How to wisely deal with the pocket money (a little manual for newcomers and current EVS)
by Ivana Slezakova
I´ve spent a year in a sunny, warm, surrounded by sea island - Sicily. Maybe this is why the Sicily has this name. I mean SEAcily. Do you sea the connection?
My project was mostly connected to office work, working with children in a centre after school, making recycling workshops for kids and I led a few international voluntary projects in Sicily. The part of voluntary projects was the most interesting and enriching for me in the point of cultural exchange and gaining new knowledge about agriculture and nature.
The picture of the sunset was taken in Isola delle Femmine, where I had an opportunity to lead two 1
international voluntary projects. Our task was to cure the island in the background of the pic. We have been planting around some 150 plants over the summer 2016 to make the island as green as possible, full of vegetation. And now, let’s go straight to the point of my article. To be an EVS volunteer makes you live on a tight budget. This is what I would love to talk about or better to write about here. I’ve been volunteering even before my EVS and I have to say: THANKS FOR A TIGHT BUDGET! It increases your creativity, skills, fantasy, innovativity and many more. Does the word innovativity exist? Yes, it really does. You cannot actually imagine how many DIY thingies you are able to make and how many things you are able to repair! You just need… lack of money and a tiny bit of patience. Ok, we could get a bit more money, but check how to save some amount of your pocket money below.
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HOW TO BUY CLOTHES FOR FAIR PRICE This is one of my favorite topics. The clothes! Cheap, nice and quality. Basically, you can find the best clothes on local markets. The price may vary from 0,50 – 5₏. The guys who sell clothes put all of them into huge disorganized piles. They space them on tables, so you can spend hours and hours by going through them. True story! Once we spent 2 or 3 hours by checking every piece of fabric on a long table.
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Generally, I don’t buy a lot. OK, I do buy a lot, but I’m always trying to find clothes made of good materials and let’s say from some famous fashion designers. It´s like a hunt. This way I have found a beautiful silk pants from a great great fashion brand for 0,50€, the softest cashmere sweater in the world for 3€ or a linen skirt from 80’s for 0,50€. Many of them were a tiny bit damaged which gives you a chance to use your right brain hemisphere! Myself, as I’m very much into clothes, I have unconsciously found another way how to get wonderful clothes. I did volunteer once per week for a charity where I sorted out the clothes brought by people. They have basically bags full of clothes and you have to sort unwanted from wanted. The wanted goes to the charity store to sell, the unwanted goes to a clothes heaven called ‘Macelleria’. When the clothes are a bit dirty, with a small hole or are missing a part like a zipper, you should throw them away. However, you can rescue the best of them, bring them home, repair, clean and wear. This way you haven’t spent any money and you have saved few clothes from the end of their clothes life. BUT! Be careful! Don’t bring all of them home, later it could be very hard to get rid of them. 4
This way I got many things. One of them is a cool leather backpack. The backpack missed straps, so I bought a tie, cut it on half and sew it into the right place. It looks BEAUTI-FUL. By the way, the tie was silk designed by a famous Italian fashion grandpa. I don’t need to explain to myself the advantages of the shopping mentioned above. However, the best reasons are that you have original pieces, you have reused old clothes and you didn’t spend much money. Do I know about any other place? The city is full of H&Mlike stores…BUT...There is a huge BUT. I mean, I don’t want to moralize too much. However, it’s quite usual that the human labor of all the big clothing chains is treated inhumanly. That’s all I wanted to say. Thanks!
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HOW TO TRAVEL LOW COST IN SICILY Sicily is a nice piece of land. The sea, forests, mountains or volcanoes! It does worth it to discover every corner of Sicily. The easiest and the most organize way to travel here is to use train transport. Trains are safe, clean and most of the time on time. Trains are not for free, but when you make a trip to a village near by Palermo, it’s quite cheap. This way you can discover all the villages around. Surely you can travel by train to further places, but you would pay slightly more. The same with buses, but I personally don’t trust to the bus transport here. This mistrustful relationship between me and Sicilian buses began at the beginning of my EVS. If you don´t know Italian, it´s 100% hard to find any bus connection or to book a bus. Their schedules are blurry as well. So I strongly recommend you trains. For adventurous – hitchhiking is in offer. However, on your own risk! Anything could happen. I have tried few times in here. Let me tell you this story. I 6
don’t like to plan trips, so I just checked a train connection from Palermo to Castelbuono. On the train station in Castelbuono I realized the town is 13 km far from the station and the next train back to Palermo goes in 3 hours. I decided to walk to a closer town, just 10 km far from the train station. On my way there a car with two men stopped. They were coming back from mushroom picking. They asked me if I need a lift. They seemed nice, so I accepted the offer. We spoke on the way to Castelbuono about casualties, they explained me what´s going on in the town and dropped me off at the beginning of the centre. The end of the story. So even without proper hitchhiking skills you can manage to stop a car. As I have said above, please be very careful with whom do you take a ride. One more option is carpool/carshare. This I tried few times as well. You can find a driver and number of available seats in his vehicle on an internet platform called blablacar. All the passengers contribute on the cost of petrol. The driver usually drops you off somewhere around the city centre, you pay him your part and you are all happy. He saved money, you saved money and you 7
saved the precious environment. It´s called 3 in 1 like a shampoo with conditioner and balsam. I recommend the most from all the mentioned above the last way of transport. However it´s not always easy to find a ride to a place you wish to go. Buon viaggio! Oh! I forgot a bike option. By bike you can discover the city and places near. The bonus of the bike is that it keeps you fit, it’s eco-friendly and faster than going by foot. On the picture below is my Julietta. I bought ‘her’ as a second-hand bike and was my best servant ever.
