Arts Lab 4.0: Month V, Maja Mörchen - I don't want to say goodbye!

This is my second-to-last monthly report. I am a little bit behind because we spent the last week traveling, but let’s start at the beginning.

In January, we were working on the Rroma museum by facilitating workshops at Ion Creangă School. In my workshop, I worked on Rroma history and painted a mural. It was a bit different from my previous workshops and definitely a challenge, but I am glad I did it and proud of the result.

For the museum, I also created a wrap skirt and top inspired by Rroma clothing. This was my first time sewing pieces of clothing since coming here, and I'm very happy that I finally did it. I really appreciated that the final exhibition had a large and pretty diverse group of visitors. This exhibition also showed me how much all of us have grown since the first exhibition.

The day after, I tried dyeing my hair for the first time. It didn't turn out pink as I wanted, but there's definitely a difference to before, and I like the result.

We also had the chance to revisit our work on the Cucuteni civilization when we facilitated workshops for students at a library in Iași.

After that, we started working on our last museum about the Jewish community in Târgu Frumos and the Pogrom that happened here and in Iași. This museum is challenging in more than one way. The topic is pretty heavy, and I found it difficult to find sources. For all of us, it was also the first time working with blind students. But it felt especially difficult to go into this with very little time to plan and prepare. I feel like we still did a good job, but often it felt very rushed and improvised. But I really enjoyed trying different activities than in the previous and collaborating with Sara.

In this period, there was also the German night. Although I found it surprisingly difficult to present my country in a way that felt accurate and informative, it was a nice event with the food being my highlight. It was my first time making the traditional food I prepared, and I think they turned out pretty good. I also really enjoyed finally eating some of them again.

Last Saturday, we had an event at the Church in Buznea. We were invited to talk to the children, eat traditional food, and visit the church (including the bell tower). I am thankful for the invitation, and it was a moment where I really felt connected to the local community.

After that, we had a complete contrast at the midterm evaluation in Bucharest. Three days of events with other international volunteers from different projects. It was really good to spend time in that environment, meeting new people, sharing experiences... For me, it was also the first time speaking German ('in real life') since Christmas, which was nice but surprisingly quite a challenge for my brain.

We also spent some extra time exploring Bucharest and visited Brașov afterwards. I really liked both of those cities, and it was so good to travel and have a different environment. (And I finally saw bears.) I really hope to carry the energy of this week with me into the future.

With a lot of stuff happening, the project is coming closer and closer to its end. I have now spent five months in Romania and can count the days until the end (23). Two weeks ago, Yavuzhan was the first of us volunteers to leave the project. It was a pretty sudden and hard goodbye, and it really showed that this time is ending soon. There are things to look forward to, but mostly I don't want to finish this project, and most of all, I don't want to say goodbye. 

Maja Mörchen is from Germany and she is doing a long-term volunteering project in our organisation, under Arts Lab 4.0, a project funded by European Solidarity Corps, a programme of the European Union.