Arts Lab 5.0: Olha Popova, Ukraine - Month 4

 (The photos are not in order...) I'm going to start in chronological order.

1) The cat is still coming to our house (I guess he thinks we are a hotel or something...)
2) We finished our residency at Moldova School.
3) I spent 2 amazing weeks of my holiday in the house of a local volunteer, with his family, on Christmas and New Year.
4) Caravans Caravans Caravans Caravans...
5) We held JEMOM exhibition.

About Moldova school: It wasn't the easiest residency for me. To be exact, it was the most difficult one. (And everyone expected the first school to be the hardest one). Have you ever tried to teach some of the visual art stuff to blind kids without a translator? Well, it's not easy. I tried to make a clay workshop for it to be tactile, but with my luck, I got the smallest kids, and those usually come with some embarrassing situations as additional luggage. I hope that for the next generation, there will be some teacher-volunteer introduction first. To be honest, I'm just happy that's over.

But after that, we got our holidays!!! Firstly, of course, we made a Secret Santa game and a little celebration. Everyone cooked some snacks. I finally tried chestnuts!!! They are good if they're fresh. You can find them in a local Carrefour. After such an eventful time, it was so nice. I got a little Lego parrot from Sena. That's amazing.

Then, Hajer and I went to the house of a local volunteer, Gabriel. His family was SO welcoming! We spent there 2 weeks, helped them to prepare meals for the holidays and walked around a bit. I saw a real Romanian Malanka celebration (but they really like to burn those little explosives during dances, so I couldn't stay and watch for long.). On Christmas, we went to Iași, rode a Ferris wheel, ate some delicious food, sang Carols, and greeted children who came to sing carols to the house... There were a lot of things that will not fit into this report. I remember those long night conversations I had with Hajer. How we all were watching movies on the couch. How I greeted the family in the morning... That AMAZING sunset that I witnessed... Everything.

After that, we came back to the house. And everything started to come back to the schedule. Caravans and exhibition... On one of the caravans, I had a chance to see the church in the process of being painted. I climbed those wooden constructions to get to the ceiling and have a look. I love to imagine that I also have a task like that. I would like to try something like that, I guess...

And that night, when it was snowing and we all went outside to make a snowball fight... I stayed there for longer with Dajana, just lying in the snow, looking into the night sky. As you all probably know, the rural skies are much clearer than the city ones. I would stay for longer, but I have a short jacket, so my butt was freezing. (What I want to note is that the heating is not really working and the window is still not done, so it's actually freezing in my small room.)

And finally, the exhibition. I tried to be a model for the first time! I worked day and night on the posters about the 10 stages of genocide. It was and is very important for me. To educate and also... to reflect. On those posters, if you can find them, my body and my feelings. For everyone to see.

In the next episode: Mid-Term trip, Ukrainian cultural night, the Last residency, and more...

TO BE CONTINUED

Olha Popova is from Ukraine, and she is participating in a six-month volunteering program within Arts Lab 5.0, a project co-funded by the European Union through the European Solidarity Corps.