International Award Gala

Last saturday 23th of november finally we had the launching gala of the International Award.
The days before the gala was so stressing, but finally everything went perfect.
We meet all the leaders, instructors and participants at Schengen Bar, and the gala started!
After a speech-introduction of Alina Posirca, the ambassador from United Kindom came to the stage to speak to our participants. Was a very big pleasure for all hear him.

After some more speechs, finally, one of the most importants moments of the night.... the speech of the EVS volunteers :P
Eliise and Marco were responsible of the speech, and they did it very good.

The gala was a very nice opportunity to us to meet our students, talk with them and know their expectations about the program.

From here i want to say a BIG thank you to all the people who came to the gala and also to all the people who work very hard to make it possible!

Carles S.

The International Award programme is about to start!!!

            

We came here as volunteers to teach you our skills, mentor and motivate you to finish the programme. In the International Award words: we are going to be leaders and instructors. Some of you have probably met us in the leadering-meetings and hopefully many of you are going to meet us in different classes. We teach you our languages and skills, for example: Turkish, graphic design, Kurdish dances, Spanish, photography, Italian, basketball.

We are far from being professional teachers, but I’m sure that’s not a bad thing. We came here to Romania just for the programme and we are very motivated and excited to share our knowledge with you. Moreover, International Award is about mutual learning: we teach you and you teach us. Maybe without even realizing it. We start our classes mostly in English, but who knows, maybe in May we’ll be able to do it in Romanian. Also, maybe in May you will be dancing Kurdish dances or the shy girl who loves reading will be the best in debating or the football fan the best in creative writing?

It’s all about you, about your will and motivation and we and other leaders are here to help you find the strength in you. Why not come out of your comfort zone and try something you have never tried before?

We are doing it: we left our home countries to come to Romania, which we didn’t know much about, to teach. I’m sure only one year ago most of us would have never imagined doing anything like this, but here we are, and very happy about it! We can not wait to finally start the programme, hopefully you have the same feelings!

PICNIC IN MOGOSOAIA :)

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  Picnic in Mogosoaia

  Saturday 2 november it was a great weather and we decided to go somewhere out of Bucharest (Mogosoaia) . I guessed that picnic will be good to know each other better and talked about our experience in EVS  and we spent good time together in Mogosoaia with family of C.A.D.D.R.U .We was all together:EVS volunteers and management and  this picnic activity was wonderful and useful for speak about us and how is working together so I think is a good idea to organize some more action activities like this picnic .Let me talk about barbecue that was the main reason for be togetherJ  and I am felling that someone is saying:finally !!! Anyway I will write  only the wonderful things about it because  it was my first time to eat barbecue without spicy,that is think is fundamental, but this doesn’t mean that barbecue was bad ,just a bit different from how I’m used to do in my country. We just used salt and beer for barbecue and then I got so good taste from meat of chicken without spicy and i will use those kind of information when I don’t have enough spicy for cooking at homeJ . I made barbecue with Alina and Larisa's sweet, helpful and nicest mother  that I'm calling  Mama because while cooking barbecue i felt me like her son J! After the barbecue we visited the Mogosoaia museum and Palace, it was big but a little empty,so we decided to go to play football in the grass and having fun all together!
  Then when we came back to the office we decided to do a party with all EVS volunteers and Romanian friends to say “WELCOME” to our new volunteer Marco from Sicily,we had a great international party with guys from many different country and I hope we will do more often.See you soon with new articles about our EVS experiences!!              
  Yusuf Akyil                                                                                                                                                                                                 11.11.2013
   

Little Kurdistan in Romania

In the high season of cold and illness our Kurdish volunteers Yusuf and Ekrem decided to organise a Kurdish night to get our thoughts away from the almost winter-like weather in Bucharest. We invited friends from other organisations and the party could start!

