These past few months have been quite challenging for us at NESU-KY, as they surely have been for you as well. Even though the pandemic has forced us to cancel or postpone numerous events, we’ve been super busy with other stuff; trying to come up with new concepts for remote events, planning and preparing for future events, working on numerous upcoming projects (stay tuned ;)), and taking care of our active members and their wellbeing. We talk every single day and have meetings at least once a week but we still like to set aside evenings or afternoons dedicated to winding down or doing some sort of fun activity together in order to truly relax and have some well-deserved free time as well. These get-togethers are a NESU-free zone, meaning that all “work” stuff is off the table.
Our evening started with an activity that our board loves: badminton! Almost all gyms are closed right now and a lot of other activities are off the limits as well but luckily sports centers are still open. We reserved 3 courts and played for an hour. Some of us – mostly the competitive ones – actually played while others opted to mess around and film videos for most of the time. All of us loved it though and as a result our board has started playing badminton together regularly!
After getting our sweat on, we headed to our vice chairwoman Rose’s place to hang out. We ordered some pizza from one of Helsinki’s best pizzerias (Luca in Lauttasaari, you have to try it) because we’re all about that balance! We also sewed overall badges and our treasurer Alex brought us some new badges to add to our collection. Finally we warmed ourselves up in the sauna and the braver ones took a dip in the snow as well, before heading home and getting a good night’s sleep.
This was such a well spent evening and all of us got to truly wind down and just enjoy each other’s company. It’s really important for us to also spend time together outside of volunteering. Volunteering is obviously A LOT of fun and at least in our experience, sometimes it’s so much fun that planning future events and talking about NESU related things is all you want to do! That’s why it’s also crucial to set boundaries and force yourself to detach from school, work, NESU and other responsibilities from time to time. And for us, these evenings are a great way to do that! We highly recommend that you plan these kinds of get-togethers as well if you have the time.
Hopefully we’ll all be able to meet up sooner than later and maybe play a game of badminton or enjoy some pizza together! 😉 Stay safe and healthy!
Sending a huge virtual hug,
the Board of NESU-KY ‘21