Hello everybody!
My name is Gian Luca, I come from Italy, to be more precise from the wonderful city of Torino (Turin).
I’m the CIM Horyzonty’s EVS volunteer for the year 2012/2013! My project started on October 6th, the day of my arrival in the Great Poland (Wielkopolska). I met some people from Horyzonty at the airport, they were there, waiting to me with big Mexican hats! I couldn’t notice them! The welcome was great and I immediately felt comfortable!
We reached our temporary accommodation in a student flat in Łazarz district. Temporary because we were waiting to find a better accommodation in the city center.
The first week was very relaxing and it was useful because I got used to the new environment, new city and new life style. I got a polish telephone number and a new bank account, I started to figure out how the organization works and what were my tasks!
My project is officially started with the trip to Bnin orphanage where, with other volunteers from CIM Horyzonty, we went for an entire day to entertain the children, with games and different activities.
I have to say the first impact was pretty intense but very strength, children were wonderful, although some of them didn’t participate to our activities and I immediately realized how important is the communication.
I don’t speak polish but with the children you can always find the right way to make yourself understood: a gesture, a smile and magically, they can understand you! Anyway, the language is very important but if you don’t have that skill you are obligated to find new choices. And it’s from here that you can realized how amazing is the European Voluntary Service, it gives you some possibilities and you can live unique experiences that you cannot have in your own country!
After Bnin, I started my first workshop to the primary school in Łazarz district. Me and Aratnxa, the other EVS volunteer, started with polish support from our coordinator Bogusia, in that way we avoided a bad impact and everything was very easy! CIM Horyzonty is an amazing organization ‘cause they make every effort to get you comfortable and make your experience unique! Since I arrived I’ve never felt alone and I had just some small problems that we solved very fast!
The first workshops in the primary school were very beautiful and motivating. At the begin we proposed mainly group games but, after two weeks, the relationship with the children started to become more and more closer so we started to propose manual activities and, in a short time, me and Arantxa started to be independent and also the polish support became less till we were able to lead some activities completely alone!
I’m also trying to study polish language because I have the possibility to attend polish lessons once per week.
My job here is very flexible and this allow me to change and never get bored! Often I get some new activities like the workshop “five senses of culture” proposed from Horyzonty, which recall the concept of “living library”. Explaining briefly, in this case people are the books that they “were read” from other people. Our group was formed by a japanese volunteer and other 3 from Turkey. Naturally there were also other volunteers as translators. We met 3 classes from different primary schools and at the end a group of teenagers from Gimnasium. We had the assignment to introduce our culture using the five senses, after that the children/teenagers had time to read their living book making every kind of question, naturally related to the cultural topic. The project was very interesting, I was pleasantly surprised by some children’s questions because they proved to be very clever!
And…. What about Poznan life? :D This city is amazing, you can’t get bored! The people is very nice and 90% of the youngsters speak English, you can feel very comfortable! Café bar, pubs, clubs, it’s full of them, every need you have can be satisfied!