Arts Lab 6.0: Sinem Sağdıç - Month 2

Salut! Greetings from my second month in Târgu Frumos. This month, all the volunteers experienced a lot of things together. We started the second month with an online on-arrival training, and to be honest, it was a bit boring. But since all ESC volunteers are required to take it, we participated.

Later on, we organized a “French Night.” Ella and Savane spent the entire day in the kitchen preparing traditional French dishes for us. The cheese was absolutely delicious. While enjoying the food, we also played a popular children's game from France. We had sticky fish cutouts, and the goal was to secretly stick them onto someone else’s back. I jumped into the game quickly and managed to stick one on Luca’s back right away, but by the end of the night, I also found two fish on my own back :) . Since France is also famous for its protests, we decided to stage one. My team and I protested against the cold—mostly my fault, as I was freezing!

A few days later, we had to organize a workshop for the autumn festival. Sona, Soukaina, and I set up an activity where we made crowns using tape and fallen leaves from the ground. The workshop turned out to be very popular, with lots of kids walking around wearing their leafy crowns. We hadn’t expected such enthusiasm. By the end of the day, the park was filled with little kings and queens.

A week later, we visited a school in Iaşi to conduct a workshop. The kids, despite being only 12-13 years old, spoke and understood English quite well. Every 10 minutes, the students would rotate to a different workshop. In this one, we were each on our own. I was a bit nervous about being alone, but I managed. We made origami together and adapted a paper fortune-teller game to the context of the Holocaust. After finishing the origami, I asked the kids to draw objects found in mass graves on it and to write a story related to those objects in the fortune-teller sections. I think 10 minutes wasn’t enough to do all this; we often didn’t get to the storytelling part. But in the end, we completed our workshops and returned. Unfortunately, that same night ended on a sad note for me as I received bad news from Turkey, but my friends were there to support me.

The first exhibition day arrived. We had very few guests, but I think that’s better for a first exhibition since it allowed us to practice. It was my first time ever doing something with VR, and I had little time to learn how to use a new program. I won’t detail every single one, but we organized many exhibitions, and with each one, I became more professional and comfortable in preparing and presenting my work. Of course, there were a few hiccups and mistakes, but they didn’t matter in the end.

We didn’t miss Halloween either. Five of us went to Iaşi to celebrate. In Turkey, Halloween isn’t celebrated as widely as in other countries. There are some events, but they’re not that big. I was happy to make the most of Halloween here. On the same day, we also visited Jewish cemetery because some gravestones needed scanning, and there was some cleaning to do. Spending Halloween morning in a cemetery turned out to be quite an interesting activity :) .

Later, Rahaf hosted a Syrian Night for us. The food was incredible. I was thrilled to eat kunafa. There was also shawarma. Who could say no to both? That night, we also played a game called Mafia. We were terrible at identifying the mafia members, and I couldn't even defend myself properly because I was too busy trying to figure out the game.

As we approach the end of the month, we’re organizing another workshop at Petru Rareş High School. I’ve dived into graffiti art, even though I’ve never painted a wall before. Since Soukaina has experience, I’m drawing strength from her. I hope this workshop ends on a high note. On the last day of the month we held an exhibition at the Liceul Special “Moldova” and showed the children how we finalized the work we did in the workshop. They were very happy when we gave them Estera’s comic book.

For now, that wraps up this month. I hope next month brings even more new experiences and learning opportunities.

Report written by Sinem Sağdıç, she's from Turkey and she's one of the 14 volunteers participating in Arts Lab 6.0, a project co-funded by the European Union through the European Solidarity Corps program.