Thoughts about my EVS experience

Puh, I never thought that eleven months (and one day) could pass by so quickly. I’m now back in Germany for a week, but it’ll still take weeks and months to realize what happened and what it means for me.

I remember the 2nd of October 2015 as it were yesterday. My nervousity and curiosity to go the first time abroad, meet all these cool people and volunteer for almost a year.  When I remember contrary my last day as I woke up, the flat empty, everyone left already and this important chapter of my life seeing to be closed it sets the in a nostalgic state of mind.

During my EVS I met so many people as never in my life before. Of course I didn’t fall in love with all of them, yet every single one was important for me to learn something new. Especially the many volunteers or Romanians I’m keeping in touch with are precious. My flatmates are just awesome in their own individual way. I worked, lived and travelled with them. One of the best things in my EVS was to get know to all the cool people, meet and talk. I have no plenty of motivation to visit them.

Quite tied up with it I definitely enjoyed the international environment. I learnt so much, ridiculous and profound stuff. It’s definetely enriching and helps oneself to develop.

Additionally, I achieved a new view on travelling, seeing it as enriching experience and tool to learn. I appreciate that I met so many people during my trips, all of them different and telling other interesting stories.

I also learnt a lot about myself, my strengths and weak points due to my work. I like explaining stuff, but I am not a very good teacher. I like children, but would not like to do it in a job on a everyday basis. My voluntary service made me braver since I started to run activities I had not done before. In the end I changed my mind and will study now another subject at university than planned before. Mostly due to my EVS.

EVS was a great time to enjoy life and work by meanwhile getting confronted with plenty of challenges and questions. I learnt about myself, made new friends, could experiment a lot, travel a lot and had a very well-balanced and diverse time. The experience is far too complex to be expressed in words. I remind now my EVS time and think about all I’ve done, seen and experienced. It makes me smiling, I feel happy about it. That’s what matters the most.

Open a box, open a mind.

Buna ziua guys! I’m Henri and since October 2015 an EVS volunteer in Bucuresti. In my project everything is about non-formal education, either with orphans, children in social apartments or young adults. Together with my colleagues I organize workshops seeking to improve & teach.

I spent a long time in this amazing country. I travelled a lot, I met plenty of people. Children, young people, and also older ones. I made incredible experiences and look back at the best time of my life. As the time passed by so quickly and then end of my stay came closer I thought about what I’ve learnt.

In specific I thought what I’ve learnt about Romania(ns). Besides the plenty of positive aspects I also discovered some downsides. One issue worried me the most is the lack of open-mindedness and opposition to immigrants. Pretty weird as Romania itself is highly influenced by a lot of very different cultures.

Since my project is about changing and rather than about complaining an idea popped up in my mind. By time and after advices of my co-workers and association a plan was born: I intended to make people aware of the foreign influences already integrated in their culture and life. What does it mean in concrete? I decided to start a treasure hunt in Bucuresti leading to places built by foreigners for instance. Even I became surprised during my research how diverse Bucuresti and Romania actually is.

For numerous years I do geocaching which is basically the grown-up and digital version of a treasure hunt. Check on the internet for hidden boxes close to your place, use GPS to find the exact location, search and find them.

What is geocaching?

Quite quickly I figured out that this was the most economical, sustainable & joyful way to realize my project.

So what I did (and I’m still doing, I see it more as a continuing project which I can also implement back in Germany) is the following:

Step 1: Finding the right places

I made researches about my neighbourhood and Bucuresti in general. What are places stamped by foreign influences? If so, up to which extent? Which of these places are worth to be discovered? I asked myself (and the internet) questions like these ones. After some time I had a list with various places which seemed to be promising.

Step 2: Visiting the places & checking for geocaching ability

In the next step I visited these places. Most important was to assure that I could actually hide somewhere a cache there. Very agglomerated and public corners are less suitable than hidden corners. In case that I found one of these places (which is easier said than done) I thought about the concrete place, seize and position to hide the cache.

Step 3: Placing the cache and publishing it

Surprisingly, the last step was the easiest one. I bought cache boxes and placed them at the chosen location. Last, but not least I wrote a description of the place and uploaded it on geocaching.com. Finished. It’s now accessible to the public.

