Marine's Project

Hello ! My name is Marine, I’m 21 and I’m from France.

I came in Poland in September 2019, and I stay until August 2020.

I live and work in Pomiechówek, a small town 45 minutes away from Warsaw by train.

I work in a library. My main work is about promoting the new books on Facebook (I take a picture of them and create a nice background for the post) and making new covers for the books. But sometimes I have other tasks, such as decorating the library according to the seasons or taking pictures of the events lead in the library !

Once a week I go to the kindergarten and twice a month to the primary school of Pomiechówek to read a book in English to the children. I really enjoy it, the kids are always full of enthusiasm and energy !

A few times since I arrived in the library, I had to make a presentation of my country, for the primary school (in English) and the high school (in French, thanks to the French teacher I’m linked with). Once I also made a presentation of the French traditions for a class of the primary school, presentation which ended by a testing of crêpes and a demonstration of Breton dance !

I live with one flatmate who works in the cultural center of the village, in the same building than the library. So we see each other pretty all the time !

We spend our free time at the flat, watching movies together or trying to teach our own langage to each other ! Sometimes we go to Warsaw, to buy clothes in second hand shops, to watch movies in the cinemas or just to make a bit of tourism !

Like every volunteer from EVS, we have langage lessons. From time to time, a polish teacher come to the library or in our flat. The lessons are quite difficult, Polish is not an easy langage… But fortunately we are surrounded by this langage all day long (with our colleagues, the custumers of the library, the books, the shops, the sellers, the advertisements, etc), so we can’t but make progress !

At home with my flatmate, at the library with my colleagues and with all the other volunteers I met, I mostly speak English! I’ve never spoken English that much before I arrived, so the first few days my brain was completely lost and couldn’t stop mixing French and English ! Now my English is almost fluent, I’m very proud of it !

So during this year I improved my English a lot, I learnt Polish from scratch and I also started to learn German, with my Austrian flatmate ! That’s for sure a intense and productive year !

Since I arrived, I had the occasion to travel in Poland. I went to Płock, Toruń, Bydgoszcz, Warsaw of course, Poznań, Cracow, the village of Skierniewice and Pułtusk. I traveled with my flatmate, other volunteers, my parents and/or a friend of mine who came in Poland ! I didn’t want to come back in France for this year abroad, but I miss my family and friends sometimes. Luckily my parents love to travel, so they came in Warsaw for Christmas ! 2 in 1 : we saw each other again and they discovered a new city/country !

I started this ESC after 3 years at university in a Art history degree. I didn’t know what to do after that so I looked for a way to live and work abroad, and the ESC was the perfect way for that. It’s an amazing experience that changed my life (and it’s not finished yet…). After this project I will come back in France and certainly leave again quickly, for I want to have more and more experiences abroad, with another language and another way of living (maybe Scotland or Canada, I’m still thinking). The virus of discovering cultures and language and to take risks infected me !

But for now I’m still in Poland and I planned to enjoy every minute of this adventure !

See you,

Marine

Meeting at Public Library

Hello again! This week, it was the second week of the winter holidays. Yesterday was a great day, not only because of Tłusty czwartek, also because we had a second meeting with the Biblioteka Publiczna im. J. Lelewela in Pultusk😍 This time, we had a group of kids between 6-12 years old and our topic was  holidays of our countries. Since it is the carnival time, we thought that can be interesting to talk about.

We started with the holidays of Turkey. I told about our religious festivals/bayrams which are Ramazan bayrami and Kurban bayrami. In Islam, we celebrate Ramazan bayrami with lots of Baklava and sweets after a month of fasting. That’s why it’s also known as Holiday of Sweets. And Kurban bayrami is the festival of meat, when people sacrifices sheep or cow and give its meat to poor and needy people who cannot buy it. Then, I talked about our national holidays. I think the most interesting and attractive one was 23^rd of April Children’s Day. This day was dedicated to children by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of Turkish Republic. The kids were really impressed by the way of celebrating it by children taking over the government for one day. Everyone was saying that they want to be the president for one day, as well! 😁

After Turkey, Marta talked about the holidays of Croatia. We can say that, most of the holidays that Croatia and Poland has are similar. So, the kids were familiar with most of them. However, they were really attracted by the devilish creature Krampus, which visits you during the Christmas period if you have misbehaved. Also, they were interested in Croatian knight’s game; Sinjska Alka, which commemorates Croatia’s victory over Turkish invaders. It was interesting for me as well! 😀 When we finish the presentations, we tested their knowledge with a Kahoot quiz where they were competing in teams.

Then, we wanted to make a poster about holidays of our countries and Poland. I’m not going to lie, I wasn’t expecting them to be that good! We were so impressed by their talent. It was surprising to see that how many details they kept in their minds from our presentations. It made us so happy!💓

When we finish the poster, we have made some masks for the carnival. They picked the mask templates and they decorated them as they wish.

