Mar
03
2022

Maslenitsa (Belarusian: Масленіца, Russian: Мaсленица, Rusyn: Fašengy, Ukrainian: Масниця; aka Crepe week)

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This week is an Eastern Slavic celebration called Maslenitsa.

As you might have guessed, Maslenitsa is all about pancakes or blini (they are more like french crepes, rather than fluffy American pancakes).They are freshly made every day and supposedly symbolize the Sun, so by eating pancakes, people consume its warmth and energy. Today Sofiya, Akmaral and house tutor Alina were making pancakes and sharing their traditions with everyone.

We are also very proud to say that Emma and Sara now know how to make and flip the pancakes!

P.S. Interesting fact – Burning woman

The grand finale of the pancake week is burning the effigy of Maslenitsa, a straw stuffed doll, dressed in female clothes, which marks the imminent end of winter. In the old days people also threw pancakes into the fire as a form of funeral repast for the “dying” winter.

Mar
01
2022

Building Positive Relationships.

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Today is the final day of our Well Being Project, Number 3.  Building Positive Relationships.

We would like to share with you some of the projects VDL girls did.

Throughout the wellbeing pillar, girls have put into the word cloud system 5 words that came to their mind when they thought of the word ‘friend’. That’s what came out of it. The bigger the words are, the more used they were.

Lulu surprised her friend with the portrait. 

 

Lisa and Valentina just became roommates and decided to write about how to be in good relationships with your roommate.

Valentina and Ana Lucia explored the topic of boundaries in friendship.

Natalia and Fernanda decided to make a Tik-tik video about toxic friendship.

 

Yasmina – It was so awesome, we discussed what matters in a friendship and what to avoid 

Sofiya –  For our well-being project, my friends and I decided to have a virtual picnic and discuss the topic of friendships and especially toxic friendships. We found out about each other’s preferences in friends and what are the most important characteristics we wish to have in a friend. Also, we talked about our different friendship experiences, both good and bad, and discussed red and green flags in friendships. As well as that, we talked about friend groups, whether we prefer to have a big or small friend group, how not to get lost in a group like that, and most importantly how to get out of a toxic friend group. I really enjoyed the conversation we had, and I learned a lot about friendships. 

 

This was a very exciting well-being pillar and many of us enjoyed being involved in the projects. Thank you to everyone, who participated and put the effort into making this wellbeing project more exciting.