The table full of food showed the Kurdish hospitality very well: cigköfte, icliköfte, lahmacun and baklava. All either very spicy or very sweet, nevertheless VERY tasty. Besides the good food they also managed to create a nice atmosphere with traditional dances and Ekrem suprised us with some romantic and tragic songs. 

We discovered their culture which was totally unknown to me when I first came to Romania. Now, living together with two great kurdish guys I have realised, that Kurdistan is not just a rebellious region in the Middle-East. Kurds have very strong national identity (I realised that when I referd to Ekrem and Yusuf as turks in the beginning, never making that mistake again), difficult history, vivid culture and an extremely interesting language which is nothing like the Turkish.

Probably the most important thing I have learnt in my EVS is not to prejudice anything or anybody. If Kurds are mentioned in the Estonian media, for example, the article almost certainly also includes words like "war" or "terrorist". What they don't know is that people from that "extremely dangerous" place can be one of the nicest, friendliest and the most helpful you have ever met. And sure, they love their people and region.

ESTONIAN INTERCULTURAL NIGHT

                                                         Estonian Night
İt was great time with my friends in our hosting organization (C.A.D.D.R.U) for Estonian night , because we have been inside a nice atmosphere with theirs culture , I mean like music presentation and sweet foods also history of Estonia about soviet union how they got their own freedom it's just the success of brave People !!! It's amazing with a few people , and that caller big success of freedom in my mind. . .

I want to write about theirs delicious food we eaten the foods Kama ; it's a drink , they are normally drinking in the morning with breakfast : it's was good , for example I liked it and kaerahelbeküpsised ; it is kind of cookie and very strong because if you want to eat you should broke your tooth while she (Eliise ) cooked it, she was used some materials like wheat , sugar and eggs but the taste was good and finally Kartulisalat : I love it normally its with pork but Eliise made it without pork for us and I helped her while she was making it , I eaten a lot salad

 I spend great time with cool people :)))) thank you so much "Eliise" because we knew what is the Estonia, history of Estonia, culture of Estonia

Joseph Thuis (Yusuf Akyil)...

Limba română

Coming here one of my main goals was to learn the Romanian language. Not that it would be extremely useful in my future life, but I am of the mind that every language is a virtue, besides, speaking the local language would make the life here so much easier.
Fast forward in time - 2,5 months have passed, my language is a lot better than in the beginning (it's not hard to better than the level 0.0), but the better shows more in understanding than speaking the language. It's interesting to see the development in simple everyday situations.

Our neighbourhood is filled with traders who sell literary everything on the streets: from toilet paper to bananas. My favourites are the singing-banana-sellers. In the beginning I didn't understand anything what they said, I didn't even understand that they were selling bananas. Honestly, in my mind they were just crazy-people.

On the next day I understood bananas. Shouldn't have been such a difficult word to distinguish, but the sound of the Romanian language was so unfamiliar to me that really, I didn't get anything.

A few days later I heard cinci lei, because, you know, it's everywhere. Beggars ask you for five lei and you just hear the phrase every day,

After getting accustomed to the numbers I already understood quite a lot of what the banana sellers said: Sase blablabla bananas cinci lei.

I was only missing one word from this puzzle and it didn't take much to get it: dulce!

 Sase dulce bananas cinci lei!  (Six sweet bananas five lei!)
 

SPANISH NIGHT!!

The last 6th of September we celebrated the first intercultural night, and was the Spanish Night!

I showed some videos about Spain and Valencia (my region!), and we eat some allioli (a garlic sauce), jamón serrano (Spanish ham) and of course, we drank the authentic homemade sangria!

Here I leave the vídeos about my coutry, so you can discover a little bit my country and region and the character of the Spanish people!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZhVnai16MQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzUdMl4wnJo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zi6LW8djk4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO4blTHCGCA
(The last video is about las fallas, the biggest festival in valencia!)

And finally, thanks to all the people who came to the party, was really fun, and I was very happy to share with all of you the culture of my country, MULTUMESC!

Carles S.