The first day of a long journey

On Tuesday, my last morning in Germany, I was very lucky. Most flights were canceled, but not mine.  I arrived in London, finally! It was so cold, but I was really looking forward to the welcome-meeting in the evening. To be honest, I didn't know what to expect. What kind of people will I meet? What kind of food will we eat?  At the end of the evening I had the answers. It was an Arabic restaurant and the food was very very very good. I had "Kafta". And the people were great! They asked me a lot of questions and I really wanted to get to know them. I felt very welcome.

I met Emilio, my co-worker for the next 10 month and Zak a good friend of CADFA. With both of them I did a London-Tour on Wednesday. Our first destination was a hill in Greenwich Park, which was very far away, but it was worth it. The view was wonderful! Then we popped into the Maritime Museum. In London all museums are free!!! I never will be bored. It 's my first time in London, so I had to see Big Ben. We took the bus to Westminster walked around and had some fish and chips. I think they are the best things, you can do in London on your first day!!!

My little Cadfa adventure

Palestine Wall

Hi to everybody! I am so happy to be here today, but I am a bit nervous too because for me, to write in English and explain the reasons why I am here in London, it is really difficult.
I am Spanish, I am 25 years old and I am a European Volunteer. My name is Emilio Sanchez, and I will be here with CADFA in London for 10 months.

I am here for many different reasons. First, because I want to help with Palestinian problems, working to support Palestinian society and Cadfa is doing good projects in Abu Dis, with students, women,  youth, etc. On the other hand, I am really interested to be here for my professional development in international affairs  and in particular to create projects with other countries and communities. CADFA gives me the opportunity to learn about the structure of a charitiy in United Kingdom in this area. And finally,I hope to  improve my English because this is very important in the 21st century.

I hope to enjoy my time with Cadfa in London with all my volunteer friends. There will be different visits from Palestine and I hope to learn a lot of  this culture, and their lives in Palestine, their lifestyle, etc.
 Today I finish my first week in Cadfa and I am really happy to have met a lot of people and I want to say 'Thank you very much' because the welcome week has been really beautiful.

It's the last day at LS U school,we have finished !!We had such a great meal together. The girls enjoyed their time and we had a new person join us, Corinne. She is an Irish teacher who teaches at (LSU) school. I feel so happy that I could do something for my country, having 10 people in one Palestinian club is really useful and it's going to be much easier for the next volunteers to continue our job ( Lucile and I ).The  thing I have most enjoyed in (CADFA) is going to the schools. Bye Bye LSU school.

Cambridge Event

on saturday the 21th we did an event in cambridge and it was the last day for lucile withe us in cadfa, it was nice we hade good 2 houers befor we start the event many thing happend maney people gave talks lawoson who was volunteer in palestine me and shahad from palestine her and luile (the frenchey) for sure cadfa stall , palestinan food we made, we talked about the life under the ocupation it was amazing to see new people to talk to new people

Thinking about what we've learned

Sadly it's Lucile's last Friday volunteer meeting as she has to go back to France at the end of her four months here.  We'll miss her.

So now we are talking about what we've learned in our time in CADFA.  Lots of things....

 English language

 Way of life in London

 About Palestine

Confidence in speaking in front of a lot of people

I did many things I didn’t imagine I would do – everything is different

 Communications with people, improved

I made new friends

Being part of a project, seeing the idea growing, imagining it, starting to implement it,

Preparing presentations

Lots of communications, links

 Ways to deal with students

Here I am starting from zero, it's been a massive experience in all ways

I don’t know everything, and in this new place I have to get used to people, it takes time

 It’s hard to live with a family, it can be noisy

 Being more organised at home specially sharing

 I learned from Cadfa to move on, keep going, if it doesn’t work, try something else.

You have to go in little steps

 I learned about myself, did different things

I am a perfectionist so it’s sometimes hard to start things. I learned that you have to start to do it to develop the idea.

On Saturday the 7th of June was CADFA Volunteer's  Day,  some of  Cadfa volunteers came to the event and enjoyed their time there.
The volunteers spoke about their experience with CADFA whether it was in London or in Palestine and it was a good chance to encourage people to get involved to CADFA.

We created a game at LSU school to show the British students the difficultly of movement in Palestine, and what Palestinians people face everyday to travel from Hebron to Nablus 
it was very useful and interesting , 
!! The girls said ''it's not fair !'' How could this people live in this situation.