La Isla Bonita

That is the name which was given to La Palma because of the beautiful forests, mountains and other green areas it has. AURI, my wonderful hosting organization and work place, organized a 5 days long trip here. This is another experience which is really difficult to describe with words. I will try it but I guess the pictures will tell more this time. We had three amazing natural sights, I would like to highlight them in this entry.

This is the volcano which erupted in 1971 so it suppose to be the "freshest" one. 

And the one with a wonderful view

Undoubtedly my favourite spot was the Roque de los Muchachos

Here at the altitude of 2500 meters, there is the observatory where you can find the biggest telescope of the world.

The expert lady (!) told me that they can see until 30 billion light years with it... Maybe they can see it, but it is impossible for me to imagine this distance...

The very first day we did a 13 km long hiking through 13 tunnels. One of them had a waterfall above so actually we had to wade a small river while it was also falling like a heavy rain, indescribable experience.

I am still huge fun of lighthouses, this one was specially nice as next to the new one we could see the old one too.

Besides the beautiful nature, La Palma also has something really interesting to show. The Salina, which means the place where they are producing salt, is located right next to the ocean so they can lead the water into different pools on different weathers and the help with the sun and wind they can make the water evaporate and manufacture the finest salt. We tasted a special version called "salt rose" which is flowing on the top of the water (unlike the "normal ones" which sit on the bottom of the pool) and has a very special shape. This is one of the most interesting places where I have ever been. It is a simple idea though it's simply perfect!

Sunset above the Salina

When it is ready to be packed:

I was wondering, for how long would this mountain be enough for my mum to prepare my favourite dishes...?!!

Well, as I started this also as a small gastro blog I should not leave out our delicious pumpkin cream soup and goat cheese dinner with candle light in the capital, Santa Cruz de La Palma. Perfect ending.

Tablas de San Andrés

In Tenerife the only place where sometimes you can find snow is the top of the Teide. I will never forget the moment a few weeks ago when we were in the mountains, inside the rural house (vid. Viva la vida nómada!) and suddenly somebody shouted: "Dios mío! There is snow on Teide" everybody run out immediately and we were standing out there in the cold staring at the volcano for long-long minutes. Magical moment. A really special one. 

This means that the concept of sledging also has to be different. Icod de los vinos is a town famous of its wine...except one day of the year when they celebrate the day of San Andrés with a very special event. Namely they take a piece of board and they slide down with it from one of the steepest street of the city. It is a very old tradition which makes the whole place full of life as everybody is participating. The braver ones are doing it meanwhile the rest is watching and eating roasted chestnuts. The event can not be the same without this epicureanism. It is only me who connected this event to the first snow in Hungary (as we are actually doing the same thing on a snowy hill), but originally here it is the celebration of the new wine. This means that we had to organize a trip here for the Erasmus students as all of the wine producers offer their wine for a free taste:)

Not only adults but children are also big fans of the "Tablas". This group was nice enough to lend us their board for a try-out. Marcos (in the middle) was the star of the street as he was the fastest and coolest from all of them:)

And there is the adult version...

I find it important to emphasize that there are serious injuries every year so don't try this at your home city!:)

Getting older...

My 22nd birthday in pictures and in few words.

My amazing friends prepared the perfect birthday breakfast con un montón de corazón:)

Ocean. Sunshine. One of my favourite books. The ingredients of a perfect (birth)day.

For lunch we had this special extra yummy cake

And yes, believe it or not, I am that super lucky girl who has two cakes on her birthday:) <3

And the most beautiful handmade present, a book where I can lead my life, impossible to explain how brilliant present it is, simply a super creative and amazing surprise:)

I am so grateful for all of these! Thank you guys:)

Residencia de los mayores

As a European Volunteer I need to prepare my own project during my voluntary service. In Hungary I am volunteering with children so I decided that here I would like to work with elders. We started to look for the perfect nursing home with my flat mate and very good friend, Iza. Finally we found a small one with not too many residents, we talked to the director and they were absolutely open for all of our ideas and initiatives. So we spent the first day with them on Monday, we had a small gymnastic in the morning and then we prepared Christmas cards and Christmas tree ornaments in small groups. It was such a nice feeling and actually not much different from the way how I spend my time with children.
This process of life...when we are children we need help with walking, eating and entertaining. Then after 70 more years we need all of these help again... We discussed this beautiful circulation of life with my walking lady, Justa, who is exactly 90 years old, but as fit as a teenager. It was a great pleasure to listen her stories from her childhood and about the years she spent in Switzerland. We laughed a lot together, especially when the nurse said that we can go out to the street so: "Justa leave your walker here". She immediately left the aid, caught my arm and wanted to start. When the nurse arrived with the wheelchair we all broke into laugh as she wanted to give her a biggest help while Justa wanted to walk without any.

I can't wait to go back again! This time we will start to decorate the residencia for Christmas...

Viva la vida nómada!!!

