Canfranc On Arrival Training

Hey J

In this blog I wanted to share my awesome experience during the on arrival training that we had in Canfranc (Huesca) from the 13^th til 18^th of November.

Honestly at first I was not so positive about it, I was wondering how it will be like and if if the other volunteers will be cool.

We were supposed to catch an early bus to Malaga train station and from there a train to our meeting point in Zaragosa. But believe it or not we had a very bad incident with the Taxi service, the woman on the radio taxi didn’t want to send us a taxi no matter how we begged, eventually she was hanging up on us whenever we give the address.  We ended up calling our coordinator Carmen and she took us by car to Malaga to catch the Train before it leaves, if it wasn’t for her we wouldn’t make it on time. So I feel really grateful as she is always there for us even when we screw up.

And to add more misfortune, I bought a coat a day earlier as they told me it will be cold in Canfranc to just wear a jacket, BUT the woman that was working there forget to take off the security tag in the coat and she just disabled the alarm, I only noticed it when I was leaving the house early morning.

So when we got to Zaragosa I had to walk for 6.9km til I found a shop that accepted to help me and to remove it, imagine the embarrassment of looking as if I stole the coat lol Luckily I kept the tickets with me.

On the way back I lost my way of course, walked til I got tired then I took the right bus BUT in the wrong direction so I ended up being more far. So I walked a lot until I found my way.

Then at 17h we met at the train station with all the other volunteers, it was funny as we were trying to find each other and tried to get to know each other but as the group grew more and more, it became hard to get to know everyone, we were 26 volunteer !

We then left to Canfranc with one of our trainers. It was a very long and tiring day so everyone was basically sleeping in the bus. On our way the road was so dark, no lights at all, it was kind of creepy so we were not so excited about where we were heading especially that it seemed that we were in the middle of nowhere.

We arrived late at night, we took off the bus and it was sooo windy and sooo cold, freezing cold, in an old street, struggling to get into the hostel we were staying to find out that there are 3 rooms prepared for us. One small room for the 4 male volunteers and 2 big rooms for the other 20 volunteers, so we were 10 volunteers in one room, and only one shower and toilet lol we were all fed up and frustrated, everyone was grumpy and not in the mood for talking, we ate our dinner and went to sleep.

At night the heaters were going crazy, and going off and we only had one blanket so we had a terrible night of no sleep especially that we weren’t comfortable with being with many strangers in one room.

The next morning we got up and we started to socialize about our terrible night lol  that was a good ice breaker haha then we started our training and we really had awesome trainers who helped us a lot during the energizers and activities to know each other.

We saw the beauty of Canfranc in the day, it was breath taking, we made awesome friends and we started to bond while learning about EVS.

11km away from France's borders

We got to visit Canfranc International Train station, it was sooo beautiful, we had a very good tour by one of the locals who informed us about its history in a very interactive way.

After few days we no longer wanted to leave that place even if there were no shops or nothing, but we had something more precious, the beauty of nature and awesome company. What more can we ask for J We also got to visit Jaca, another beautiful city and on our way back we had few hours in Zaragosa waiting for the train so we spent them in the city with our new friends who were living there.

The on arrival training was one of the greatest experience I ever had, especially that I didn’t get the chance to have it in my previous short term EVS. So I feel very grateful and lucky for meeting such great people and for all the information I received from all the trainers and also during the language course we had there.