“Connecting European Youth Through Sports” in Portugal

I participated in the Youth Exchange “ERASMUS PLUS CONNECTING EUROPEAN YOUTH THROUGH SPORTS ” in Arrouquelas, Rio Major, Portugal from 01/09/2024 to 10/09/2024.

In this project we had the opportunity to do some sports with people from other European countries and discover the portugish culture.

More specifically, I really enjoyed the fact that we did different sports and games in a daily base. Apart from the ordinary sports (such us football, volleyball) we had the opportunity to try also surf in Peniche and tree climbing park which were so fun. The games that every country had to prepare were so enjoyable too. Every intercultural night was so good and I liked it because I learned a lot of things about each country and taste traditional food and dance traditional dances. The Portuguese night was a very special night because we had the opportunity to see a folk group which presented us traditional Portuguese music, clothes and dances. All participants were so friendly, polite, and kind and I made some new friends during the program. They seemed to enjoy the fact that they run this project.

The organizers organized a Youth Pass ceremony in which they gave us our youth pass and a bottle of wine as a gift. We also had the opportunity to take some nice photographs altogether too. The food was very good and in appropriate quantities.  I liked the fact that I ate Portuguese traditional food and I never felt hungry.

However, there were some things that I personally didn’t like about this project. One thing that disappointed me was the accommodation. They told us about tents so I thought that we will do camping in a camping place or in the nature but instead of that we had our tents in the cement outside of the main building of the programm. I found it unaesthetic and inconvenient because some nights were really cold and with a lot of moisture. The village were we lived was very beautiful with nice green places so I would prefer to had camping in one of them. Additionally, some days we didn’t know exactly the programm of the day because they had to do some changes and that made some organising things more difficult.

To sum up, the whole experience was so entertaining, fun and beautiful, I did things that I had never done, I met some nice people.

                                                                                                                                                                                   Thomaida Bparouta