We had a great time at the library with these amazing kids. Thanks a lot to the library for having us during the winter holidays.

Greetings from Pultusk,

-Hande Ozdemir

 

A visit to the Library

Hello everyone!

Even though it is the winter break, we are quite busy these days. The day before Valentine's Day almost all the volunteers visited the public library, Biblioteka Publiczna im. J. Lelewela, in Pultusk. As you can imagine, the theme of our meeting was Valentine's Day! 😊

Our audience were seniors from Dzienny Dom "Senior-WIGOR" and children from 6 to 12 years old. As always, we wanted to present our countries so we started off with the presentations. To spice things up, we taught them love phrases in our languages and they were quite good with the pronunciation! Our Turkish volunteer Hande was sick, so the rest of us presented her country and tried to pronounce some of the phrases in Turkish. It was quite a challenge!

As we finished the presentations, we had Q/A time, where our audience had a chance to ask us some questions. Some of them visited our countries, so they shared experiences and memories. Others wanted to know the current situations of our countries while some of them were curious about which Polish dish we like the most! 😊 After questions, seniors said goodbye to us and we had some more activities with the children.

To see how much they listened, we played a Kahoot quiz. They had really good scores and were so excited about it, that we played 3 different quizzes with them. We had a great time and funny team names. 😊 Afterwards, we did some Valentine Day cards with messages in different languages inside.

         

During the whole meeting, Sylwia helped us so we don't get lost in translation. Thank you for saving us again! And big thanks to the library for having us, we had a great time!

Your Croatian volunteer Marta Bjeličić 😊

Meeting at Day Care Center

Hey everyone!

Nowadays,  we are having winter holidays in Pultusk. So, we wanted to visit Day Care center with all our volunteers. Since St. Valentine’s day is in this week, we thought that it can be our theme for the meeting.😍

We started with presentations which give information about our countries such as location, language currency and of course, food!😂 Also we taught them some love phrases which they can use to express their feelings in our languages. They tried to pronounce them and they were surprisingly good at it! 

After the presentation we tested their knowledge with a kahoot quiz. They really like having the kahoot quiz while they are working with their teams in a funny competitive way. Since there are young kids as well, Sylwia helped us with the translation, thanks again Sylwia!😇

When we finished the quiz, we wanted to show them some of our cultural dances. First, Tudal taught us a dance from his region, Brittany. We all tried to do it when we are in a circle. Everyone learnt it easily and enjoyed the dance from France. Then, I taught them a traditional dance which we  generally have at wedding parties. At first, it was a little complicated but after a while they could dance and have fun! They also showed us a great performance with a group of 5-6 of children. They are very talented and I’m so impressed!

After these physical activities, we thought that we can show our artistic talents.😝So, we have prepared some postcards for St. Valentine’s day. Also we wrote wishes in our languages which they have learnt from our presentations. 

Finally, we spent the rest of the time playing with the kids. It was great to spend quality time with the kids at Day Care center. We promised to go back and meet them again. We are all looking forward to it.

For now, that’s all from us!🙋

To see details from our activities, don’t forget to follow us on social media.👇

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Amelie's Project

Hey,

I’m Amélie, I’m 23 years old and I am from Belgium. Since September, I’m a volunteer at the Centre of Rehabilitation, education and care. I’m here for 10 months.

In the centre, there are hippo therapy, one kindergarten school, one primary school, one secondary school and one club for the people with disability who don’t go to school anymore. There is also professionals like physiotherapists and psychologists who work with the studemnts of the school and sometimes with children who aren’t in the school.

For the project, I work in hippo therapy. There are 8 horses and one pony. The main things that I need to do are:

-   cleaning the horses,

-   go and pick up the children in the school,

-   prepare the horses,

-   Hold the horses when we walk with them and the children.

During the week, for 2-3 hours,  I go to Klub Absolwenta, which is the graduate club which supports young and disabled people and school graduates. Also I go to the kindergarten for 1 hour and a half.

When I’m in the Klub Absolwenta I help them making some arts and handcrafts for Christmas or Easter.

The activities I do in the school mostly depends on the week. Most of the time I am with the psychologist to see what she is doing with the children or I help her to prepare some stuff.

Sometimes I go into a classroom to see the way they have their classes and their system.

I work and live with Anna, another volunteer who comes from Germany. For three months, we were with another volunteer from Sweden, but she needed to leave. It was so difficult !

 During the free time, we go into the city, we see movies (on Thursday it is always a movie night), we go to see other volunteers, we cook together. Also we talk and laugh a lot.

When I first came to Poland, my level of English was very bad. When somebody talks to me, I had to focus a lot, and I could only understand half of it. It was so frustrating because I wanted to speak and exchange with others but I couldn’t.

