My EVS at the Biblioteka Publiczna Gminy Pomiechówek

Hello,

Many people asked me why I chose Poland for my EVS and my answer was always, "Oh that's embarrassing..." But in fact I chose Poland for one reason, and this reason is called "Michał Szpak". Is this embarrassing and crazy? Yes, it is! But at the other hand it's also brave and really spontaneous. No one would choose a country just for one singer, when you also don't understand most of his songs, unless you are crazy... And damn I'm crazy, so here I am! Ok, honestly, on the first day when I was without wifi and connection to the outside world and looked inside of my apartment, completely alone and too panicked to be able to open the front door again, I had a lot of moments when I was thinking that this was the worst idea ever, but now I couldn't be happier here in Poland. My life has changed completely.

These few months, especially the week of my arrival training in Warsaw, made me open again, like I was at the age of 7 before I got very shy and closed. I also found so many new friends here and I'm sure, some of these friendships will remain even after my time as volunteer has ended. During the first weeks, I met so many new people and everyone wanted to see me, and even the major came to personally greet me with a gift on my second day. As the first volunteer here in Pomiechówek, I’m a little bit famous. For me this situation is on the one hand strange, because in the past other people were never interested in me, but on the other hand, it's really a great feeling ‘cause everyone dreams at least one time in their life of being famous. 

When I met the three other volunteers in Pułtusk and their friends, this was for me a little bit strange. For myself I was feeling like the new one, but they made me feel that I'm already a part of the group and this gave me a good feeling. I had the same good feeling when I started to work at the library and I found very fast a best friend in one of my colleagues. 

There I have the chance to be creative; for example, I designed a special bookmark for Valentine’s day and made a poster for my own project “Let's Talk”. My other big projects during my EVS up until now are, making presentations about my home country Belgium in front of several school classes in the “ Gimnazjum” and reading books in English for the children at the kindergarten. That's also one of the reasons why many teenagers know who I am. For me it's even not a big deal if I stay longer at the library and finish my work, because I’m very happy with my work and often surprised how fast the time flies. Too fast in my opinion… 

 

 

For the next months, I just hope that my Polish gets better and also the weather, so that I can finally travel and see other cities in Poland. Was choosing Poland for my EVS a bad idea at the end? No! After ups and downs I can finally say, that it was one of the best ideas of my life. I learnt finally to live without my family and be more independent. I really enjoy every moment of my EVS in Poland. 

Dziękuję!

Saskia Roder