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I have to remind you one thing before you get your own bike. Lock it well and everywhere you go! Cause on the second picture you can see what has happened to my first bike. It turned into a wheel of fortune!
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HOW TO DoItYourselfing Do it yourself is a perfect way how to reuse and recycle old materials and how to reduce your costs. Do you want to make a shopping bag from your old T-shirt? It’s very easy. Just cut the T-shirt around the collar, the connection between sleeves and the body, cut the beginning (the part on your hips) of the T-shirt into small noodles, make a knot between two opposite stripes (noodles), continue until the last two stripes and…you have the bag! First of all, you have a nice bag, then you have reused your old T-shirt which you would throw away and finally you won’t use plastic bags to do shopping. This eco-friendly approach will bring some happiness into your life and will help to protect a bit our planet. However, as Neil Armstrong said when he first stepped onto the moon: “That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” If you don’t get my instruction, check out the tutorial below and see the happy faces on the bottom picture. Sure we are all happy! We have a shopping bag, we could say GOOD BYE to plastic sacchetti and on the top of it we will decrease the usage of plastics!!! Three times Hip hip hooray! 10
https://www.pinterest.com/MsNevilleDTSHB/t-shirt-bag-project/
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Other very useful DIY is a takeaway coffee cup. Palermo is full of coffee places, but not always you feel like to pay or get a coffee from cafeteria. Make a coffee at home and take it with you. You go to work and on your way you can make a step, take a sip, make a step, take a sip, etc. ... Making of coffee cup is so so so easy. You just need to find right size of a jar according to your coffee preferences. Do you like cafÊ latte? Use a jar from mayo. Do you enjoy small size of coffee? Just buy a product you would like to eat and it´s packed in a small jar. Remove the etiquette by soaking the jar in hot water. Then gently 12
remove and voila‌ You have a coffee cup to go. The best is that you can close it, put it into your backpack and finish the coffee later.
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I have mentioned here where to find cheap clothes. With a bit of imagination you can make different variations of clothes from different pieces. You can make a nice skirt from a big dress. Put a collar of the dress on your waist, use the sleeves as a belt and here you go, you have a long skirt in an African style. You can make a skirt from two shirts as well.
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Button your shirts together, front and back, and the second front and back. You should button one shirt to another as it´s on the picture below. One pair of sleeves you can use as a belt, the second you can leave outside or put inside of your new skirt. Now you have an original skirt in gypsy style. You can use both it as both, a skirt and two shirts.
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HOW TO BUY BUONO AND ECONOMICO FOOD
This is the easiest. Markets, markets, markets. All the markets are full of cheap and fresh food. Find a nice market close to your house, so you don´t need to carry all the groceries throughout the all city. Markets here are so dynamic and colorful. You would enjoy the shopping there.
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However, there is a trick and be careful about that. Don´t buy more as you are able to consume or share with the others in 4 or 5 days. Then the food could get bad and you will waste food and your money. Once happened that all the people from the flat bought at the same time 3 eggplants in offer for 1€. We had 9 eggplants in the house. We were all so tired of eating them, but we didn´t want to waste any. According to this, make also a research what would the other guys buy so you won´t be in the same situation. After this two tiring weeks when we ate just dishes made of eggplants my stomach has started to be eggplant sick! The same has happened with fennel! So I´m both the fennel-eggplant sick! Quindi, even though the offer is for three or more products of the same nature think twice if you really want to save 0,20€ and being overloaded with one product for a week or two. If you finish all the market food, no problema. There are many other markets going on in Palermo, so you can find the fresh food on some other local market.
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That’s it from my side! Hope you enjoy your EVS as much as possible, you will spend your pocket money wisely and last but not least! Follow the 3 R rules – RECYCLE, REUSE, REDUCE! It’s awesome!!!
Your Ivana from Slovakia not Slovenia
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