My name is Davinia. I’m 23 years and I come from Spain. I’m volunteer in Arad since almost 5 months and I can say that come here is one of the best decisions that I ever took in my life.
At the beginning It was a little bit hard; new people, new country, different culture and problems with the English. Actually, if I have to be honest, until I come here, I didn’t be sure about what was my paper here, what I had to do. A long the first month, I met my peers in the project, I got use to life in my flat and I started to know the place where we work.
With all this new information in my head, I become to understand why we are here. However,the first problem for us was how we could help this people, adults and children, with different kinds of disabilities, different ages. At the beginning all of this was a mess for us, but little by little we started to work preparing different kind of activities. Some people can be scared about how they can comunicated with this people without understand the languages, but if you try, nothing is imposible. They are really good, and they are so thankful for our presence there. About our activities, for example, we made a plane with recycle bottles, a picture with bottles caps, we danced with them and also we prepared a theater where the main character was in a wheelchair, to try promote that, even if you are in a wheelchair or you have some disabilitie, you’re able to make a lot of things.
For the other hand, with children is a little bit different. They can not make activities, they can not play all together. We had to work with them in a individually way, take care of them and trying that they have fun. Maybe working in this way is a little hard, but also like this you can know better the children and connect with them. Really a love them, but I have to admit that one of them steal my heart!
This is only a little resum about all things that I have made in my job, but is not only this. Be volunteer is not only help the others, this experience help you to know yourself. Moreover, is a good opportunity to know more about the world and different cultures, like in the intercultural events, where you can taste food from different countries and also know more about. Furthemore, in my personal experience, I could also learn typical romanian dances. This is one of the better thing to made a volunteer in Arad, we are a lot of volunteers, and we have a lot of activities, so if you want, you can join with the others and you can participate in more activities, no just in your project.
Another important thing that I have learnt a long my stay here in Arad is the English, so for the people who want improve their English is a good way to do it, because you have to comunicate with people from different countries and English is the official language. Nonetheless is not the just language that you can lear, for example, now I’m able to understand the Italian and I know a lot of words! It’s amazing all the things that I could do in just 5 months, like travel. Traveling is other thing that I made, and It was wonderful. I visited different countries a long my days here but also Romania.
I made a trip a long Romania to know better this country. A lot of people before to came here asked me: “Why Romania?, They don’t have nothing, just gypsis. Don’t go there, is so poor”. I had to listen a lot of things like this but now that I’m here I’m not regret. Romania like a country is amazing, the people is really frienly and they always try to help you. It is a normal country like other, have markets, have all the things that you need, and It’s true, is poor, but I didn’t need luxury things here to be really happy. Moreover, Romania is a country where you can do something that for example in my country is impossible, hitch-hiking! I traveled 10 days around Romania like this, and I met really good people, people who only wanted company, only speak with you and help you.
Consequently, now I’m really happy about took the decision to come here, and this experience change me and teach me that un order to know a country you have to be there, because a lot of people in Spain can speak about Romania, and usually is in a bad way, but just some lucky people like the volunteers here, we can say that we know Romanian and is beautiful.
I only can say positive things a long my experience here, so if you don’t know what to do with your life because you finish your study, or because you want life abroad to know more about the world, you want help people, travel…don’t think more and do it! I were afraid before to come here, for my English, for the country, but all was perfect finally. Therefore, don’t be scared because with an experience like this you only can take good things.
Davinia