 

Although it contained some work, it was a very pleasant and enjoyable project. I learnt a lot, even more than I initially thought.

Even more important though are the people. Geocaching for itself is a hobby requiring and provoking a lot of endurance, curiosity and thinking. Sounds like your last math exam? Not at all! It’s at the same time very funny and relaxing, not mentioning the feeling of awesomeness after you found what you’ve searched for. From my point of view it is easier and far more useful to learn something by doing something you like and which rewards you. Therefore, I think that people don’t see it as “lesson” or “course in open-mindedness”. They have fun and learn at the same time, in an informal and more subtle way.

Did you get curious? All it requires for you to play is a smartphone with internet andGPD. Follow for instance this link and search my first cache: https://coord.info/GC6NTA3

Read the description to figure out more about the place and the cache itself.

Here a though-provoking hint…

Enjoy it. Happy caching 🙂

My EVS experience: a brief stream of consciousness

When someone asks you to talk about an experience that you have had, it’s not easy to put in order your thoughts, feelings and impressions. So, be kind with me if you will find this article a little confused but try to consider it as a Picasso’s painting, where multiple perspectives are put together and allow   the observer to have a 360˚ view. (I know, I used a very “low profile” metaphor).

First of all, I have to admit that before my departure, there was an emotions’ storm in my mind: fear and curiosity for the “unknown” at the same time, enthusiasm for the new adventure and sadness regarding missing friends and relatives. What I really appreciated during this period was the support that I have received from unexpected persons, such as my grandma or some university mates. They encouraged me to do my best and use this opportunity for showing to myself that I was braver than I expected.

And the 1st October 2015 arrived faster than I expected… What a day! I remember that Razvan and Liviu welcomed me at the airport and suddenly I realized that these 9 months would be totally different from the life I was used to conduct in Italy: new house, flatmates (I am an only child!), new language, culture, currency; a lot of changes and all together!

At the beginning it wasn’t easy to cope with all these new things but through attempts, hints and suggestions received from different sources ( for istance: people from Young Iniziative and italian friends that have lived abroad), I managed to survive on my own J

Of course not everything was like unicorns and rainbows, there were bad days in which I was homesick or sad and disappointed because an activity didn’t go as I expected or the results weren’t totally positive. It sounds weird but now I’ve realised that I have to say “thanks” to them because they made me stronger and aware about how to deal with bad mood and find a way to move on. An important role was also played by my mentor Adela, who was always helpful and full of good adivces about “keep negativity away” (and not only about this topic, of course).

Moving to the activities, I really appreciated the non formal approach used in every of them: this method allows you to use your creativity and make the learning process funny and interactive for the volunteer and the audience too. At the beginning it was hard to change the mental approach and think differently: I consider myself a “product” of formal education and setting the mind to something you are not accostumed to, requires an effort in therms of perspective and thinking. Anyway, during these months I challenged myself thanks to non formal education and I tried things that I’ve never done before such as teaching my mothertongue or organising workshop in highschool. Through them I improved some skills and I discovered new ones, such as time management, planning and indipendency. It was the first time in my life that I was totally free: usually everyone receives instructions or suggestions about what she/he has to do in a specific working context; of course all this freedom it’s quite “shocking” at first glance , I felt lost because i didn’t have a path to follow but it made me more responsable, focused and efficient about my work. As the time went by, I don’t feel a fish out of the sea anymore but quite confident about my results achieved here through the non formal approach.

Other skills that I think I have developed are connected to everyday life situations. As I said before, I am an only child and sharing a flat with other people it is not easy at all. Every person has habits, personality and manners that can be totally different from yours. It’s up to you and the others of course to try to establish a nice and tolerant atmosphere in the flat and during the activities, so everyone will feel accepted. There were some moments of tensions or misunderstanding but I think that this experience tought me and my fellows to cope with them, through confrontation, discussion and mutual understanding.

