Hej!
So nice to be here sharing remarkable expericiences from EVS
participants from 2016. Today Leyla Olberding from Germany share her adventure. Check it
out. ;)
Cześć!
My name is Leyla and I am a volunteer at Fundacja Pomocna
Dłoń in Poland! I'm living and working in Warsaw, the beautiful capital.
Our work (I’m working with Sara) is about the residents of Fundacja Pomocna Dłoń, a home for people with disabilities. Most of them are in an age of about 50-70, though there are also some younger ones.
Leyla's working place ;) |
It is wonderful
to experience, that to connect with people you don't need to speak the same
language. Though, it would help a lot! In the beginning, they had a lot of fun
teaching us new polish words. We were really happy when we could remember the
pronunciation of some words, so of course we tried to use them in conversations
with the workers or in a shop.
Leyla in action! |
Most of the time the response was a strange look
or laugh as an answer so we were quite confused. With the time, we noticed that
every time we were saying one of those words to a worker, some residents would
start laughing. Probably, you can guess what was happening. They were just
creating the words they taught us so we were basically speaking almost half
polish and half an imaginary language. But it is not only us, being interested
in their language. They are as well interested to learn some Portuguese or
German words. And here we had to do something similar like them… We often just
couldn’t understand the word they wanted us to translate, so sometimes we just
had to teach them a random word in our language for what we thought they mean…
So in general, we have a great time with them.
Leyla and some friends from work. |
In music therapy, we learn
Polish folk songs and on Wednesday afternoons, we learn how to dance the
Polonaise, a traditional Polish dance. The rest of the week, we spend mostly
drinking tea and puzzling which is not the worst way to spend your time.
Some EVS from Warsaw 2016 :) |
But
EVS is not only about work. We have a lot of free time and my flatmates Sara,
Nele and Xavi and I have a lot of time to travel. We visited many different
polish cities and some in Germany as well.
Reading Leyla’s experience you could feel more involve in
what kind of activities EVS participants get in. As always is great to share
with you our adventures like a volunteer in a foreigner country.
Thank you very much for follow us!
Cheers!
Angélica Camargo Flórez
EVS - Pułtusk 2016
EVS - Pułtusk 2016
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