Impressions of Romanian group

Our volunteers and friends took part in an amazing youth exchange organized in Poland in the past week. This is what they had to say about their experience:

Living in a world where interculturality is the key to success, today, we have many possibilities that give us the chance to meet new people and places. The gateway to the knowledge of new cultures is also the Erasmus + program. One of the experiences I want to tell is the one I experienced a week ago, in a beautiful village in Poland. There I met wonderful people like the Poles who took care of the guests from Cyprus, Latvia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, including us from Romania.

The theme of the project was “Time is on our side”, which certainly helped us to set our priorities for both the day and the distant future. This is due to the skill of the organizers of planning interactive games in which we not only learned how to program our time, but also to accept the cultural difference between the participants.

Also worth mentioning are the intercultural evenings that made us even closer to discovering the splendor of diversity. Due to this fact, the Erasmus + program manages to expand daily.

"A fost o experiență frumoasă în care am reușit să trec peste barierele culturale și lingvistice. De aceasta consider că trebuie să promovăm programul Erasmus+ și să profităm din plin de oportunitățile pe care ni le oferă." Mihaela

"I enjoyed the time that was well spent at this project and also with the participants who where willing to share their own experiences without any restrains." Raoul

"This was an amazing experience because we learned how to manage our time better and we shared our knowledge about others cultures." Daniela

"I really enjoyed this project, I gained a deeper understanding of the topic but most importantly I got the chance to meet amazing people and new cultures. Once Erasmus+, always Erasmus+" Ilinca

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Departure day

It was the last day of our youth exchange.  Departure day. At 05:00 am Romanians and Latvians got on the bus and left. One hour later the same did Hungarians. At 07:30 we had last breakfast. At 08:20 Czechs went to the bus stop and went to their way to home. At 10:00 the last team, team from Cyprus got on the bus and went to home. Polish team stayed on place to check if everything is fine and they also came back to home.

One of our videos showing departures and advertise of our blog in one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GG1xFWfcEuo

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Seventh day.

The last day of our youth exchange was a little bit more lazy than the previous ones. Unfortunately, we had to start to pack our bags. Our day began with a breakfast and little energizer and then we talked about dissemination – how we can advertise the project and Erasmus+ in general among our friends and in our local communities. Every person had to declare how he or she wants to do it. Then we thought about competences – what we learned during this project (and we learned a lot!). After the lunch, Polish team prepared evaluation of the exchange and it was quite unusual. We spent one hour walking in silence, writing (and even painting) our thoughts and impressions about the project. In the evening, we had bonfire and farewell party. We revealed secret friends and we had a ceremony of handing youthpasses to everyone. Most of us stayed awake till the morning, talking and dancing, because it was so hard to say goodbye...    

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Visiting Zamość (Sixth day)

Trip to Zamość was exctiting. We could refreash our brains after being in project venue for first days. We had some fun there but also responsibilities. Everyone of us prepared leaflets advertising our Facebook page and our blog. We were talking to young citizens of Zamość on the streets and giving them leaflets to get more info about our actions.

We also had meeting with regional TV which made interviews with our participants. You can find it in the evening news (from: 14:48min)

https://lublin.tvp.pl/44237456/4-wrzesnia-2019-g-1830?fbclid=IwAR0SnPNdH9hiPi42WlhsVtu3N6PtapN3ZoLlhTkfR-keiFSpoZ6svxsFpEM

After interviews we split into two teams according to our choices how to spend free time. Half of group decided to go for trip around old town with electric cars. Second part of the group decided to meet with HEureka’s good friend, Mr Leszek Sobuś who told us a lot of things about history of Zamość. We were also shooting with cannon! How cool is that.

Evening came fast and we all went to traditional Polish restaurant for a dinner.  We tried traditional Polish soup – Żurek, which was served in ‘bread plate’ and a lot of other things :D

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Meeting with students in C.K. Norwid Secondary School (Sixth day)

We are together for quite a long time already. We know how valuable experience youth exchange can be. So, it is highest time to meet with young people in Lubelskie region of Poland to share what we are doing. Thanks to it in near future next young people will participate in international youth exchange.

