The House of Children and Youth Friend
Lilit Chobanyan
16/01/2022 – 15/01/2023
Česká Třebová
My name is Lilit, and I am from Armenia. I wasn’t thinking that a year in the Czech Republic would change my thoughts. I will remember this experience. I have mainly worked at Dům Dětí A Mládeže Kamarád, a centre where I met a lot of amazing people. I had good colleagues and we became friends very fast.
I spent my ESC in Česká Třebová town, Czech Republic. I was dreaming of visiting this country, so when I heard about the project I was lobbying about that. A country that has amazing historical places, castles, museums, and galleries has its place in my heart now.
I’ve worked for Dům Dětí A Mládeže Kamarád organization and helped with teaching English and Russian. I’ve been so lucky to work with such great people: people who are such hard workers and have such respect and appreciation for one another.
Our organization has activities for everyone. We had a games club and camps for children. Different activities connected to cooking, playing musical instruments, football, ceramics, hand-made decorations and so on. It was nice to see people up to 70y/o making decorations and gifts for their family.
I had an opportunity to share some receipts with Czech children. We made Armenian Gata and everyone liked it. Our colleagues asked me to cook a lot of gatas for one of our events.
We had a boarding games club and a lot of summer camps.So I had the opportunity to travel with children and speak with them in Czech. I had apartment just for me. It was crazy to live alone in foreign country and foreign culture. I thought that I will be scared and will have problems but it was great. In the end of summer we had a lot of camps and I was very tired. I had 2 weeks of vacation and I was lying in bed and watching TV series. I managed to start and finish “Grey’s anatomy”. I had 24 day offs and I was trying to use these days to visit my relatives in Belgium. And of course, I took time to travel around Europe. I managed to visit Poland, Belgium, The Netherlands, Slovakia, and Italy. Slovakia was my last trip with my friend Nelly who was volunteering in Poland. We went to watch football match between FC Pyunik and Slovan Bratislava. I was sent there as a reporter from Armenian football public “Urish football” .It was crazy experience, fogy weather and cheap service. I advice everyone to visit Bratislava. I enjoyed 2022, I will remember it as a “Travelling memory album.”I would like to say that everyone needs to be out of their comfort zone to realise life and reality from an all-new point of view.
