You should do it!

We are Marta and Montse and we are volunteers in Europe at Your Playground EVS. We are really happy of having this opportunity. It is being a great experience because we have worked with kids and it was so funny. Also, our responsibles had helped us a lot. Moreover, this allowed us to meet new people and learn more about different cultures.

Poland is in a great geographical situation and we could visit other countries as Hungary, Check Republic, Germany and Austria, and learn about their culture and gastronomy It was an incredible experience. Also we love Wroclaw because it is really beautiful and lively.

We recommend others to participate in projects like this.

PD. Polish lessons were really funny.

Wroclaw in my mind…

Wroclaw in my mind…

I’m going to tell you about my living in Wroclaw… in one week will complete two month I’ve been here. My first expression was- oh my god what a calm and beautiful city! After Tbilisi-my hometown it seems really quite, calm, you feel secure in the streets. In Georgia people don’t follow the street rules, they cross the red. Here everything is OK with that cars street rules are more obeyed by people than in other countries… like it\s in Wroclaw I feel really secure here. Maybe the reason is that it\s not capital city and there are not so many different people from different countries and culture and second reason is that here is perfectly developed the biking system so the amount of the cars is really small. Here cars move slowly people, don’t rush in the streets every building is dyed in faded pastel colors and this fits so much to the character of the city, even people in the streets wear clothes so simple style with pastel colors. As I mentioned they don’t like vulgar or hipster outfit… the style is standard but with good taste. A little shock was for me that couples love walking in the streets with holding their hands and this become for me a symbol of this city. I’ve never seen sooo many couples with holding hands in other countries, they look so romantic at that time…

Despite of everything is so calm and quite on weekends I saw that sometimes they can get mad and waste their energy. First two weeks I worked hard but finally came that weekend when I could go out. When I neared The market square- the center of the city I felt the noise the action and when I entered the place I saw whole city concentrated between the buildings of market square everyone was drunk hugging kissing each other laughing out loud the music was on everywhere every pub and bar was overcrowded people had fan. I wasn’t surprised that beer is the main thing for the event. But it was funny for me when I saw the big containers on the table with a tap, men were pouring beer by themselves from it and drinking so they didn’t wasted their precious time for ordering new glasses and bother a waiter. In market square is always positive aura that pleasure is have fun there or just walking under the sun. If you love beer, pubs, esthetic and beautiful places, river, bridges and colors this city is for you.

Besides that city has very good location for traveling. It is very close to Berlin, Prague, Vienna even you can visit Budapest. For example time you need from Wroclaw to Berlin is 3:30 hours by bus or car. I mostly used blablacar. You can be registered on that website: blablacar.com and find a driver who has the same direction as you, see the price what he is offering (in most cases it’s cheaper than a bus or a train), also read the references from other passengers who have already traveled with them to get sure that its safe, pack your backpack and get ready for your trip. From Wroclaw I visited Berlin, Prague and Vienna. In some of them I tried couchsurfing. This one is a website for surfers and hosts, there you can find each other and offer your flat for free or find hot and ask to get you in there flat. In that case you can check its safety with the references. Except the fact that it’s free I like it more than hotel because I met some good people with that type of traveling so I advise you the same if you are not a huge fan of comfort.

Wroclaw is a lovely, beautiful city with very good location so if you have a chance to live here don’t think a lot, it’s really worth!

First impression

                                                             

Already 2 weeks ago when me and Anka came here in Wroclaw from Georgia and now I want to sheare my emotions, expectations and first impression of summer school and Wroclaw.

Everything was start 24 of May when I open my mail and saw the message started with magical words “Dear future volunteers” I was extremely happy and could not believe that I was chosen as a volunteer for this amazing project, that time I was working for my Master Thesis and this project became my motivation to finish my Thesis quickly and begun preparing for Wroclaw, time flies and the day of our flight came soon.  

So we arrived in Wroclaw and before we started training’s week we have some excursion around the city center Dorota, Sebastian and Justina  were really kind to us that’s why we managed  to get new environment and new people without difficulties. The city is amazing I impressed on the first day, colors of buildings, beautiful views, a lot of places where you can just sit downs  and enjoy the weather and view, food also became my favorite thing in Wroclaw (Zurek, pierogi, zupapomidorowa just perfecto). On the other hand the most important part of everything was other volunteers,  at the first day of our meeting Sebastian told us that we are one group, now I realized that we are really one group, maybe in our countries we have different kinds of friends, different professions and job but here we have same job, same profession and we are equal, we have friendly atmosphere at home and we learn how to work together, for me each of them is special and I have already love Anka, Marta and  Montse, I will them when we return in our countries and as Montse says “enjoy the moment don’t worry about the futue” so I’m trying to enjoy the every moment here.

First week of training, when we were preparing our summer schools agenda was difficult but interesting for me,  working with experienced people and share their knowledge is amazing experience and I tried to catch every important advises and it gave me huge motivation for our future activities.  We were working during the whole week and finally on the weekends we have had the agenda. 

So firs day came and we went to Ecocenter, I was nervous a bit,about ourselves how we managed our tasks, about kids attitude to us, first two hours I felt that we were a little bit confused but after few hours this feelings disappeared and we was involved with kids every game and energizer , every day was better, because kids were participated in every task with full of enthusiasm, what was most important for me  they were friendly with other kids and with volunteers. On the second day I was really impressed when we asked them to create summer school’s logo how they worked together and they create really amazing logo, with lot of meaning, they even don’t forget volunteers to put on the logo, they put volunteer’s flags on the logo. The national day was also special, because we saw that kids really enjoyed about presentation and post presentation activities, we show them our counties special features,  brought some Georgian traditional food for them and some of them really liked it. On Friday we were like friends  they communicate with us, trying to teach us some words also they often asks questions about our country and language, most memorable parts of summer school’s fifth day was when Michał said us goodbye because he was going in vacations with his family and bring us some Polish sweets, his attitude to us and smiling eyes was best ending of the day but we were really sad  that he would not spend this five days with us. 