Last but not least, I’d like to spend some words about Bucharest and romanians. Unfortunately, in Italy there are a lot of prejudices and negative conceptions about Romania and one of the reasons that brought me to take the decision to do my EVS here was to touch with my own hands and see with my own eyes the reality of this misterious and almost unknown country. I’ve already knew that Bucharest was called “the city of contrasts” and it’s true: very fancy buildings and degraded areas, luxury cars and homeless people, super modern shopping malls and little local markets. This variety of impressions is also visible in the romanian culture and language, both full of influences from abroad, and I was impressed how close is romanian to my mother tongue and I think that this is one of the reason why I didn’t feel a complete stranger here, beside the fact that the majority of romanians is friendly and easy-going. In addiction some locals told me, regarding my physical aspect, that I could be a romanian!

I think that a lot of impressions and thoughts will come to my mind after my return and probably I will under stand and discover new things about me later. The learning process is like eating: you can say immediatly if the food is good or not but the body needs to digest it to benefit fully from it.

Just one  more thing…. Multumesc frumos Romania!

Thoughts after seven months of EVS

After more than seven months here in Romania, Bucharest, the project and the flat the spirit of the first months faded away, normality caught me. It’s time for a little review of my EVS experience.

Activities

In the first place my EVS is about the project. What I’m doing so far and how does it go?
It is still interesting to compare and contrast the non-formal education which I practice now with the formal education which I had to survive for the most time of my life. In the beginning especially it took quite a lot of energy to hold the activities in this non-formal way, though now it’s definitely better. It’s very cool that I can do things in a different way.

Especially in my language club I have the unlimited freedom in the way how to teach German. I can experiment a lot, just after the concept of trial and error. Up to now we did some pretty cool stuff… (let’s not talk about the failures)

 

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Moreover, the flexibility offered by our project is amazing. I only have a few activities fixed in my schedule. I can move the rest as I want. So I can decide on which day I’ll go to the social apartments, when to the abused children center etc. When I’m busy in one area I have the ability to focus myself on this manner and equalize it in the next week by laying the focus more on the others.

I enjoy that our activities combine a lot of cool stuff. The good purpose, flexibility and creativity, challenges and fun. Especially working in the social apartments is pretty cool (I’ll write a post about my work there as well).

People and travelling

I didn’t spend too much time on thinking about my time after EVS and how it’ll feel like. Though there is one thing I’ll miss for sure: The people and the international environment which is so awesome. As I was in school and back in Cologne all the people were very homogeneous (at least compared to now). During my EVS I get in touch with a lot of people with various backgrounds born in different countries. I arrived in this new normality. It’s so exciting, funny and instructive. I’ll give my best to keep at least a fractional part of it after my EVS.

There are plenty of people who travel more, plenty of people are more curious than me in these regards. Nevertheless, if I travel it’s always amazing, because afterwards I can always tell some funny stories. That’s what tempts me the most. For sure, it’s nice to travel to see a Romanian monastery, but what makes it worth an experience is not the monastery itself, but the five km of walking to the destination (with a heavy bag, minus degrees and snows) or hitchhiking, amazing experience.

Besides gathering stories and experiences travelling is also way to challenge yourself and come out of your comfort zone (and still I’m doing it not often enough). Going spontaneously to Moldova, or hitchhiking alone and negotiating then with the driver who wants money (I offered him my sandwich), it’s just exciting.

“Personal development”

A few words about personal development: One of my main goals for my EVS and also for many of the others quite important.

It’s a tricky thing with personal development. You learn a lot, you receive a lot of input without realizing it. Blow on blow things are happening. Always there is something new or different. Basically, in EVS you don’t have time to think. You just live and let things go with all its up- and downsides. So at the end of the month you learned a lot, although you don’t realize it. Little time to reflect and additionally you’re still caught in the EVS bubble and probably only afterwards you’ll realize how you changed. Meanwhile, I’m writing these lines I have no idea how much in learned and only a foggy glimpse in which manners. It’s just a better version of guessing.

The catch for me in this manner is that you’re basically confronted with two facts: 1. You want to develop yourself. 2. You can’t measure really measure the progress (in a serious way). Leads to the very vague and sometimes frustrating situation that you don’t know what you achieved. Some doubts arise; you question the decision to come here or yourself.