Association HEureka Generator cooperates with Secondary and Elementary Schools. We were very excited to visit one of them, to see daily school life of Polish youngsters and to tell them how they can be active on international and local level.

We split into 5 international groups and spent 45 min on 5 different lessons. It was not so difficult to prepare for this event. We used games from our first days and also we were talking in English about ‘Time is on our side’, Erasmus+ programme and our hobbies.

We would like to thank to C.K. Norwid Secondary School for this opportunity. It was very cool part of our youth exchange ;-)

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Fifth day.

5th day was full of work connected to preparation of our meeting with local community of Lubelskie region. We made leaflets and created structure of meeting at school. With students. There was also time for some cool phisical activities not to spend too much time on the chairs.

HEureka’s member, Kasia Kurowska came to us and presented very cool circus technics which we later tried together with her. We hope that tomorrow event in Krasnystaw and Zamość will be succesful :D

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Fourth day.

The morning of our fourth day at the exchanged started with a nice surprise: the weather was amazing again! Warm and sunny, just perfect for the excursion we’ve been planning for the afternoon.

After some delicious breakfast we went to the conference room as usual and played a very exciting energizer including 2 pillows… When we’ve been energized enough, we had some discussions and games related to resolutions, goals and desires. After this we were divided into smaller groups and started to prepare a task, one by each group, for the other groups for the afternoon game related to time management. It turned out to be a great fun, especially after an amazing lunch. We had to solve some riddles, dance, do some pictures real fast and answer questions related to time management and our countries.

Sadly, during our afternoon session the weather turned grey, so we finally decided to only go for a shorter walk to the lake nearby. We had great fun and enjoyed a lovely walk in the nature together, full of interesting conversations all along the way.

As soon as we got back, the dinner was ready by the bonfire, waiting for us. After we’ve finished eating, we just sat around the bonfire, enjoyed the company of each other and danced until the thunderstorm came – and even after it.

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Third day

As usual our programme started at 10 am. However, many participants were coming tired after

demanding cultural night. But the first energizer woke us all up.

Afterwards we started the time-management workshop about prioritizing methods by scheduling our

perfect 24 hour free day, sequentially the number of hours was reduced and we had to also reduced

our list of activities, so we got only to those most important for each one of us.

Then we learnt the technics of priority matrix which was found very worth-taking by everyone.

During this technics we obtained the knowledge of how to prioritize our daily activities by evaluating

them according to their importance and urgency.

The last activity before the lunch was writing down the important mile-stones of our lives and then

discussing those which took the most of our effort and finding out which skills and people helped us

to achieve those things.

After the delicious lunch we had the chance to try oxford debate. Participants were divided into

audience, two teams of three speakers and the head of the debate and her assistant. The topic of the

debate was democratically chosen by all of us and it was this statement: “People should work 4

hours a day”. Before the debate itself the speakers had some time to prepare their arguments and

learn how the debate looks like in theoretical way. During the debate it was quite stressful for the

speakers especially for those who participated in oxford debate for the first time but they all did very

well even though the questions of the audience were not easy to discuss.

After the difficult debate we were very thankful to have more free time before the diner. Some of the participants used the break to go for a walk or swim in the lake which is close to the

accommodation. Or people just relax.

This interesting day finished with the night programme of playing games, either card or drinking

games which were made up by participants. We were having a lot of fun.

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Second day

31st August we spent with amazing people. During our sessions we got know with new techniques of analyzing time we spend on different activities as well as S. M. A. R. T goal analyze which could be really helpful for planning your time on long term. We had a chance to share our culture and get know new about others by tasting different snacks and drinks and sharing stories.

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First day

Since it was the first day, we started with ice- breaking games to introduce ourselves and meet with other participants. We had various activities such as speed dating. We asked each other’s hobbies, studies and talked about our lives in general. In the afternoon, we had workshops prepared by the Cyprus and Latvia. Cyprus team made an activity for questioning about time management, including various quotes. In smaller groups, we commented together on them. Latvia group shared their previous Erasmus + experiences. After dinner, we had a meeting to discuss and sign for a contract of rules that we all agreed upon, to obey during the project.

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