Salut prietenii!!

Flying over toRomania, a country I have never been before, a country which sounded quiteexciting, different and strange to me, for one whole year, not knowing whatwill happen or which kind of people I will meet and I will have to live with,was a big step in my life. Just finished high school this year, did not knowwhat to do with my life, so I came here, but for what reason? To get my lifeinto order? To get more self-confident? To get more open-minded? To learn aboutdifferent cultures, habits and people? I think a piece of all of these reasonsand a lot more pushed me to go away from home, from my “comfort zone”. I likeunknown situations in life, it helps me developing myself enormous and I hopethrough all these little processes I will know at the end of the year somehowwhat I want to do in my life, at least what will be my next step. If I had anyfears about how the people that I will be living with and my coordinators are,they all disappeared in the very first second when I met them, my new friendsdin Lituania, Spania, Franta, Olanda, Cehia si Romania sunt foarte frumos!

I like learning aboutso many new things, I am the youngest in the team, so I think I have a lot tolearn, even if I think that it is not always depending on the age what you canlearn from people. I love sharing opinions about different topics, learningabout why and how different people see things differently and being able toshare feelings, what is sometimes really easy for us, because we are all in thesame situation, living in a country where we knew nobody from the beginning. My(not so big) prejudices about Romania also disappeared and I started to havenew impressions about the country and the people here. I just love thelandscape; Brasov is so beautiful surrounded by perfect mountains. I started tolove hiking and in winter probably skiing and/or snowboarding.

I like to improve myEnglish, I am definitely more confident to talk in English now. I like to takethe challenge to learn a new language, mysterious Romanian!

The European VoluntaryService (EVS) is a great opportunity to develop yourself and to meet so manydifferent people. Since our on-arrival training with 85 volunteers from allover Europe who are volunteering in all over Romania, we build a great networkof very interesting, open-minded people, which we can visit during the year.Spending one week all together in Predeal, partying, eating and of courselearning about EVS was unforgettable, so many new visions, new impressions, newfriends. We already saw many of our new friends every weekend since then.

In termsof our project - we have/ will have a lot of work to do to achieve our aimsuntil the end of the year.

We are tryingto get to know some communities in rural areas on our “explorations” and westarted to work in the primary school “Floroaia Mică ” in Întorsura Buzăului,as well as Milda and me are working in the “Casă Familiale” every week there.We decided to have for November all our own class in “Floraia Mică” in order tosucceed with our topic of the “Lună de Toleranţă ”. The 12 children in the“Casă Familiale” are always very glad when we are doing free time activitieswith them, like drawing, board games, theatre or team games.

In orderto promote EVS and our project we went twice to a high school in ÎntorsuraBuzăului, where we met many interested teenagers, which seem full of energy toshow us around in the area and to do activities with us. We also did variousactivities for them for the 11th of October, Non-formal-Education-Day,like chemical and physical experiments, a theatre workshop and a drawingworkshop.

I justshared my feelings how they came into my mind, hope you liked it and you are upfor the next posts!

Kathrin