I remember that during the first week with Anna, I absolutely understood nothing about what she was telling to me. I was a little afraid that was going to stay like this. Imagine being together with a people for 10 months and don’t understand anything. It is not a good thing. But after 2-3 weeks it was really better. And now we really understand each other. Sometimes we don’t have the vocabulary but it is not a problem because we can mimic or explain the words. And for anything I wouldn’t change my flatmate.

Another big difficulty in the beginning was that I went to my On-arrival training just one week after my arrival. It is a meeting with other volunteers of Poland for one week. During the seminar, we speak over the projects and we exchange a lot about the different countries, cultures, politics. All of them in English. I have to confess that it was very difficult for me to understand something about the subject which looks so complex in English for me. It was funny because everyone was thinking that I was very shy, but it was just that I don’t understand what they said to me. Fortunately, there was a boy from France and he translated the important things that I don’t understand for me. It was very helpful.

Now it’s been 5 months that I have been here and I have progressed a lot. I can speak with the people normally and I don’t need to be super-concentrated. I have made the mid-term seminar and I have almost understood everything.  I can also see a movie with the subtitles in English. And it is magical because I discover all the songs and what they actually say now that I understand better.

I hope the rest of my project is going to be like the start because till now it has been really good!

- Amélie Crohain

Visit to Szkoła Podstawowa Nr 1

Hey everyone!

This week, we had the first snowfall of the year, finally! I was really scared that we will not see the snow this winter, which is so sad and shows the seriousness of the global warming. However, fortunately we could enjoy a lovely and white view. Pułtusk is even prettier when it is all in white J

Besides snowfall, we were also honored by an invitation from Szkoła Podstawowa NR 1

im. Konstytucji in Nasielsk this week. It is a primary school in Nasielsk, which is a small town close to Pułtusk. We went there to meet the students from 4 to 8 grade and introduce our projects, countries and have a quiz afterwards.  Firstly, we were welcomed by the director accompanied with nice conversations and coffee. We introduced ourselves to them and got to know about the school. She introduced the school to us and we visited some classes. We didn’t stay very long not to interrupt them, however the students and the teachers were very nice and welcoming. We had a chance to see how they have their classes so we could compare if there is a difference between their system and ours.

After visiting the classes, we went to the room that we met students. First, the voluntary club of the school had a presentation about their activities. It was very inspirational to see what they’ve achieved as the voluntary club. They are responsible young people who are trying to have an impact on society, which is really impressive.

After their presentation, we had introduced ourselves, our countries and our projects. When we finished, we wanted to see what they have learned from us so we had an interactive quiz with them. Results were surprisingly good! I can say that they were really interested in different cultures and they asked a lot of questions to us when we were having conversations with them. At the end of the meeting, they gave us diplomas which were designed under our names. It was very nice of them, thank you once again 😍

We all had a great time in Szkoła Podstawowa Nr 1. Also, they want to host a volunteer in future which means that we will be in touch 😊

This is all from Pułtusk for now. 😋

Have a great weekend!

-Hande Ozdemir

Marta's Project

Hello everyone!

My name is Marta. I come from Croatia and I am 25 years old. I have started my EVS project in November and will stay until the end of August. My project includes working in kindergarten with preschool children as an assistant to the teachers. Children are from 4 to 6 years old.

My task is to help the teachers in the everyday life of children in kindergarten. Usually that would be preparing for the activities or cleaning afterwards, helping children with their assignments, when we are going outside...Currently, I am in the group that has children with special needs.

The biggest challenge that I am facing is the language. I have never learned Polish and even though it is in the same language family as Croatian (Slavic languages), it is not so easy to learn it. We had organised Polish lessons which gave us a good basis for further learning. Both, Polish lessons and kindergarten helped me to work on my language skills. I am trying to talk in Polish as much as possible with children, teachers, in the shops...There are some struggles but we manage to understand each other. This type of situations also made me use more the non-verbal communication, body language for example. It is nice to learn a new language and people appreciate it more if you try to speak their language.

Until now, I had a chance to get to know the culture better and also the way in which kindergarten functions. I have seen some customs and holidays that are not common in Croatia such as ‘Dzień babci i dziadka’ (Grandma and Grandpa Day) – teachers with children prepared recitals and gifts and afterwards they had a short feast;

Andrzejki (Saint Andrews day in Poland) – a day of mysterious parties with the candles and future telling games. Children and teachers dressed up in costumes and played some games;

The breaking of Christmas wafer or ‘opłatek’ in Polish during Christmas show in kindergarten. Each person has one and you go from person to person wishing them all the best for Christmas and in the New Year. It is something we do not do in Croatia and I believe it is a nice tradition.

I enjoy my stay in Poland and hope that it will continue to be as good as it has been. In my opinion, learning about new cultures and their traditions is very interesting and I’m excited to see what else is yet to come.

Your Croatian volunteer Marta 😊

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