March, Memories and the Art of Letting Youth Lead - Ariane

March is here already and time is flying by at a frightening speed. A snap of fingers later and I just celebrated my 25 years old birthday here with new people that I do not dare to call friends yet. Beginning of new year and slowly winter fading away. For this occasion I could not avoid being a stereotypical French and making crêpes for "la Chandeleur". An event celebrating the return of the sun and longer days, hence a yellow rounded shaped type of food. I wanted to share that with Mini Fjället as we are progressively getting more and more along. And here I learned a valuable lesson or rather confirmation of theoretical knowledge and discussions around how youth workers should not "do instead" or "do for" but "do with" or even better just support. I was planning the activity, thinking of making all the food myself, hesitating on the capacity of young kids to manage the making of thin pancakes in a big pan. Taking the advice of my colleague I ended up coming with just the dough not knowing what to expect at all. We ended up having an amazing time ( of course I nearly choked seeing all of those little fingers reaching for the inside of the pan). They learned at different speeds and degrees, asking for help or space, and I believe everyone had much more fun making imperfect pancakes instead of eating "perfect" ones. Making something brings more growth than delegating to someone who knows better or not doing it fearing a bad result. A thought that could cure our procrastination issues ? I will take with me very fond memories. Already the week after, kids were asking for more pancakes and were already showing signs of fast progress !

Teaching something, even if you are good at it, is somewhat a more difficult task than it looks like. Welcome to the ski day with kids that never put skis on. There was a comical aspect to arriving at a "mountain" with a sign indicating 300 meters as a person growing up next to two different mountain chains in France. Past a little smirk at this unexpected sight, I was ready. Picking up kids and trying to explain what you were taught many years ago by a professional ski instructor was not a piece of cake…Your body remembers but try explaining it now… Between the ones unable to get back up on their own and the ones going straight and fast as if death is pursuing them (without the ability to stop ofc). Somewhat between all those emotions and work-out the day passed and we for sure will remember it for a long time.

Aside from Fjället, which is certainly taking up a lot of space in my life right now, I still continue trying to build a little life here. I mentioned volunteering in the film festival last time and it was an intense and great event that I would definitely recommend to anyone in Gothenburg to meet a lot of people, see a lot of movies, go to some party and see the backstage of the film production and mingling. Those double days were worth it…I continued my busy days with helping to paint my friend's new house and other adventures. After that I took some well deserved rest on a nice week-end in the small town of Falkenberg where I could admire the frozen sea landscape under a lot of sun. Prepared a birthday surprise party for a friend and then organized my own with this odd feeling of time passing without notice. I will continue to try my best I guess.