PTPI conference and more...

Good day to everyone!!

Once again we have to apologise for the big and long silence. This time is due to the PTPI European Conference which took place in Katowice – Poland. 

Since the beginning it was a big adventure for us. We were supposed to go to Poland on Thursday 16th but there was a strike in all kind of transportations, and we knew that one day before and 1h and a half before the last train we could reach not to suffer the strike!! Because of this we had to run to pack our things and take the train. Once there, hosting families were waiting for us in spite of the last changes...

On Thursday 16th the conference started with a very nice charity program: we were divided in two groups, some of us went to the “House of Guardian Angels” where we played with children and we had a great time full of energy and love. The other group was in “…” painting, decorating and talking to the patients there. After that we had welcome dinner and we started to know new and interesting people.

On Friday 17th we had a city walk trough Katowice the whole morning, going to the main cultural and interesting places of the city. After lunch we had the “world café” and we were discussing about different PTPI topics; it was great because we were changing our tables after each question so we practised the “peace trough understanding” because we had to talk to different people, with different ideas, from different parts of the world. Finally, we had the Conference Opening Dinner; it was a Gala Dinner in the Hotel Arsenal: company was great, food good and traditional polish dance group showed us the beautiful polish culture.
Saturday 18th “The main day” During the morning we went to the school where the polish chapter is situated. There we voted for different positions in PTPE’s board, listened about what are other chapters doing, there were interesting “Open Space Workshop” about homestay, youth projects… and all the countries brought something to share for people to know about them: pictures, meals, sweets, drinks, flyers… So it was a very complete day! Ended with a beautiful dinner next to the forest and we had a polish dance group again which made the evening perfect.

Sunday 19th To finish the conference, we had an excursion by bus to visit to “Tarnowskie Gory” a place where are very old and important mines. It was very interesting, we could go inside the mines with a guide and he explained everything about the history and we also had a boat trip there!! 

So that’s all about the conference! As you can see, we had a great time there and we are happy to know more about other chapters, new people and new friends!

Thank you for keep following our adventures,
WaY