Here I developed some sides of mine more than others, I discovered well-hidden ones and almost forgot about the previously most important ones. There are times when you’re satisfied. These are (surprise, surprise) the good times. Unfortunately, the sun isn’t shining the whole year. For instance, I noticed frustrating backdrops and setbacks. Some things of mine changed and now I’m thinking whether these are good ones. I arranged myself more with the situation than seeking for progress (in any areas). With every step, from every attitude, there always up- and downsides, different ways of interpretation.

That’s what “personal development” leads to in my opinion. For any question I had – and answered – two new ones raised up. It’s just a hopping from issue to issue without ever finishing. My EVS brought me the uncomfortable conviction that’s a never-ending process without any final satisfaction which is still hard to accept for me. But hey, I’m one step further. I know it and now it’s time for the next one and figuring out a way how to cope with it. This is also one thing what my EVS taught me up to now: Don’t worry too much. And if you do so, search for alcohol and company (maybe also one of these dubious changes)

Bucharest and Romania

For months, I live now in Bucharest and Romanian. I gathered far too many impressions and opinions (partly reversely to each other) to point all of them out. Bucharest is pretty amazing, although I have to admit that it’s a question of taste. It’s in most parts ugly with ruins or communistic architecture, it’s also like Cologne (not a compliment, nothing get’s finished here), loud and a traffic which can be described from exciting until dangerous. Well, I’m in the lucky position to value the upsides higher than the downsides. It’s a very diverse city, full of contrasts; this is – in my opinion – what turns Bucharest in a very interesting city. The infrastructure is quite cool and this city offers you a lot of opportunities and events. Apart from that the night-life is also a nice one.

As Bucharest is diverse, so is Romania also diverse in a certain way. It’s marked my plenty of influences. I hadn’t thought about it before I came here, that’s what makes Romania so interesting. I don’t regret that I chose Romania as my EVS destination, not at all. It’s so cool, though it’s important (for me) to have in mind that a) I live the first time abroad, so I assume it’s normal that everything is amazing, b) I experience Romania as a volunteer which goes hand in hand with adventures and an unique lifestyle which is to distinguish from a common life here. Moreover, c) I’ll (probably) live here for a limited period, so I don’t worry too much about things I’d worry about if I have to stay longer here than eleven months (for instance my whole lifetime long).

Apart from that I’d suggest everyone to come here and experience the country. You can leave your prejudices at the airport and see by yourself how it is and probably you’ll come again.

I could write now some paragraphs about Romanian and what exactly is so cool about it, but I want to focus on some other, more abstract aspects.

Undeniably, Romania has some, well… let’s not call them problems, but issues someone should take care of whereby we touched the first one: Everyone is unhappy with the current situation. Sadness and frustration about the socio-economic situation is common. In Germany, we say that awareness is the first step to improvement, yet it seems that one step was made, but that people forgot about the concept of walking and stopped then. As I experienced it, there exists a strong feeling of resignation. People know precisely what should be improved, but instead of doing something they arranged with the situation. The common attitude is to accept the situation as it’s given and to become resigned a la “this is how things are supposed to be here. I can’t change them”.

This attitude is tied up with adapting to the circumstances here due to the history of this country. Furthermore, it’s pretty interesting how this attitude spread and caught me as well. On a different level, however I also became resigned and accepted the situation as it is. I don’t really care and worry about when new obstacles arise. I tend to think “well, that’s Romanian. Happens” Granted, my case is different, yet it’s fascinating and unsettling at the same time that it also worked this way for me.

Let’s draw some lessons. The good thing is that you learn here to accept that things are not perfect and how to deal with it. It’s a lesson for your life for sure. The bad thing is what you learn and which attitudes and behaviours you should avoid.

OK, one more lesson for free. Regarding problems existing here: I learned that many things highly depend on let’s call it “luck” and the circumstances. I was born in the “right” country, that’s the reason why I heard about passports only in ancient stories and Romanians have it far more difficult to travel. This is also one of the reasons why plenty of people want to leave this country and move, for instance, to Germany. It’s sometimes an awkward situation when I tell people that I’m volunteering here in Romanian which is completely the opposite of what they want. Working and living somewhere else. For me it’s a pretty weird situation and I can’t comprehend it to 100%. It’s driving me in a sad mood. Of course their reasons are legitimate and understandable, yet how shall you improve and build something here if everyone is saying “la revedere”?

