Written by Nieves:
6th of June. The alarm of our residence wakes us up at 5:15 a.m.. All the guests go to the garden as it is required. We are tired, cold but having some fun with the situation. At 5:30 a.m. we are told to come back to our rooms, but I did not go to bed as I preferred to work on the presentation that we will show during the next days.
At 9:00 a.m. we meet with Donna in BVSC in order to go together to a local football stadium in Birmigham to cooperate together with other 15 local volunteers on its renovation as part of BVSC programme "BVSC Team Challenge". We work on painting the changing rooms and we start as good painters: protecting the benches, shelves and switches. After that, we move the clothes racks and clean the dust of the walls. The walls looked like totally different than the ones that we have found!!!
At 17:50 p.m. we arrive to Fircroft College with time enough to have a rest and change our clothes. At 19:00 p.m. we meet Priti and her friends to have dinner out and, what a surprise! The building alarm rings again at 18:15 p.m.! Fortunately our date is delayed till 20:00 p.m..
7th of June. Visit with Priti to the Gurudwara and community of GNNSJ Gurundwara and Nishkam Centre. We are explained about their religion and rituals. Afterwards, we climb to the cupola and we have dinner on their center (what seems to be for us as the “cocina económica” that we have in La Rioja).
After this, Priti picks us with her car (it is raining cats and dogs) to discover a little bit more Birmingham. And work a little bit more on the offices of BVSC. Around midday, we go with Donna to the church of St. Michael (Catholic) where we help to clean the inside (Donna and me) meanwhile Miguel and José Luis remove the leaves from the garden. On the afternoon, we are lucky to attend a music concert that me and my colleagues enjoyed a lot. At the end of the day, Priti meets with us again and takes us to the jewellery museum (very interesting).
This can be the summary of our last days. For sure I forget a lot of details to tell you, but the most important thing of all is that all the people we are meeting are wonderful and they are very friendly with us, making a great effort to make us feel comfortable, especially on the offices of BVSC and during our work there. Today finishes our first week here (time runs so fast!) but even if all passes very fast, it will for sure leave a trace in us that we will never forget.
