Hey everybody, my name is Arus, I’m 23 years old and now I am going to tell you my story of EVS.
Just 1 year ago I was studying Master’s degree, but I was also confused what I really want to do in my life. When I found out about the project I didn’t hesitate to apply. Everything was very fast and I didn’t even realize how I appeared in Bulgaria in a few weeks.
I started my EVS journey with great excitement in Pazardzhik. Before when I didn’t know what to expect from this year, I was thinking it was something that every youngster should try in their lives. Now I am sure of that. During this one year I worked with disabled people, an experience that I had never had in my life before. It was one of the things that I really liked. The feeling that you could help people who need it is awesome. In our project we also worked in the Roma school with children. As my personal project I started to work in the Armenian-Bulgarian school in Plovdiv. I used to teach Armenian language lessons once a week. After awhile I started to teach Armenian dance choreography to the school children. So, I gained the first experience as a dance teacher. Formerly, I was dancing Armenian dances for 10 years, but I had never had an opportunity to be a dance teacher.
During this period I discovered a lot of new things for me, I had achievements which are very valuable for me, memories that I will keep all my life. I got to know different cuisines, different lifestyles, different habits and customs.I have been successful in communicating with others, because I understood even if we don’t have the same culture we can support each other in difficult situations, to be close friends, understand each other, to be tolerant and earn very strong connection. I have done a lot of trips with my flatmates. We visited more than 25 cities inside of Bulgaria, 2 cities in Romania. I also had trips to Montenegro, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Spain and Italy. The solo trips were great experiences for me. Learning new languages was another achievement. Except that I improved my English, I also learned Bulgarian and started to learn Spanish by myself. We also had training courses and youth exchanges during the project. Thanks to all this I expanded my outlook and grew both personally and professionally.
