A tramp approaches a group of young people. He stops to talk to the educators who are with them and who are the oldest in the group for only a few years. An educator and the tramp begin to play chess. "Oh you are Italian, I have lived there for many years, in Pordenone." Basically the man had sold drugs all his life and somehow ended up in front of the Catalan Parliament talking to Nico and playing a game of chess, his great passion. While Nico tells this story in the kitchen of our apartment, he prepares one of his various dishes that always come out much better than anything that Guillaume, Selin or I cook. Sa’ri is currently in Valencia; Will come back tonight.

We live together, but each of us is also living in his own dimension. Selin this month was on a completely different (and very green) planet for a week. Guillaume was playing sports, giving guitar lessons and counting how many anti-anxiety pills he had left before boarding the next plane. Sa’ri began to enjoy spring in Barcelona, ​​dancing until he was tired in different concerts for three days in a row, while Nico traveled to Italy and concentrated all his energies on his personal project and on working with children.

I would like to be able to experience reality through the perspective of others for a day so that I can finally see clearly the blurry image that I keep painting and changing in my head. Looking at the calendar on my computer, I read some notes about things I did and of which I had completely forgotten. I tried to remember those moments along with everything that happened this month and, even asking my classmates, it took me a lot of work to rebuild everything. We live completely submerged in things; Maybe it's hard to see them from afar. A continuous stream of events and emotions doesn't let you stop to see where the current is taking you, unless you don't want to stop swimming and drowning.

Sometimes, however, someone takes you out of the water and makes you look towards the river behind you. This is more or less what they did during the intermediate training, three days in Mollina (Málaga) to evaluate and talk about your volunteer project in a generally positive and motivating environment. At the end of the week some people cried for all the emotions they went through during the sessions. We, well, we take the thing a little more calmly and simply enjoy the activities, the atmosphere, but we get so excited, less during the buffet offered at the Municipal Booth at the Cordoba fair and our last one night, during which we literally ate everything we could to run out of the door in five minutes to go to Granada. This was in the penultimate week of May. Before, everything proceeded quite quickly while my colleagues made a lot of progress in their volunteer work.

Sa’ri did the superhero workshop with the children of his center; Some of the drawings are below. He also began practicing slackline with some of the teenagers, who were the group with which he had the most difficulties. You can now communicate in Spanish with everyone.

Selin is preparing his personal project at Rellotge XXI. Organize an activity designed to promote creativity among children and problem solving skills. The objective of the project is the critical analysis of gender roles in society through a game that includes activities that also serve to awaken interests of a specific subject, from geography to biology and English.

In Mans a les Mans the children have started a theater activity and Guillaume is recording a few scenes to make a short. They have also started a cooking workshop; The first recipe has been a banana and chocolate milkshake. Guillaume continues with the guitar lessons and helps the boys with their homework (math is surely not their favorite subject). He somehow managed to motivate Selin to go jogging with him in the morning and now they are sports partners.

Posters with Nico's personal project have begun to appear on the floor. The mural that he and the Rialles boys will paint on the bell tower in the center is almost entirely raised. The work will begin in July and it will be the children who will decide how to decorate it. Nico is super involved in the activities of the center. Keep working with children with disabilities and they seem to like you great. One of them made a bracelet that he proudly wears on his right wrist.

As in the last three months, in May there were also people visiting and some trips to Spain and Europe. Guillaume, Sa’ri and Selin visited Granada, Nico went to Italy while friends from Germany, Austria and the South came to see us. This does not mean that we are not enjoying the new energy that spring brought in Barcelona, ​​although we are all a little tired of traveling and we want to stop for a while (we really have no choice since these last two months will be full of friends visiting ).

When a tramp approaches you and tells you the story of his life while playing chess, you realize how beautiful things can be. Intensity and authenticity are the key; Beauty does not mean just good feelings and beautiful colors. It is dirty and may involve illegal things and difficulties. I will not say that everything here is always wonderful for all of us, but one thing is the intensity of each moment. It may be because we are aware of the fact that our experience has an expiration date or because we have not been here enough to not see everything as new and stimulating. We are going through many different things and if you add the complexity of life and the perspective of five people living together abroad, you might end up with a tramp who had a life full of drugs, crying and being happy at the same time in the ground in front of the Catalan Parliament.