Gata?

Well, hello there! Long time no see. What have you been up to? Great to hear! Me? Quite a large amount of stuff I would say. What? Elaborate? You sure…? Okay, but just because you asked so nicely.

Everything started in 1994. I can’t remember what the weather was like on that day, but I always imagine it was a golden autumn day. What? Too far back? Oh, so you only want to hear about my EVS? That’s too bad, I was already so excited to tell you about my kindergarten days…

But, jokes aside, I survived my 11 months in Romania quite well. I even learned a lot on the way. I participated in an acceptable amount of camps, I took on a colourful variety of roles in varying degrees of involvement (which, more often than not, increased over time, but we all have bad days, right?). When counted correctly I participated in 21 camps as, more or less, an assistant, and took part in six trainings. I know, it seems like I didn’t work at all, buuuut don’t forget that this was only one part of the job. So, don’t you worry, I was busy enough. (I could even say I was so busy I didn’t even have time to work on my blog, but that would be a lame excuse.)

So now you have the basic data about my EVS, I guess. The people? Hmm, that is a tough one to answer. I don’t want to mention any specific names of awesome personalities who made my time a lot more fun, that wouldn’t be fair. Nor of the people who taught me a lot and showed me some magic. Who keeps track of that, anyway?

I can say for sure that the small village of Sovata wasn’t my reason for such a long stay. There are salt lakes… I know, but not enough for 11 months. It was mainly the people: trainers, assistants, participants, partners in crime, etc. They made every day very different, and for every bad day there were worse jokes. So, I guess, I was horribly lucky and grateful to have met them all.

What I learned? Seriously? Alright, this will be a tough one. So one of the things I learned is, for sure, that we always learn more than we ourselves notice. Therefore, I’m probably not the best person to ask about this, but I will give it a try. I learned a lot of things that can be learned, like learn learn. Activities, theory and (god help me) even a bit of Hungarian. Which are all great things to learn and I’m happy to know them, but (and here’s the deep and meaningful twist,) I also learned a lot about myself as a person. Things I really don’t need to share at this point but which made the whole experience kind of worth it. And no, I won’t tell you, so you just read this paragraph for nothing. Sorry, not sorry! (But there’s always the possibility to somehow ask me in person or to steal my diary. Your call!)

What? Awfully positive? Naaah, I think everyone knows that life is not always a pink unicorn prancing over a flowery meadow, no matter where you are or what you do. I don’t need to talk about that. Of course I had hard times, too, but a smart person once said: „You are the creator of your own experience.“ And boy, that was smart.

I’m back home now, appreciating my family, friends, and the comfort of my bed. Somehow enjoying the break and missing work at the same time. I even started learning Hungarian again. Life can be quite hilarious.

Changemakers

In between the ski camps occurred my personal highlight of January. We were able to participate in an international program (Changemakers) about working with disadvantaged youth. Participants from Spain, Portugal, Poland, Hungary, Italy and Romania came to Sovata to learn and exchange knowledge.

We (Viki and I) stumbled into the program with a huge sleep deficit. We had only two days to rest between the camps and while we were home we were just laying around like vegetables vegetating. So when we had to move again, we were not entirely highly motivated, but luckily that changed (Ba dum tss).

The program was 10 days long, a mixture of teambuilding and problem-solving activities, an open space and a 2 1/2 days snow shoe expedition, everything for the aim to learn more about working with disadvantaged youth. And if you think this is enough to achieve with a bunch of people you don’t know yet, you are probably right, but we are up for that challenge. Additionally, when a lot of great people from different cultures meet, they also want to share and teach a bit about their own culture/celebrate. Therefore the evenings were reserved for cultural nights. (People who actually looked at the picture, might have noticed, that there were also some free evenings, but believe me they were badly needed!)

So without any further detour, I will try to sum up my impressions and experiences, starting with the best, so the almost nonexistent bad parts won’t be mentioned, due to my laziness.

At first I have to mention the great people I met. They made the time really a lot of fun and gave me many new perspectives and things to think about. I always loved international camps, because of that reason. No matter the topic, the people make it amazing and unique. So thank you! You are pretty amazing!

Secondly is probably the snowshoe hike. I use probably, because I’m still not sure, how to feel about it. It is/was a mixture of a lot of different feelings, from the beautiful nature to the awful weather and heavy snowfall, as well as the feeling of struggling and achieving. We had some difficulties during the first day of the hike, but we were able to manage them as a group. Everyone had a different personal struggle, for me it was for example mostly my patience. This led to (some) frustration, which slowly faded after some warm tea and food. Even a bit more after reflecting the day and in the morning the only thing left was tiredness. Of course I can only describe my own feelings, but I just hope for everyone, that the frustration was eventually exchanged with the feeling of success or that there never was any frustration.

