My EVS Experience

Posted on by

If somebody told me before about EVS, I can hardy believe that I could like it. It was unpurpose choice or my life. I saw this program in the internet and applied for it. Time passed , I completely forgot about it. One day I received a call: “Hi, I am Hanna Darafeichyk from Poland, do you still want to participate in our project?” My answer was “yes!”. But I was thinking “well, which program?” It was funny. If only I knew that later on I am going to fall in love with this city, country and people. I am Armenian and I am doing EVS in Wroclaw. Nine months I’m a volunteer here. When I look back at the time I passed through, I realize that the experience I received is forever uneraseable.

Świetlica , kindergarden, gimnazium, school, giving and taking language courses, university these are some of the things I was busy with. The fist barer for me was polish language. After the first lesson I thought NO, it is impossible, as I needed 10 minutes to read the word “ przepraszam”. But the adventures were waiting for me in świetlica: NO ENGLISH. You have to survive somehow. After 2-3 months you realize that you can not only communicate with teenagers in polish but also be able to say : stół z powyłamywanymi nogami. I am very glad that they helped me to understand them and to talk with them in their mother tongue.
EVS gave me also opportunity to travel a lot as inside Poland such outside. Where you can know Polish culture from different parts. Wherever I have been, polish people are very kind, ready to help, friendly, funny and easy going. I don’t know how am going to admit that we will stay in the huge distance with my army of polish friends.
Workshops, activities, trainings, presentations, knowledge exchanges… I am full of this. My project calls “help other develop yourself”. And I think it has done all its possibilities for me. The experience I have is necessary for everyday and every minute. You learn how to communicate with kids, teenagers, adults, seniors while working or leaving with them. But the most important thing for me in my project is people that I met during this time. 15 different cultures, 15 different ways of thinking and all of them are great. I am very glad to take part in this project and want to thank my host organization for all the support I got, thanks for the friends to be who they are, thanks EVS to exist. If I have opportunity I would repeat it FOR SURE. Dziękuje bardzo!

Anna Avetisyan (Armenia)

Fot. Tomek Hasik

EVS Experience

Posted on by

 

Oscar, fot. Luca Valentini

The city where I have been doing my EVS project is Wrocław. After traveling through Poland during the nine months I can say that it is one of the most beautiful

and developed cities in Poland.
Polish people are very kind and friendly in general. I have always got help from them when I have asked for it.

The Polish winter has been also a new experience for me. I usually like going to the mountain and I have some kind of experience with snow and low temperatures but not living for four months in a row.

Learning Polish language has been also a challenge for me. I have tried to learn as much as I could. But because the main part of my project is English, I have spent most of my time with people who are able to speak in English and because Polish language is not easy to learn, finally I have not been able to learn it properly in a communicative level. Anyway I have met a lot of Polish people and I have learnt about its culture talking with them in English and a bit of Polish in comparison.

I have also been interested in learning Polish history and during my project I have visited several historical places like Kraków, Oświęcim and Zamek Książ. It was also nice visiting Trójmiasto and seeing the Baltic frozen sea.

It has been also nice meeting people from different countries and learning about their respective cultures and customs. My project has been also good in the way I have the chance to visit a lot of schools where I have been conducting workshops about human rights, global education and presenting my country – Spain. Preparing and doing activities with kids has been also very charming and I am glad to know that there are a lot of Polish people interested in knowing about my mother tongue language and my culture in general. I realized about this during the sessions I have spent with the participants of my language café in Mediateka and in the Spanish cultural evening that was performed in the Ethnographic Museum of Wrocław.

 

Oscar Pastor Pèrez from Spain (Madrid)