Coop’Action – France

Could be something more relaxing and refreshing after a long school year in a city than spending ten days out of the civilisation in a small village in the south of France? I do not think so…

 

Our Czech group first met at the train station in Toulouse, from where our train was leaving. The vibrant and hot city indicated great and chilled atmosphere for which we were looking for.

 

The theme of our project was cooperation in a group, how to live together and being sustainable. The place of the YE for this theme was absolutely perfect – in a big house with no wifi connection, in the countryside, shared bathrooms and a dry toilet. 

In the beginning, everything seemed a bit difficult but after a few days, we lived like a family in our collective house. For smooth running, we had to create many rules and be aware of everyone needs. 

 

Our group was quite small, only twenty participants from the Czech Republic, France, Poland and Romania, which after all was a great opportunity to know each other more and easier to cooperate and travel. 

We split our tasks for every day to be fair to everyone – we cleaned common space, bathrooms, dishes and cooked a meal for the whole group. All of the food we had was from the local farmers so we were enjoying it like the real French gourmets. During International nights we tasted many different sweets and interesting meals, but of course, everybody enjoyed the most our traditional Czech meal – pork with dumplings and spinach and nobody could not move how full we were.

 

Our organizers Maëva, Elise and Ophelie were taking us to many interesting places where we meet with the locals and see the life in the French countryside. We have visited a festival, bonfire, Toulouse city, local marketplace and we were hiking for two days to see a wonderful view of Pyrenees and sleep outside. We were all the time taken to very inspiring places, for example, an old church rebuilds to the community club with a garden and outdoor kitchen. We also learned a lot of new stuff – some of us never cooked before or never slept outside, but what all of us enjoyed the most was the production of our own fresh cheese and making bread which we were eating the rest of the project.