But taking this aside, it was a beautiful hike and definitely worth it. I can only recommend to visit Romania in the winter, because it is crazy beautiful. #snow

Most importantly I will also mention the actual reason why we all participated. All of the participants had a different background, so when they shared their experiences and knowledge in the Open Space, I really learned a lot. Or more importantly I also had fun while learning. We talked about different learning/teambuilding games and how to adapt them to different target groups. It is quite obvious that we had to try all of them as well, but we managed (with all the work-focused seriousness a german can offer). And I can assure you we were also a quite lovely target group to adapt to.

Of course there is far more to tell, but I will stop now. I think you can get sick of reading what a great program this was (as well as me getting sick of writing it). So I’m not spoiling it anymore. Just for a last time, it was great! Please take all the opportunities you get to participate in these programs and learn as much as you can ❤

Sleep is for the weak!

Slowly we are catching up. I started the new year back in Germany, which was a very good and a very bad decision at the same time. I had about two weeks of vacation and I spent them with returning to something familiar instead of traveling somewhere new… but I really wanted to listen to some German. Weird right?

But it also gave me a lot of energy, energy I surely needed! One day after I arrived back in Sovata, the next camp started. A ski camp! Can you imagine? Skiing for work? I was excited, believe me! Snow!!!

Well, it turns out, that skiing with a lot of children and being responsible for them, can be quite exhausting. Especially with something called a language barrier. But you know, for every barrier there is supposed to be a solution. I started with huge expressive gestures, which worked accordingly (hopefully looked better than it felt). Then, being a bit smarter after a few days, I tried intensive eye contact and a few simple words like up, down, left and right. It was sadly not as effective as I hoped. But! At least I can scream now directions in Romanian and I have become quite confident with staring in ski goggles, ignoring my own reflection and believing deeply that the kid is paying attention.

In case you wonder, how the kids learned to ski in the end: I was only an assistant, so the main explaining-part was done by others and the collecting-kids-who-fell-down-part was mine and for that, you luckily don’t need that much of explaining.

Despite being overly exhausted and my toes being frozen, I also got the possibility to work on my skiing skills, which was quite nice. As well as the fact, that the kids improved their skiing really fast (sadly faster than I did). In the beginning some kids weren’t even able to stand on their skis for 5 minutes. They would fall down and look around, waiting to be picked up. But in the end, they were skiing nicely in curves and some even managed to go with parallel ski. It was a proud moment.

To connect to the title, the work was sadly not done after spending a long day at the slope. Apparently it is quite hard to make kids tired. Never imagined that somehow… So they also needed some evening program. Yay, movies, games and dance parties! And then, after all that ,at around 10/11, we were able to slowly crawl to the showers and our beds to be prepared for the next day.

Now, imagine doing this for 10 days straight. I can’t say that this was our best idea so far… But we focus on the positive parts: Ski! Snow! Spaß! (I needed to change the language there, I really wanted this alliteration)

Tessék?

I can’t quite exactly tell you what happened in my first two months and how I felt about it or anything like that, because it feels like a huge mass of new experiences and adjustments. I remember that I looked back at the end of December and that I was stunned how fast the time had past. But that is a general observation of life I guess. Duh. My monkey mirrored my emotions of that time pretty good.

I will try my best with some generall impressions. Did you ever felt stupid? Probably, everyone has I guess, but I never felt as stupid as in these first 2 months. I kept finding myself in conversations, where I wasn’t able to understand a word. At first it didn’t bothered me that much, because I was going to learn the language eventually and I didn’t wanted to bother to much with asking for English. So I found myself trying my hardest to follow the language and the gestures, but eventually after a few hours my brain was done and I was just not listening anymore. It wasn’t my best option and I found myself starting to dislike the sound of Hungarian, because it seemed like a huge wall between me and everyone else. I was frustrated and even more when they mentioned, that it was tiring to speak in English. Therefore one of my first words in Hungarian became „Tessék?“, which means „Pardon?“. I used the phrase, as I felt, in two ways. One was a curious little kid, who couldn’t understand what the adults were talking about and was desperate to participate. The other was a passive-aggressive (insert a negative word, which seems the most fitting for you). Luckily I can say, that I feel less stupid now. Also less passive-aggressive (Yay!). Of course there is still a lot that I don’t understand, but I have more motivation to actually learn. As surprising as it sounds, it can be quite difficult to learn a language you are opposed to…

