The Turkish way – “It’s not over ‘till it’s over”

Ioana participated between 19-26 august, in the youth exchange: “It's not over till it's over”, organized in Turkey, Kırşehir (Cappodocia), in which our organization was partner. This article is her testimonial regarding the project! 

An interesting project can only gather great people, so the extraordinary experience was inevitable. Through this project, the Asirys Association has not only offered us vital information about the correct first aid techniques, but it has helped us develop in an intercultural environment. 

We knew from the beginning that we only have one week together, so we had to take advantage of our time. Our Turkish hosts started with some games meant to make us know each other better, but it was almost impossible to memorize 40 new weird names (although we had no problem with the two Czech guys named Tom and Jerry, for obvious reasons). Anyway, we managed to find some nicknames and we solved the problem. 

As human beings, we had to spend a lot of time all together – the hunger and the need for smoking were the main reasons for us to gather – and so, the good time came naturally. We talked so much that I believe we covered all the existential subjects for discussions. But besides the jokes and the fun, we found out many things about each other’s culture and traditions, we could see the differences between us and by comparing our countries we came up to discovers ourselves. 

People are their country ambassadors, so this project showed us how big the gap between reality and our perception about the others is. It would be perfect if we all had our opinions based on experiences only and quit having prejudices.

For me, this experience was all about the people. I have great memories, but I won’t share them with you. You have to live your own exchange, so that you would meet your own Spanish group, have your own conversations with your own Boju and so on. So go ahead, you won’t regret it :).

Scris de Ioana Todică