Integration weekend ESN Santander

A hostel with enough spots for all the international students and volunteers is rented in Cóbreces (Cantabria). We use a private bus to take us to Cóbreces, arriving to the hostel at 19h on Friday. The first day, upon arrival, some ludical activites were prepared so that the international students could get to know each other better. After that, dinner was served on the hostel. Afterwards, a party was prepared in the  public sports center of Cobreces, place that was offered for us for free for the night. In exchange, all the drinks bought by the international students that night were donated to a social cause of the local City Hall.

The second day we started with breakfast in the hostel and afterwards we went to the Cobreces Beach, to play some Beach Games. We had the materials in our ESN office so that wasn’t hard. We had two basketball nets, footballs, frisbees, rackets, petanque… It was a really fun activity for the international students.At around 13h, we went back to the hostel for lunch. In the afternoon, at 16h, we did a hiking route in the area, to the “Bolao” cliffs. This route had been prepared by a staff member that already knew the way. Most of the participants went hiking.

After the hiking, everyone had time to prepare for the party in Caramelo, in Oyambre. The bus picked us up on the hostel and took us there. In Caramelo we had paella for diner and after there was a party until 3am, when the buses came back to take us back to the hostel.

The dynamic of the last morning, Sunday after breakfast, was with envelopes where each person that was on the event had an envelope with their name on it. Post-it notes were prepared for everyone so they could put notes for each other inside the envelopes. There was also one envelope for each volunteer and one for ESN Santander in general. While we were doing the activity, we were all cleaning the rooms and the luggage. The buses came for us at 13h00 and took us to Santander.

The arrival to Santander was done in two stops: the first one, in front of the port station, where the students that lived nearby left the bus. The second stop was made in the Rectorado of the UniCan, where the rest of them stopped.