Concerts, Italian family dinner, and maybe a little work!

Hey hey everyone in little cold New Zealand! We are enjoying 30 degree temps with hot dry weather (not actually sure if i can call it enjoying, as we are barely tolerating it!), while sitting in open tents conducting workshops in a wide range of topics. We finally have a day off to spend time checking emails, facebook, and updating bloggs, for the first time in a while. There are thousands of people in the camp with hundreds more arriving in bus loads daily (from france, germany, spain etc), but i'll leave that story for later otherwise the blogg will take hours to read. There are also 3-4 Italians behind he asking when i'll be done on the internet, little do they know that i have extended access because i'm an online amassador (mwwaahahaha <- evil laugh).

So anyway i'll breifly tell you about yesterday, which i have to say was the best so far.The final workshop in the series of three for the Solferino section of the trip consisted of looking at Psychosocial Support, and how this tool could be used in rehabiitating children after a traumatic event. Games were the primary tool used to break down barriers, increase trust, abd allow for an opening of dialogue regarding feelings and coping mechanisms that they (children affected) are using. It was fantastic to see contributions for Australia, Armenia and Pakistan with regards to the variations in games that they use with refugees and other victums of traumatic events. The workshop was undertaken through group work to brainstorm ideas, before the whole class went outside to partake in a game that further built on the ideas brainstormed in groups. Finally after the game was complete, we conducted debriefs which looked at the goals and applications of the games (whether they were inclusive or exclusive, an what they hoped to achieve for the child). The workshop also presented the idea of Psychosocial Emergency Response Units (ERU), they are not unlike the Water and Sanitation ERU (WATSAN) or the IT and Telcecoms unit, however the PS ERU aims to address the psychological aspects that are linked with a traumatic event (a cheap unit to set up and something NZ should look into!). The workshop provided a great range of ideas and games which i'll bring back to NZ, with a huge thankyou to the organisors (The Reference Centre for Psychosocial Support).

Once workshops were finished, the whole camp had the ability to attend a concert in Castiglione delle Stiviere. This itself was a fantastic event, made even better by the fact that myself and representatives from Vanuatu and Tonga met up with Marco who lived down the road and was attending the Youth on the Move conference. The chance meeting led to the three of us going to his house to meet his Mama and Papa before sitting down outside and eating freshly cooked pasta and pesto along with pork, topped off with fruits and red wine. The dinner allowed us to get out of the camp environment (and food!) and into the smaller Intalian community which is something none of us had experienced. Marcos father provided us with red wine and bags of fruit from the trees on their property to take back to camp which was very generous. In a sign of appreciation we conducted an impromptuded performance on their lawn of the nation dances of the pacfic. I have to say i'm not a dancer and the whole performance consisted of loud music, laughter and trying to get Marcos Mama up and dancing with us. There is a video somewhere but hopefully it will never surface! After sitting down to Dinner (the first quiet dinner without chanting, music and thousands of people since we arrived) we headed into town to watch the concert in Castiglione. I have to quickly point out that New Zealand has much to learn when it comes to displaying the Red Cross symbol! Here you cant walk 5 metres without seeing a Red Cross flag on a house, or lines across the streets with mini flags linked together. It is an amasing site to see when walking down the narrow streets. The concert was completly in Italian so i didnt have a clue what they were singing about, but her when in rome right? so we danced away with random people while waving the New Zealand flag as high as it would go (P.S. it is true that the majority of people only know NZ for the All Blacks, i've been ased to do the haka a number of times but after the first time i havent felt the need to embarress myself hahaha). The level of enthusiasim for Red Cross s unequaled around the world, i'm sure you can not put on a concert in other locations and have locals dressed up in Red Cross gear chanting to the music and clapping once the large screen scroles through the 7 principles, it was a truely amazing experience. There is a video of the movie they showed at the concert on the Our World - Your Move facebook site which is worth a look at.

Anyway to head off and do somthing productive with my day.

Aaron