As we are already in the 4th and last week of September, it’s been quite a while since this ESC program started, at least for me, as I’ve arrived on the 1st of the month. Let it be stated that the beginning, as it is with these types of programs, was a bit slow, but what was good about it was that I got to know most of the important people in the organisation, not to mention all the Żabka’s of the Łazarz district.
Even though I’ve arrived in Poznań at 23:15 in the night, the next day we were starting at 10:00 so I had to be on time, at least to make a good first impression. For that morning, Kamila showed me the most important places on the way to the office, which is located on the last floor of a high school in the district. Thus arriving there, I got into contact with one of the volunteers, Zacha, one intern, Marta, and the rest of the board, consisting of Ula, which I knew from the interview and Flora, who has been a long-standing member of CIM.
After the meeting, I was free until the next day, when I met my mentor, Alvaro, who is a former volunteer in CIM that came back for an internship here. Altogether we’ve discussed about what’ll happen during the following days, one of the things being the arrival of Salvatore, the Italian participant, sometime during the next day.
Wednesday was “The Boring Day” for me, as I had nothing to do, I even asked if there’s something I could do to help at the office, but I got rejected. So I stood at home, anticipating the arrival of my flatmate. He arrived, accompanied by Mikel and Śliwa, and from there, we just spent half an hour talking and drinking some beer, thus concluding the day.
As a new day rolled over, so did a new meeting, this time with one more member, in the shape of Salvatore. All of us discussed and tried to think more deeply about what will happen during the ‘NGO Day’ that would take place on the 14th of September, thus we had slightly more than a week to prepare everything, not to mention to put the Ukrainian volunteer up to speed, that will come on Sunday. We devised some games about our language and cultures, shaping them as time passed, hoping they’ll be good enough.
Friday started nicely, as we had the first Polish lesson, which was just a test to see how well we fared in this language. As some of us had some…advantages (Salvatore spent half a year in Poland and Zacha has been living for quite a while here, so they had some previous knowledge), we tried our best completing it. I, for one, was just gambling on what could the right answer be, given that I had no basis in that language and I was sure that I’ll get selected in the beginners group, having as a classmate my mentor, Alvaro.
After all of that was done, we had to go on an errand with Marta to get some freshly washed laundry for the rooms that’ll be occupied by the 2 other volunteers that will soon join us (hopefully). For that, we went on to discover ‘the other side’ of Poznań for us, which was the opposite way of the Wilson Park. Carrying those bags was quite a struggle but we managed, as we were 4 people, fortunately. After that, we all went our…kinda separate ways to our flats, enjoying a chill Friday evening.
The weekend was as chill as it can get, as on Saturday we went out, had a beer, listened to some live music, chatted, above all things, and on Sunday we welcomed Anna, the volunteer from Ukraine, who’s next on the Weekly Reports list!
That’s about it from me, hope I did not bore anyone who read this and that I gave the right amount of information.
See you in a month!