- 17 September 2024
- Posted by: Team for Youth Association
- Category: Volunteering Stories
Hello! I am Zeynep and I am an international volunteer from Turkey. Since the day I came here, I experienced a lot of life changing things. I would like to talk a bit about my volunteer experience in Baia Mare.
First, this is the first time I’ve been abroad and of course this is also the first time I’ve been experiencing a new culture every day for a month. I had a chance to try Romanian food in these two weeks and I really liked some of them: mamaliga, corvig and the traditional sweet cheese pastry. There are so many patisseries and bakeries to buy pastries and enjoy my morning with a delicious coffee. The dairy products… They are something else. If you are planning to come to Romania for volunteering, you should definitely try the cheeses and ice creams.
In Baia Mare, there are couple of museums to visit and I’ve visited the “Minerology Museum” so far. If you are interested in the stones with energies, you should absolutely visit this museum. The next week I will visit the “Art Museum” with my Romanian lesson teacher, Iulia. We have Romanian lessons on Mondays and I really enjoy having classes with her. She has her own ways to teach Romanian and they are not the usual teaching methods.
On Tuesdays, I go to “Asociația Esperando” which is an association for people with disabilities. I have met really amazing people there. Erika is responsible for the volunteers’ participation in activities at the rehabilitation center. She is kind and she has a sense of humor. When I go to Esperando the volunteers do handcraft activities. I help people with disabilities to do these activities and we also do sport activities like Ping-Pong and Volleyball. The first week I came here, we also went horse riding. People with disabilities I met in Esperando are really nice. I like spending time with them.
For some people it is hard to do activities with them because you need to be patient but for me, I love the days I do activities there.
And I see this as a big experience for me because doing things like this in our lives, opens our eyes and we experience things that are more different than our daily lives.
And the other volunteer activity I do is with “Little Feet Association”. It is a association I do volunteering in a village called Berința. There is a rehabilitation center for addicted people there. The days I go there, I help the things in the rehabilitation center. Dana and Emauel are in charge of this rehabilitation center. They are also really nice, kind and understanding people. We complete our jobs in the center, eat lunch together and have good laughs during the lunch. Dana and Emmanuel have a really special sense of humor I really enjoyed.
I think for now, these words I’ve been writing, expressing my feelings about my project in Baia Mare so far and for the two weeks left, I will be here for writing about my experiences again!
