So, today is that day, can’t believe it’s already a month, feels like just a week, but when I’m trying to look back, and remember all the little details, oh yeah, it looks like more than a month. From start to end the expectations were rising, changing, meeting each other and so on. I had a lot of experience, starting from personal to general things.
Week 1
After Armenia, I guess every country feels quite strange, big and uncomfortable, but I wasn’t feeling bat from the first day, Poland mad me feel comfortable from the first day. Pff, just kidding. From the first day I arrived in Poland, I feel cold and changes in the form as they are. During the flight to Warsaw we had stopped in Kyiv, which is a beautiful city, but not after August. There was super cold and the weather was even worse than the weather in Poland for now. But I was lucky enough to find my one of my old friends available to see and walk around, so Kyiv was super strong to us, but some warm people made awesome memories out of it.
After a couple of hours of walking, we continued our trip to Poland.
As we arrived, the first thing we noticed was our broken suitcases. Gosh, I was so mad at Ukrainian airlines. There was rain outside, and we couldn’t even move our suitcases, so we decided to take an Airbnb with other two Armenian girls. We find a good place, and had a problem with connecting with the owner of the place, after two+ hours of communication with Airbnb customer service assistant we finally found the owner and took the details about living place.
After founding ourselves totally tired we were super happy to get some cozy place, to lay, but the explorer inside won the old lady who wanted to sleep, and we wet to a small city tour in Warsaw city center. I have never been to New York, but the atmosphere in Warsaw made me nostalgic and I fell in love with these feelings.
The next morning we were late for the direct bus, while we’re waiting in a row to ask about information and took the bus with a long road to Klodzlo. After 10 hours of sleep, lunch, dinner reading on the bus, we finally arrived at Klodzko bus station. But it wasn’t our final destination yet. We asked for schedule, but the only man who was in the station was wrong with timetable, after waiting extra 30 mins in the completely dark, rainy and empty bus station we lost the hope to get the bus that day. With a broken suitcase, it was really hard to move anywhere, in the end, we took a taxi, which took us to Bystrica Klodzka. After waiting some time Marzena took us from the station. We went shopping for some basic staff and got home in Domaszkow. Feels like everything now will be cool ever after, right? Wrong! Just kidding. Everything was fine after that.
The day after we went to the office, all of us. To a small town with cute buildings called Bystryca Klodzka. Everything was cool there, if except the strange smell from the corridor, but if you will walk fast, there is a big chance that you’ll not notice that so hard. So expect of this everything was awesome.
We started to meet the other volunteers and as we waited for mentors, we had nothing to do expect better knowing each other.
A couple of days went in the same way, and then we started to meet the mentors. Had tasks such as writing a short description of ourselves, personal article about volunteering, why its matters to us and why we’re here in general, so things were going well. After some days like this, we were told about future plans of EFM. I wanted to go to school as soon as possible because I’m not a huge fan of office work. I left my job in Armenia, to have some experiments outside of the office.
For the first weekend, we went to Klodzko, to explore the city. It was clearly the Polish autumn in the small city. I loved that.
Week 2
From the second week the Turkish group arrived, they were not the most communicative group I know, but in general, there was some new changes in our house, new people, new food, new topics to discuss. This week also was the week of YouthMAster. I had only one day there, but I really liked the activities, the topics and the youth who were engaged in the program. I found Polish youngsters really interesting, cheerful and open-minded. They were super interested in a lot of general topics which was a surprise for me.
For the weekend we went to Wroclaw, the city where still feels the German memories mixed with Polish architecture of soviet union and modernism. The went to the city gallery and center of city history, most of all I liked the halls with old photo boxes and the interactive gallery of old photos of the city. The city of bridges and young life.
We met an amazing hospitable people there, and had a really good weekend there, which was a good way to discover Polish youngsters in our ages,m they daily routine, way of living and how they think about a lot of things in their country and culture.
Week 3
From week three I was met with my school finally. I loved the working atmosphere there and the kids there. They meet me with big smiles and open hearts.
From the first day we started to thin about Creative activities we can do with kids and what involve them to conversations in English, started to play language games with them during the English lessons. I did a presentation about my country and my culture. From day to day the kids started to become more familiar with me, the small ones started to not shy to talk with me and some of them are always hugging me, without any reason, they really make my work meaningful day by day. Some of them are asking me to teach them some Armenian stuff, such as “hello”, “bye”, ”how are you? “.
We went with kids to a puppy daycare house and planning to go to hedgehog’s house at the end of November.
My knowledge of Russian helps me to understand sometimes what are they saying and that makes easier to communicate with me. Some of them starting to teach me Polish words and our kind of teaching each other and learning with exchanging knowledge, I didn’t expect that I’d like to work with kids so much.
For the weekend I went to Poznan for the concert of the band “Archive”. The weekend was amazing, but in the end, I missed the train and learned how to use trains in Poland, and met some pretty Polish people who help me to fill the forms to be refounded.
Week 4
In the fourth week, I got familiar with the teacher, we started to explore each other’s skills. I started to discuss some design projects and the teachers were really supportive of my ideas. So we decided o make a “Postcard” project in the school, that will allow the kids to make their own postcards and sell them on Christmas market in the school, to have a foundation for school sports room reconstruction. Sometimes I have the lessons with Kids and sometimes wit teenagers. We made a day of design discussions with the Music’s teacher and I do slides for teachers to explain how they can earn money with design. How they can know is this profession for them or not. So things are going well. Sometimes I late for the morning train because when the weather and to take the next one I should lose half of the classes in the school. If there was any bus, my project will be really the perfect one.
For the weekend we went to Prague. One of my must-visit cities in Europe. I made a lot of good friend there and amazing memories. We missed the bus but I found a favourite spot in Klodzko to read a book. Some trips are teaching us to care, some to plan, some to be careful, some to be kind and this one makes me feel the importance of moments. The moments and the things are happening around me. Now I look at my time in the other way.
Today the new volunteer started her work in the school, so happy about that. Will be cooler to make projects together.