 

EkoDay

W czasie naszych warsztatów we współpracy z Wrocławskim EkoCentrum, które użyczyło nam również sali na warsztaty dziewczyny we współpracy z naszymi wolontariuszkami przygotowały niesamowite warsztaty na temat ekologii.

GOODBYEs...

We are at the end of the second summer school and I don’t know what to feel right now!

I’m happy about how it went the all school, children opened to us and changed from the ones we met the 11th of July.

I’m sad because I was getting used to all of them and say goodbye is always a little bit sad. Starting from the youngest ones Oliwia, Łucjia and Hubert to the oldest ones, the two Julia, Michał, Hania and so on…I will miss all of them and I’m sure this is going to influence the way I will look at the new incomers. J

I have also to say that I’m proud of myself because I was able to manage the actitivies and to involve everyone in the actitivies. I don’t say it has been easy, on the contrary this put me to the test and measure what I can and can’t do. So, yeah, I’m proud!

Anyway, despite everything we collected good memories and learnt new things for sure. From the day about tolerance, when we watched one of my favourite cartoon Zootopia, to the anatomy day, children had the chance to go deeper about topics that are important in daily life but no one is paying too much attention on them. Tolerance is a concept that is given from society but not everyone can explain the real meaning and what really surprised me was that while we were talking about stereotypes, children could give a perfect definition about what a stereotype is but actually they didn’t really have any!

The week run so fast but thanks to Mariam we also had the chance to know something more about our bodies, from the organs and their functioning to the way we should eat to live a healthy life.

After almost two weeks of bad weather we also had the chance to go outside for some outdoor activities, we played a lot on the playground usually making team-games so that through competition they were improving their skills to cooperate inside the group.

We ended the summer school in the proper way! Everyone brought some sweets, snaks and drinks so that we could do a goodbye party, but the “party” could start before the tasks of the city game were done! J Everyone made a good job so we awarded them with diplomas designed from ourselves and children were really happy to receive them.

The day and the school so was really over, last group pictures as memories and last hugs and kisses. I will bring all those children in my memory and I wish all of them good luck! 

First week

15th of July. On the way to Berlin with Vanessa and Tamta, I’m looking back to the last two weeks since I came to Poland, Wrocław precisely. I arrived from Bologna after a crazy week between my last exam at  the university and packing for the new challenge of this year: volunteer in a summer school for children in Poland. When I told to my family that I would pack again to go away for other two months they stared at me asking “why?” but as soon as I explained what the project was about they were as enthusiast as was I. So I finished my exams, I packed, said goodbye to my Italy and landed in the wonderful coloured city of Wroclaw. I spent the first days to get used to the new city but it was love at first sight, the colours, the people, the atmosphere, the food…everything was so different but so familiar at the same time (probably because of the hundreds Italian restaurants in the city centre!). I spent the first few days waiting for the other three voluteers that would have become my flatmates, roommate, collegues and friends for the next two months. I was wondering about these georgian girls and the other italian, if they would have been cool, friendly and so on, and I have to say that I’m really lucky because we are going well along til now.

One of the hardest part of these two weeks has been the training week. For one week, with the girls and the coordinators, Justyna and Sebastian, we prepared the activities to do during the summer school. The days were going around topics, energizers, expectations, fears, activities, games, and so on. I have to confess that it has been really exhausting for me because I never had to organize nothing like that, if I had to prepare a summit about international relations, I think I could have done it in a blink of an eye, but non-formal education has never been my major or my field. After the first two meetings I was really demotivated, I knew nothing about this kind of job but then I took it as a challenge and finally after one week everything worked out and we had a sort of “agenda” to follow for the first summer school.

Like that it could sound that the hardest part was gone, but I was completely wrong, because during the weekend before the beginning of the activities I was really nervous. Doubts like what if the kids wouldn’t like the activities, what if they would get bored, what if we won’t be able to manage them...any kind of possible problem was rising in my mind. Then Monday came, alarm set at 8, breakfast, get dressed, out of home at 9 so that we won’t be late, arrive to the Ekozentrum (where the summer school is taking place) and waiting for the children. After some minutes after we arrived at the centre, the kids started to arrive one by one, shy and curious about us. As first day, it didn’t go so bad, til the end I was worried that they would get bored but at the end, when we asked them about the day, their responses were almost positive. Monday was gone and all my worries with it; of course, the following day we still had some esitations but nothing that couldn’t be forgiven for such beginners like us.

Right now one week of summer school is gone as well, and we spent really good days with the children. We had the day about our countries, the one about cultures and those about ecology, sometimes has been difficult to communicate with the children but those were marginal limits at the end and everything worked out and we had also fun. Of course, we are still not professionals but I want to be optimist and see that there are ways of improvements from us and the next weeks will be easier to manage.

From now that’s all and Berlin is calling!

Michelina

Czas zacząć zabawę

Już po raz trzeci organizujemy letnie warsztaty dla młodzież z Wrocławia. Warsztaty w pełni są przygotowane przez naszych wolontariuszy. W tym roku zaprosiliśmy do współpracy Tamte, Mariam, Vanesse i Micheline. Zapraszamy do śledzenia ich relacji na naszym blogu. Dzisiaj zaczynamy