Training Course in Palermo, day 2

The story of the training course in Palermo continues, from their base in the convent of San Giovanni Battista di Baida.
By guest blogger Alex Adriana:

Baida - getting to know the topic

So, we started the second day with one of the games we did on the first day. The facebook game. The people who didn’t have their picture drawn yet, got it today. The other energizer was massaging each other in a big circle. I noticed that it’s very common to touch each other in a lot of cultures. Sometimes I’m okay with that but other times it makes me a bit uncomfortable though.

Today was about the homo eroticus (his-story). It was about how many historical happenings are written from a male perspective and females are nowhere to be found. So, we talked a lot more about the women in this story. There was an assigment and we had to write down a few fictional characters (from fairy tales and myths) and divide them into three groups: virgin woman, fertile (sexually active) woman and the old woman. It was very funny and nice to see that many of the Slavic fairy tales are the same as the ones I know from Dutch culture.

After the coffee break we did a very nice energizer, called Mazinga! It’s very simple, yet very powerful. And we continued with the lecture, when our lecturer said something very inspiring I think: "Every  woman is a nun, even when she shows her nipples". To me it means there is nothing about a human (male nor female) body to sexualize. Everyone’s body is sacred.

After lunch we had time to prepare our presentation, but since the internet wasn’t working and we had other technical difficulties we couldn’t finish our powerpoint. We ended up making a poster, which was also very nice. But, due to lack of time we weren’t able to present this day, so it moved to the other day.

After dinner we had the opportunity to show the organisation we represent. In our case that’s our school, as well as the internship me and Ruby (one of my classmates) are doing. There were many other organisations, some of which I’m really interested in. For example, some of them work with the same method, but others are in a totally different field of work. In the late evening we had a party on the rooftop of the monastery, which has an amazingly beautiful view. I talked with a lot of nice people and I got to know some people a bit better.

Day 2 was a very nice day, but I was also a bit sleepy and I felt like the lectures were a bit too long here and there. But the people here are very, very nice!

A Training Course in Palermo, Sicily

This week three students from the CMV study programme went to Sicily for a training course under the title of Let's Bridge The Gap (or: LBTG for short). The programme was hosted and organised by CESIE, an international partner of our school of social work, under the Youth in Action programme which is funded by the EU.
One of the students was asked to act as guest blogger here.
Here's what Alex Adriana has written on her own blog, which was copied here:

Baida – getting to know each other

by ladyalexx

So, the first day here in Baida started off with a groupbuilding activity called Mission Impossible. We had to do all sorts of things within our group but we had limited time. We had to take the funniest group picture, interview 5 people about what identity means to them, find out the price of coca cola, a bus ticket and chocolate in different countries. We had to list 35 countries, sing happy birthday in as many languages as possible, make up a story of a few certain words and we had to make a sixties commercial for young people. After this we had a short break and then we wrote down our fears and expectations of this project. Not really sharing it, but putting it on post-it notes and hang them in the lecture hall. After lunch we did a game, called ‘Facebook’. We had an inner circle who were the models for the outer circle. The outer circle had to change seats every few seconds so everybody took part in drawing the person from the inner circle. It was very funny.

Then things really started. The concept of gender and sexuality was introduced and in pairs we had to answer questions and tell our findings to the group. I had to talk about what the difference is between sex and gender. For the rest of the day we worked on a big puzzle with all sorts of terms that can be divided into different groups. First we made the puzzle in small groups and then we made the puzzle with the whole group, so everybody could see what the level of knowledge of the group is. The exercise was also meant to have a common ground of the words we use and what they mean. 

We ended the first day with an aphrodisiac dinner where we presented our national food which is also kind of aphrodisiac. The other countries had many nice things as well. After dinner we went up to the roof with a few people and it was very nice, we socialized more than during the project I think.

In general, I really like being here. The people are very nice and open minded. All of the assignments really helped to get to know each other better and really make us a group."