A really great and luckily memorable time was the On-Arrival training in Bukarest. An EVS is really great. You not only get the chance to spend time abroad and volunteer, you also get the chance to meet all the crazy people, who are doing it as well. Of course I don’t need to mention what happens when a lot of young volunteers meet in Bukarest and spent their time together for a week, these experiences are too boring to share. It is probably more interesting for you to know the main parts of the official program. We learned a lot about the EVS, our responsibilities, our rights, cultural exchange and being abroad for a longer time. So, actually very useful. After this amazing program and the off-program teambuilding, we declared us to the best group of the On-Arrival training and after a crazy night of a fake fire in our hotel (important to mention that it was, despite your current believe, not our fault), we had to part again. So with a huge sleep deficit Viki and I started our 8 hours bus ride home.

Back in Sovata another really nice part started. The christmas party and a graphic facilitation course. It was the first time I met almost all members of Outward Bound and there is probably no better time than a Christmas party to do so. The graphic facilitation was a great course and opportunity to learn. It only took a few tips and some practice to improve and I’m really happy to have participated. But of course, no matter what age the participants are and if they are trainers or not, they always act like kids. Which is, don’t get me wrong, a lot of fun. So we facilitated also some nonesense, but beautiful nonesense!

This beautiful and deep piece of art is one of many. I felt blessed to be part of such a creative and talented group and it will be only a matter of time till our first exhibition.

In regard to the Christmas party part. There is sadly nothing interesting for you to know. It was a normal Christmas party. I won’t tell who had to much to drink or did something funny, because that is only funny when you were there (when you were there and you don’t remember any of these things, then you probably belong to the group I frist mentioned).

Better late than never

The mindful observer or the attentive friend might have noticed, that the blog starts a bit late, but my official excuse is: creative issues. So I will try my best to recapture my experience so far.

It was a quick way from applying for my EVS at Outward Bound Romania to finding myself in a flat in a small town in Romania, so there was luckily not enough time to start to worry about the comments given by various people. The comments were probably my first EVS experience. I won’t go into detail here and half of them were probably meant as a joke, but some people had a hard time understanding my wish to go to Romania and at that time I had a hard time explaining my choice, but luckily I went through.

So when I arrived in Sovata, aka the small town, I found a nice apartment and an even nicer flatmate, Viki. The first time when I noticed that Romania could be a bit different from Germany was, when I was walking to the Outward Bound Center on my first official day. So apparently, I look german or at least I look different enough to get noticed and if that wasn’t enough attention for me already, in a small town you greet people. So being used to disappear in a city with my music in my ears, I had to start being a polite small town human being. So, with all the comments about living standards and bad prejudices about Romania in my head, this was my only problem. Talking to strangers. But luckily I had a hero come to my rescue in form of Viki, who taught me the right Hungarian phrases. Yes, Hungarian.

In case you are wondering about the Hungarian, I was also surprised. In my short time of preparation I started to learn a bit of Romanian, so I wouldn’t be so helpless after all. Of course I also read about the Hungarian minority, but it was just saved as an information. So when I arrived and almost no one was talking Romanian, my brain finally understood that a 95% minority, was quite a lot, despite the word minority. So I was really grateful for my English speaking Hungarian flatmate.

With all that processing in my mind I arrived to my first day at Outward Bound Romania, which was quite empty. In retroperspect probably the better start, because in busy times, you can have a hard time finding a free moment to explain everything. So I spent my first two days with Viki, doing some repairing tasks, and after that, joined my first program.

What exactly is a program? Outward Bound is an organisation for outdoor trainings and non-formal education. In short form, nature is the classroom, where you can learn and develop. For more information, you can always google/ecosia your own way or click on the link 🙂 https://www.outwardbound.net/

I have to be honest, in this program I had a tough time. Some of you will probably think: of course you had a tough time, you went hiking with a bunch of children, they were probably noisy and hard to handle! But call me crazy, that wasn’t the the tough part. It was the Hungarian and the Romanian. The kids were Romanian, so most of the time everyone spoke Romanian. Which was quite doable thanks to a language I learned and thought I would never ever use. Thank you Latin! You are still important! I was pretty proud. But what fried my brain in the end of the day was the Hungarian. Man, this language is just complicated, I’m really sorry… But despite the fact that I almost understood nothing, I had a great time and had a chance to see the surroundings in the last few beautiful fall days.