowers which the bees use to make the honey. At the end, we could taste three differents types of honey!!

After that, we came back to Palupõhja to spend some free time, we badly needed some Siesta before supper.
When we had eaten, we learned something about Fondo Natural, the spanish organisation that cares about nature and has many interesting projects.
We also saw some videos that Azpe brought ous. They were about the birth of a queen bee, the live insight of a beehive and the beedances.

Later in the evening some of us made a walk into the fields where there was beautiful fog, and we enjoyed playing with some heyballs. In the forest we sang songs in different languages while walking, sadly there were no animals to see, because they already fled to Russia from our enthusiastic screaming (singing!!).
We finished the day and began a new one with sauna (above 100 degrees!!) and some funny card games, for example the „Jüri-Mari“-Game, that can actually be played in different languages. Spanish version: Jorge and Maria, Lithuanian version: Jürgis and Maryte, German version: Jürgen and Marie. It seems like the stereotype, that Estonians are slow is really true, they were nearly always loosing against the enthusiastic forigners…haha

Rosa, Azpe, Sergio

4th day- Workshops, Spanish cultural evening

In the morning the Spanish people went canoeing and three of them fell into the river (we had experienced instructors with us though, so everything ended well;). Before dinner we made posters about our project and bees. It was a competition between six groups of four people and after the voting team number 6 won. It was a really hot and sunny day, so everyone was exhausted and some of us went swimming to the river.

After lunch we had three workshops where we were building bug hotels, making wax candles and lip balm. Every one of us got to see the process of how to use different bee products in preparing hand made beeswax candles and lip balm, which was made of organic coconut oil, beeswax and linseed oil.

After dinner we had Spanish cultural evening, where there were a lot of energizers, good food, music and dancing. But the party kept going and we had a campfire outside and disco inside.

So it was a really hot and active day, what was full of mosquitos :O

-Kirke, Robertas and Evelina

3’rd day: honeycomb foundation sheets, Youthpass, Lithuanian evening

 In the morning some people went canoeing, and 2 Lithuanians „decided“ to expirience what capsizing a canoe feels like, all ended well. 🙂

After breakfast we had some reflection time, learned about Youthpass and played a game called Youthpass Islands. We had a lot of fun learning new things about foreign cultures and the 7 key competences (we also watched some useful videos which helped to understand them better). We even wrote some short and awesome poems about bees.

Before lunch we had group building activities. After lunch we had siesta and after dinner lithuanian culture evening. Before evening we had a workshop with Jaanus, where we made beehive supers and a lot of frames. We also put metal wires on them and added honeycomb foundation sheets.

Lithuanian culture evening : It started with a game called string ball game, then we moved inside and watched a video introducing Lithuania. Our knowledge about Lithuania was also checked. Then we moved outside to dance, it was quite energizing. Afterwards we got to taste lithuanian food. Then we danced some more.

After the Lithuanian culture evening we went to sauna. There were 3 brave spanish people and 1 lithuanian. Woohoo. We jumped into the river, swam and enjoyed sauna once more. It was an excellent ending for the day!

Gabriele, Taavi, Kaisa

Second day 04.08.15- introduction to the topic, Estonian games and evening !

The second day (the first real day) started with a magnificent sunrise. It was our second day without meat 😀 We played some team-building games and made groups to think about the rules, fears and expectations for the project, which we introduced afterwards.

During the lunch time we were really excited because we waited for the media to come… and it arrived finally. Then we had a chance to acknowledge the main reason why we organised this youth exchange. We started to build bee hives directed by beekeeper Jaanus.

After dinner we had the Estonian cultural evening. All participants know now how to dance Kaera-Jaan, Kaks sammu sissepoole and Me lähme rukist lõikama. Through the whole evening Estonian folk songs were playing. All participants tasted Estonia national food. After Estonian evening we had a campfire, where everybody sang national songs.

Here are some pictures and videos about that day.

Photo authors : Mirjam Grosberg

Blog write : Mirjam, Martin and  Simone

First day 3.08.2015 – Arriving day

3.08.2015 the Arrival

It was a wonderful day. Lithuanians started their trip to Estonia from Mazeikiai about 12 am. The whole group went by bus. In Estonia the day started off almost easily as there were some tiny obstacles on our way, like the fact that the luggage of the Spanish team got lost at the airport. That is why our bus arrived a little bit later also. The four of us (Merlin, Taavi, Alise and Ragne) waited eagerly for that bus to arrive. We were informed that the bus comes to the Nature House of Tartu, so we had to relocate ourselves there with our enormous bags. The Spanish finally arrived there as well, without their luggage, sadly. But finally we were able to start the trip to Palupõhja Nature School to start the long-awaited project. BUT!!!! Before we could even start driving, we had to tackle into the biggest problem in the world: we had to make up our minds, which seat should we take… and it wasn’t even Friday. The driving lasted about an hour and as we drove past various farm animals, we finally made our way to our destination. Oh happy day! We made acquaintance with the surroundings and even the Lithuanians arrived some time later. Of course we all introduced ourselves, but it was kind of hard, because the names seemed quite unpronounceable at first, but things improved and on the second thought, I think, we were more optimistic… (I hope.. maybe.. I don’t know). But the night went on with a lot of activities like talking games or other social games and the day ended with the great finale of Lithuanians going sleeping in tepees and Estonians and Spanish suffering the great snoring depression!

Here we start our first dinner ! Delicious!!

Photo author : Jakob Oetjen

Merlin, Ragne and  Martynas

See ya in youth exchange!

Hey bee friends !

In Estonia 6-9 july all leaders and also some participants came together for the APV(advanced planning visit) and spend some awesome time together. In two days the youth exchange main themes and structure was planned out and the place was checked over.

Now can the youth exchange happily come !

Azpe hope to see you soon ! Also the other participants !

Hello world!

This website is about our project and what we do.

Also we want to more known about bees and collect information here. Different articles and picture, what is in the internet, in the books and media.

Hope it inspire more people!

Bee happy!