I have never explained you why EVS is so extremely fantastic! Probably you can see many advantages of it from this blog, but there is one important thing which I have to explain. What I love the most is that in your everyday life you are living with certain limits, you believe that these belong to you. But one day you wake up, there is a great opportunity which gives you the chance to cross all of these lines. You mustn't miss it! You have to forget about your fears and comfortable routines.

One of the best examples for this was our teambuilding weekend. I have to admit that sleeping in my own warm bed, having a nice hot shower before I go to sleep, switch on the heating when I am cold or eating my delicious bread prepared by the baker always belonged to my accepted needs. These make me feel comfortable and home. I always felt that these are things which I don't want to give up (not even for a few days) what's more, which I insist upon! Last weekend I crossed this boundary of mine...

                 

We arrived to this "handmade" house in the middle of nowhere surrounded by this breathtaking view:

             

We had different teambulilding games, but for me the nicest and strongest teambuilding element was collecting wood for the fireplace and for the oven and preparing our own bread.

That amazing amount of wood which this thing can eat...

This is our own Teide from flour...very bad people are playing with the food:)

And the result:)

And I thought that I had already seen beautiful sunsets before this one...

Good morning volunteers!

Almost three month ago we arrived here so it was just on time to participate in the Arrival Training for European Volunteers:) This event was held in Candelaría (slowly I spend more time here than in La Laguna), in a 4 starts hotel. I don't remember when was the last time when I ate so many delicious things namely we had full board: all you can eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. Yes, I know Marci, it would have been your heaven:)!
This made it very easy to prepare the perfect birthday breakfast for Marie (which happened to be on the last day of this "holiday"). From my many German friends I have already learned that this is an essential element of a good birthday. 

Marie's Birthday Brunch Table

We prepared lots of surprise for her during the day including the inevitable video about her with some embarrassing pictures:) 

Here she is trying to understand our birthday wishes which we all wrote in our own languages to make it a little bit more difficult for her:)

During this week I had my third visit to the Teide National Park which is always a big surprise. I have never seen this place twice the same. This time we had cloudy weather next to the ocean but glare above the clouds at the foot of the volcano.

Above the clouds

The coldest sunshine ever:)

I have to write a few words about the organizers who made this event so special. I have to emphasize that this was not a holiday (even if it felt like:))!! This meeting had important aims and most of the topics really made me think. One of my favourites was when we had to make a city based on the European and our own values. It is always a great pleasure to think about something new which I have never had in mind before. And to design a city (and also to build it) is definitely a thing like this.

Finally it became a little bit utopian

At the end of the week we made a lot of new friendship so the bridge has been built between the volunteers of Tenerife and Gran Canaria, hopefully we can mutually visit each other in the upcoming months.
Finally we had a random salsa class...to make the experience unforgettable! 

In few words: fantastic people, incredible food, super cool activities and such a great weather!

Such a long time ago...

I know, I am totally lost... In the last few days I had so many things to do so I wasn't able to report every moment of my life:) The main reason of my disappearance is that I am working really hard on my master applications, this is the most important thing in my life right now. I hope it is a strong enough reason to neglect my precious blog:)
But here I am again! Probably I could try to summarize all of the things that happened since my trip to La Gomera, but I will only mention the most important one. (And leaving out for example my first real Halloween with costume and spider queen make-up:))

Last week my parents visited me. After two month it was amazing to see them again. I was extremely happy that I could show them all of the beautiful places on the island. It is worth much more if you can share these experiences with your loved ones.
We visited all of the sights which you could already read about here (so who can tell me what is this place?:))

 But there were new experiences for me too such as the drago milenio which is one of the most popular sights here. This is the only place on Earth where this kind of tree exists and this one is one of the oldest.

Close to the drago there is a beautiful butterfly garden where the butterflies really fly on your hand, shoulder, head, back (with a small help: a drop of nectar).

She found immediately the best place: the hand of my mum:) 

And sometimes also without any help, when you don't even realize...

I was concentrating on touching Mr. Huge Lizard when somebody found my back a nice place for a short rest:)

Another new experience was related to one of the biggest business of the Tenerife is the pearl. I have never heard something like this. In this small pond you can fish out a shell which contains a pearl. It depends on your luck if it is a golden or silver one or if it is small or big. The fishing costs 25 euro but it can also happen that you catch a pearl which is worth more than 100 euro.
If you would start to wonder where is the business part... You can choose from thousands of necklace, bracelet and earrings and for another huge amount of money they put your own pearl into these jewelries. Obviously you will choose something because otherwise what can you do with that small ball?
Even if I think it is ridiculous, I have to admit, I had it in mind to try it out. But then I decided that this is still not the age of pearls for me. And one day when I will have a pearl necklace then I would like to have one like Audrey Hepburn has in the Breakfast at Tiffany's. Maybe for my 30th birthday from my husband:) I have to remember this:)!!

