AEGEE-Alicante and the Health4Youth project decided to work together on organising a healthy lifestyle pre-event to Agora Zaragoza already before the summer. And when the event was finally there, a small but very active group of participants, a lot of organisers and helpers from AEGEE-Alicante, and Maria Arends (AEGEE-Groningen) and Sygrit Andringa (AEGEE-Groningen) from the Health4Youth project gathered in Alicante to take part in this amazing pre-event: Mediterraneanly.
A busy four day programme on the topic of the Mediterranean healthy way of life was 
waiting for the participants. There were workshops on healthy lifestyle, a lot of sports activities (almost all given by professional instructors), cooking activities, and a visit to a biodynamic fruit and vegetable garden. Of course, there was also time for socialising, parties and getting to know the lovely city of Alicante, including its nice weather and beach. Every day started with a nice breakfast and all lunches and dinners were prepared by the participants and organisers themselves.
One of the highlights was the tapas workshop, were the participants made tapas in the public kitchen of the local market. The participants had to work with a budget, buy the ingredients at the market and prepare different tapas in groups. After that, a lovely meal was eaten together in this public kitchen.
One of the participants, Carlos Castillo Perez, wrote about the pre-event. Carlos is a fresh member of AEGEE-Alicante, but he already joined several events in the network. As he did not have enough time to be an organiser for the pre-event because of exams, he decided to apply as a participant, to an event in his own city. This is his story:
MEDITERRANEANLY, UNDOUBTEDLY, IS THE BEST WAY OF LIVING:
There was no better way of warming up for Agora Zaragoza 2013, than with a pre-event on the Mediterranean shore, in the welcoming city of Alicante. We were five minutes away from the beach, and three minutes away from the the city’s party area. In this city there are just two seasons: spring and summer. Given that the event took place between the 26th and 30th of October, we could say that we were in the cool period of our summer, with temperatures around 20-25 degrees Celsius.
It all started at 16:00 on the day of arrival. However I have to confess I was not present in that first gathering, as the football match between Real Madrid and F.C. Barcelona forced me to arrive some minutes late (240 minutes to be specific). The rest of the participants had a pleasant walk through the streets of Alicante, and a great first contact with the city that was going to be their home for the next days. Once the night had fallen, the amazing, awesome, attentive, charming, outstanding organisers had prepared an authentic Mediterranean dinner, with a varied mixture of meat, vegetables, eggs and more, to the delight of their participants. Throughout the event, they did not only maintain that level of cooking, but they even improved! Legend has it that one of the organisers made the bread every day, and twice a day she carried it to the hostel and delivered it to the participants, freshly baked, and with a huge smile.
The second day started with a yoga class at 8:30 AM (a typical time when everybody takes yoga classes, obviously), followed by the breakfast right there, and thanks to the high temperature we went to swim in the sea. Some of us went to swim as well the second day, after the “Zumba” class. Simply fantastic.
In addition to all those sports (yoga, beach volleyball, football, jogging, salsa, zumba, or the hardest one, beer-pong), we did a lot of different workshops. A broad range of them: some were more dynamic, others funnier (the one about alcohol. Though it was supposed not to be exactly funny, with Spanish people and our anecdotes relative to that topic, it was really hard to take it entirely seriously) some more reflective (as the one about the effects of the lack of sleep, conscious eating, or the one about healthy lifestyle) or more cultural (the astronomy workshop).
Unfortunately, the nice weather betrayed us the last day, but our organisers had a back-up plan. The first plan had been to go to the mountains and camp there. But because of the weather forecast, we decided to stay in Alicante, and have a Ukulele class. This class was really funny, even for me, despite the fact that I could not play the Sponge Bob-Ukulele (I am still quite upset with that). After that, some of us went to visit the Castle of Santa Bárbara. And after living in Alicante for seven years, it was incredible that I did it for the first time…
As you can see, in spite of this being “only” a pre-event, and relatively short, much could be written about the event and about its people (both all the participants and all the organisers) because in AEGEE we will always have a lot of things to tell (not only because with AEGEE we sleep very little and therefore, days are very long), because every AEGEE experience turns out to be an unforgettable experience.
As “Participelper” (half participant, half helper) I can speak in the name of everybody when I say THANK YOU both to the participants for being so funny and collaborating in every activity with a great smile, and to the organisers and helpers for their hard work and for their positive attitude throughout all the event. And AEGEE-Alicante was not alone in this, as Maria and Sygrit from the Health4Youth project were also involved, whom showed us many interesting and useful things about how to live in a healthy way.
P.s. another participant, Elmar Guliyev, AEGEE-Baki, made a nice compilation movie about the pre-event.
Written by Carlos Castillo Perez (AEGEE-Alicante) & Sygrit Andringa of the Health4Youth Project Team.