EVS Leyla Olberding talks from Warzsawa

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