Plastic Tide — Spain

My new friends and I spent the first week of May near Valencia on a Youth Exchange called The Plastic Tide. We arrived in Valencia early in the morning so we could go to the city centre and explore a little bit before the organizers took us to the venue. We discovered that Valencia is such a beautiful city with a fantastic atmosphere and we talked and laughed like we had already known each other for years. 

 

After about 90 minutes on a bus, we arrived at the venue, which was a large campsite in the municipality of Enguera called El Teularet. There were six national teams attending the project: Czechia, Lithuania, Spain, France, Portugal, Greece, and Romania. We unpacked our things in our tiny cabins and started to get to know each other through name games and energizers. For the next 7 days, we attended seminars and created projects and presentations on the topic of plastic waste. We learned about how each country deals with plastic elimination, how plastic gets to our oceans and the different problems that it causes, what can we do about it and how can we prevent it. We created infographics and informative videos on the topic of plastic waste. 

 

We got to learn about the countries of the other participants through intercultural evenings, where we could learn national dances and taste their foods and drinks. Big applause to the Lithuanian team, which made their presentation very fun and interactive! During our spare time, we could play football, do pilates, walk around the campsite, and talk with other participants. The organizers took us to Valencia for one day so we could explore the city a bit more. We spent half a day on the beach as the weather was perfect, and many of us even swam in the sea, which was very pleasant. 

 

During the last evening, we said goodbye, exchanged contacts, shed some tears, and promised that we would see each other again. Overall it was another great experience on Erasmus+ with positive, easy-going, and like-minded people. See you all on another project!