How it was my On-Arrival Training?!

I arrived at the Rin hotel in Bucharest on the afternoon of 21st of October and from the beginning, I knew is gonna be a wonderful week! The first team I met was the Turkish team and immediately I understood why I want to spend my year doing volunteering in Romania! Everyone was so happy, we were chanting for hours telling about our lives, our differences, and our commons. We ended the day with a very interesting visit to the old center of Bucharest. We went to a Turkish corner and we ate baklava and drink tea, things that we both have in our countries!

In the first day of the training, we played the game of representing ourselves and our names in a way that everyone would remember. It was a bit hard at the beginning to remember all the 25 names of the participants, but it was interesting the way everyone presented him/herself. Then we played a game in which we had to pick Dixit cards that were on the floor that represent us, we were walking around the room, discussed each other why we picked that card and we tried to understand more each other. We played a lot of energizer/ice-break games that day to feel more comfortable with each other and it worked. By the end of the day, we had a connection as a team with a common song Lululalu lulalulalulaeee.

The next days we learned a lot of interesting things about Erasmus+, the history and how it began, and about Youthpasses tasks. Through a game, we learned a lot about our insurance Cigna, a very important key for our EVS journey. Through team cooperation and with the help of trainers we tried to answer some questions about the challenges we have during the EVS. They gave as same questions-examples about things that have happened to other volunteers and we tried to find a way to solve them in order not to feel panic if some of them happen to us.

Some other things we learned are the difference between stereotypes and discrimination and that we must not make fast conclusions, that is better to think twice before criticizing a situation or a person in the country that we are living now. It was very helpful for this the Iceberg concept of culture in which as in a real Iceberg only 10% of the things we can see and the other 90% it is deep inside us.

One of the funniest and interesting parts of the training was the cultural night. It was organized by all of us and we shared the best and the funniest things in our countries. As I was the only Greek person, the Italian team wanted me to join them and create an Italian-Greek event. As countries, we have a lot in common so it wasn't hard for me to be part of the team as we made a sketch about the characteristics of the Italians followed by a traditional song and dance from Greece, sirtaki.

Through a city rally, we learned better the city of Bucuresti as we were in different groups such as social, political, youth, art, historic, haunted and we had some tasks related to our topics. I was part of the youth team and we went to some places where young Romanian people are going such as the university, cafes, library, churches, clubs and we asked them some question like if they know about Erasmus+ projects etc. The next day we presented what new we learned during the city rally and some videos and photos we created.

On the final day, we had some workshops and I was part in two of them. To be honest I couldn't decide which I wanted to go because all of them were very interesting. So I went to the Fairytales of Romania (graphic facilitation) in which I learned to express what I hear and what I understand through some basic symbols such as line, triangle, circle and square. We were presenting ourselves and the others by drawing these symbols based on what we were hearing. And then we changed the papers and we were trying to find ourselves on the paper. We also discovered the fairytale "Salt in our food" and we drew with these symbols what we heard from the fairytale. 

After I went to the crafts workshop in which we learned how to create traditional Romanian flowers on a fabric with needle and thread. While we were creating them we were hearing Romanian music. It was a very interesting workshop and the things I learned I am gonna use them in a project we are developing about crafts in Romania.

So these are some of the things I learned during my on-arrival training week and I am looking forward to the next training that I am gonna participate on the 7th month of my EVS.

As you may know, we are hosting at the moment our first EVS volunteer, Nikolia, from Greece. She will spend 12 months with us, helping to develop our youth center and create a more active community by volunteering! Each month our volunteer, Nikolia Papadopoulou will share her experience in Romania through a small report which we will post it on our blog. 

Building Bridges is a project funded by Erasmus+, a programme of the European Union. The content of this article is the exclusive responsibility of the authors, and the National Agency and the European Union are not responsible for how the content of the information will be used.