Before you would start to miss my culinary adventures I show you this incredible Mexican platter which we had on the beach of Los Cristianos as a farewell dinner.

An unforgettable dinner with live music and candle light (even if it is not visible on the photo:))

La Gomera

As it is quite clear from the title, I visited the first island. I may have mentioned in the very first entry that one of my aims here (beside the surfing which could be considered as an achieved one) is to visit all of the Canary Islands. The closest one is La Gomera, which is a perfect place for hiking as it has some nice mountains and a beautiful flora and fauna. Unfortunately I didn't have the chance to experience the forest, because I had another mission...

I was selected to hold a presentation about the European Voluntary Service (EVS), the programme I am participating in. Isla CreActiva (http://www.islacreactiva.com/) is my coordinating organization had a stand in the First Youth Fair for the young people of La Gomera. In this event we informed the local youth about the exchange and volunteering opportunities in Europe and I was the living example for EVS.

After my first presentation in Spanish (which was super scary by the way), we had a little bit of free time so we went for a walk in the capital: San Sebastián. The word "capital" may sound a little exaggerated in this case as the place has only one main street and the population is 9000 people.

This small city is famous of one historical moment, when Christopher Columbus had a short break here in his big journey. In the beautiful park of the centre I found the first so called ruin, a tower which made me feel like a tourist again. So I grabbed a map and visited some sights and believe it or not, even if it is a tiny place, I didn't have enough time to visit everything.

For me the most amazing part was the port with this fascinating background: the Teide. It is a hardly describable feeling when you can see an island from another one.

This trip was an unforgettable one even with the fact that after my presentation the only question (from a 15 years old) was: "Is it really true that there is snow in your country during winter?" :)

Water adventures

In an island it is not a too big surprise that the beach is part of our everyday life. It is very new for me. I have to admit that I was always a "princess" on the beach, taking care of my hair not to be sandy or my clothes not to be wet and creasy. This period ended 7 weeks ago, when I arrived here and I had to realize that it is impossible to really enjoy the amazing beaches and the ocean with keeping my hair dry and nice:) So I decided to participate in every type of "ocean program" with all of my enthusiasm. That's how I started to take surf classes and it gave me the opportunity to experience how many different parts of your body can be hurt by a surf board:) Our teacher was a professional who is a perfectionist with his students, so we started on a beach where the waves were huge, enormous, giant! And exceptionally now I am not exaggerating. I would call these classes as fights against the waves, but it was really worth it. I could experience the power of the ocean and my own endurance. Finally I could stand on the board a few times, which made me really happy, but I think I am going to wait with the next try until the spring comes and gives us back the normal-sized waves (because these ones now are already the signs of winter).

The other water adventure supposed to be a little bit drier, but finally it wasn't:)!

We visited one of the most famous sights of Tenerife which is called Los Gigantes. These huge cliffs look also beautiful from the beach but the experience is incomparable from the ocean side. It is an incredible feeling when you are there at the foot of the extremely high cliffs and there is nothing else around you: the water, that huge amount of stone and a silent kayak (or not even that if you swim away a little bit from the group). 

Less than two months was enough for me to become addicted to the ocean and to make the coast the only place where I can really think about the important decisions of my life...

A perfect weekend

I have never thought before that these kinds of weekends exist. It was exhausting but amazing! It all started with a 3 hours long hiking as a warm-up on Thursday morning, because we had to discover this old-new route as a possible next activity for the exchange students, so it was strictly part of my job:)
The real challenge started on Friday (very early in the) morning, when we had our first real, long and difficult hiking with a lot of creeping, climbing and jumping... But it was worth every single moment for this incredible view:

The beach where we arrived was also breathtaking, not to mention the motorboat trip which we had as a perfect end.

On Saturday we became real tourists and visited the "must see" of Tenerife which is the Loro Parque. During some fascinating dolphin, seal and whale show we were wondering how cruel this is and how small aquarium they have to live in. But anyway, they were extremely cute and I was so keen on touching them (obviously I couldn't) so I decided to marry a dolphin (or reindeer) trainer:)

As the closing of the week finally we visited the southest points of the island which was a big surprise. The most famous places los Cristianos and las Americas are simply belong to another world. The most touristic place I have ever seen (maybe after Disneyland). The sad thing about this is that most of the people leave Tenerife with the impression that this is it... But that part has nothing to do with the real island! Anyway, we didn't let this strange experience effect us and we enjoyed every step of our way back from the South part to our precious North.

Only hotels

Reality

The best of Tenerife

Here come some of my favourites in pictures...

The bluest beach

 The most unique products

(strawberry and orange vinegar)

The funniest girl with the funniest rice:)

The most colorful market

       The most beautiful flower                           The most special morning

The most creative street art love message

The most disgusting but most delicious typical Canarian dessert

(Gofio with honey and almonds)

 The most interesting fruit

The nicest small town

The biggest paella

The highest point