So, to put it in a nutshell: How was my time here?

To cut a long story short, it was pretty amazing. Granted, I didn’t dance samba for the whole time because I was to 110% fulfilled with happiness. Though if I just compare what I did or experienced in my life before or estimate how it’d have been to spend my time now in university I’m almost before dancing samba. It’s unique, that’s the sad, yet even more amazing part of it. I didn’t make a lot of decisions in my life before going to EVS, though this one was definitely the best of my life.

(That’s a nice end I suppose)

 

Te iubesc România!

I’m there since October and I felt in love with Bucharest and Romania. At the beginning, I was more like “Oh God What I’m doing there?”, “Why did I choose Romania to do my EVS?”. There were too much things that I didn’t like and still don’t like as the corruption, the no-respect for the nature, some cultural aspects of the personality and so on. But well, time passes and I learnt to cope with, to try to understand why Romania is like that. During these months, I also saw other sides of Romania and its inhabitants, that I want to share with you:

1. The Romanians have always a smile for you when you ask them for the direction and some information or in every situations (not like in France).
2. I always have the feeling to be welcome there and to be appreciated for what I am really.
3. I like Bucharest and its eclectic architecture. You can see old buildings just next to modern one, sometimes old building are mixed with a modern one. Bucharest just breaks all the theory about how a city is built.
4. Romanian mountains are just awesome. I only saw the Bucegi Mountains but the landscape that they offer us are just amazing and wordless.
5. I think that Romanian people are the only ones can come to you in the metro when you are in a very sad mood and tell you “Don’t cry” with a huge and communicative smile.
6. You can go to some gypsy concerts and having fun there.
7. Romanians like traditions and celebrate them with enthoutiasm. I don’t like Christmas but I think it was the first time since a moment that I really enjoyed this period. Or during the 1rst of March, they celebrate the celebration of Spring, where women receive small gifts with red and white threads.
8. Romania is in the Balkans closed to awesome countries with awesome people like Bulgaria, Turkey, Hungary, Ukraine, Bosnia and Herzegovina …
9. When you are walking in the street, you are just in the mood “time to reflect” and you don’t pay so much attention on what comes around you. By inadvertence, you go into someone. This person instead of telling you be careful, just tell you it brings “noroc” (luck).
10. When you are waiting in the metro for a friend, you can meet an old Romanian man telling you a French poem “La Seine” of Jacques Prévert, that you learnt in the primary school but you are unable to remember one sentence of it.

I wrote 10 reasons but I’m quite sure there are some other reasons that I forget or I will find out. Because Romania is always continuously surprising me.

Furthermore, since I began my studies I lived in different places, like Angers, Wernigerode or Charleroi. But that’s the first time that I feel like being home. Maybe it’s the EVS effect, yet I believe that it’s only one factor, one reason.

Through this article, I don’t want to say that Romania is perfect. Far from there, there are a lot of things that I’m still recalcitrant with. As I wrote before corruption, their ways of dealing with the environment, but also among others the omnipresent of the Orthodox Church.

Te iubesc România!

P.S. : I’d like to add something about clichés about Romania but I didn’t know how to introduce it in my article. So I will add a small P.S. . Before coming there or even when I came back from Bucharest to my hometown for the Christmas Break. I heard a lot of wrong and hurting comments about Roma community or Romanian people. People didn’t really understand why I decided to come to Romania to do my EVS there, why I decided to move there for nearly one year. I heard sentences like “Tell them that in France there is no work there”, “If you want to see some gipsies, you don’t have to go so far away” or “Did you come back by chariot? “. I just want to invite you to come there and to discover this country and its people. And not only for visiting, because the only comments that you are going to say are “it’s cheap” or “internet is pretty fast”. Romania is much more than these stupid, non-sense, wrong clichés like France is much than Baguette, Fromage and Vin. You will always feel welcome and important there, whereas in France we’ll just ignore, look down on them, and asking ourselves why there are there. Maybe next time, we will meet us, you will ask me how awesome Romania is and not how strange it is or which stupid idea you had to come there. My P.S. is finished.