On-Arrival Training in Warsaw

Dear people,

Yesterday morning I arrived back to Pułtusk after an unforgettable week in Warsaw. Last week, all the new EVS-volunteers in Poland gathered in Warsaw for the on-arrival training. The atmosphere was highly international as the participants were from many different countries, i.g. from Finland, Spain, Italy, Greece, Germany, Portugal, Hungary, Czech Republic, Turkey, France and Austria. It's usually quite easy to get to know people in this kind of group, because the wide variety of cultural backgrounds is pretty much an eternal source of conversation. 

The goal of the training was to prepare the new volunteers for EVS, teaching them how to face challenges and accept the reality; not all of the stay is going to be a bed of roses. Besides, we learned a lot about the Polish culture. Not only did we discuss how it looks like to a foreigner, but also were explained the historical reasons behind the intriguing cultural aspects. For me the most interesting task was to go to the city to interview real Polish people and find out their views on various topics.

We worked on the topics in many different ways, also by doing handicrafts

The trainers had also organized us two nice surprises. On Tuesday evening, a local guy took the volunteers for a walk and told the stories behind certain Varsovian monuments. Unfortunately I couldn't join the walk, but I heard it was truly fascinating. On Thursday evening an excellent traditional Polish dance group entertained us for a couple of hours, and we even got the chance to try some simple Polish dance moves ourselves.

The whole training was well-organized and the discussed topics were certainly important for the new volunteers, most of which had never spent a longer period abroad. I personally enjoyed the explanation of the Polish culture the most. The things about the challenges of living abroad were nothing too new to me, since this is already my fourth time abroad for a longer period, but hopefully I could contribute to the conversations somehow. Another great thing about the training was that we had quite a lot of free time to get to know the city, meet Polish people and eat Polish food.

The dance group made us dance

My personal view of EVS,  I was glad that the trainers let us visualize our feelings about EVS in our own way

After the week we all felt more motivated to do our best in our projects, so I'd say that the training was succesful.

Yours,

Petja

Europa Zmienia Warszawę

Hello everyone!

On Friday 4th of July we were cooperating with our brother organization from Warsaw in the event “Europa Zmienia Warszawę” aka, Europe is changing Warsaw! Oranized by Europe Direct. The day went really good, as expected we all were there on time and started to prepare the different things we wanted to do with children as well as organizing the information for who wanted to know about the event. It took place in Warsaw’s Castle square, and the weather would have been great if it wasn’t for the strong wind that happens sometimes and made the things a bit harder to do.

During the event we had different traditional games for the group of children that were coming during the day, the most popular among there were “ciupy” aka stones, “podwórkowe bierki” or pick up the sticks and giant darts in the ground.

The two things that the children enjoy the most, and really wanted to participate in them were the origami, where we were making flowers, frogs, boats and planes, and the section of eco-recycling where used toilet papper rolls were being used to créate different character or even hats, this was one the most funniest part of the event and everyone were enjoying and creating different things, the good part of it is how the imagination of the kids flow and you start to learn a lot from them.

On top of everything we had face painting, while the most demanding design was the mask of spiderman also a lot of other things like butterflys, dogs or cats, as well as flags were painted in the face of the children who were brave enough to let their skin in our hands!

Last but not the least we were using used t-shirts to makeamazing and colorful bracelets for all our guests, on the sad note of the day it was that during around one hour and a half, not many people were coming to the place and we had a bit boring time, as when we are doing something with the kids the only thing that you get from them and that its enough for all the energy you use during the day its their smile and their sincerity, its hard to see any sign of malice in them, and it makes you feel really good with yourself. We also had some quiz games about the different countries of Europe.

As a personal opinion of this guy who is writting this it was a great day, and I really enjoyed it, I would do it anytime and I hope that everyone who were there, the organizators, the volunteers and the children were really enjoying the event! It was really nice to see them smiling while you were working with them and their desire to stay more time with us.

Take care.

Hugo.