Cześć ! Here is Samuele, the Italian volounteer in CIM Horizonty’s EVS project. This is the first article I write and that makes me think a lot how fast this month has passed: 30 very intense days that I’ll try to sum up, so let’s start from the beginning.
As I said, I’m Italian, exactly from the sunny Puglia, and my arrival here was not the best: after one whole summer of hot weather and many swims in the Italian sea (even the day before my departure), I arrived in Poznan and I found one week of clouds. But apart from the cold weather I could feel the warmth of the association and the spirit of friendship since the beginning. The relationship with the other volounteers, Saray, Alexandra and Mikel started very well too, even if the last one tried to kill my Italian pride cooking spaghetti in his way and making them like glue. But however, I survived and so I had the chance to meet lot of interesting people linked to the association and to meet one class in the middle school I had to collaborate with. During the second week Mikel and I went to Warsaw (the girls went the first one) for the EVS On-Arrival training, where we spend an amazing week amplifying our knowledge about EVS and Polish culture and knowing good people from all around the world! Even if it could appear stupid, it has been really amazing to descover new cultures and have had the chance to coversate with people who leave even much far away from my small hometown, in which there aren’t many opportunities to deal with many different cultures.
In the weekend we came back to Poznan and started our activities in the school, even if we had time in Germany for a workshop about integration and language animation all held in Polish and German languge, but we managed to understand something, somehow. However, the problem of the different language comes out expecially in the school and even for an italian guy like me who always try to make people understand also using gestures (the famous italian gestures), sometimes is pretty hard to communicate with children. So, one of the feelings that I may experience in the first period could be “why am I here?” or “am I really useful?” or also “are the students really interested?”. However, thanks to Maja, one association member who helped us, the work with the class became much easier and we managed to prepare a small presentation for the big event about foreign languages that took place in school gym. The event was a success: students were involved and we the volounteers were part of the jury, so we too had nice time there.
The spirit of frienship is spread even through Horyzonty and the association Krąg, which we collaborated for some events with. Indeed Wojtek, one Krąg member, invited us volounteers to join him and his scout group in a camp in a forest close to Poznan, and after two days of full immersion in the green environment and scout games, Wojtek, Mikel and I went all together at Lech Poznan football match. We had really great time and I descovered the most important and common instrument used in Poland to socialize with people: PIWO.
Who knows, maybe can I use it to relate with students? Just kidding, of course, but I’m looking forward to take part in next activities and develop my non formal teaching skills. The ride has just started, and the best is yet to come.
