Hi, I’m Cristian from Sicily, I'm 18 years old and I'm going to tell my experience with the ESC. So one day I was looking at the coupons that my driving school offered me and I get to know about the European Youth Card that gives me many services. In one of them I saw “opportunity to do voluntary service in Europe”. I got curious about it and started to research what this ESC is about. As I was not convinced about many things, like the reimbursement one I wanted to take the risk.
So I searched for opportunities, filtered the dates (from June to September) and made many applications and one of those was for Yellow Shirts. As I waited for someone to write me an email, one day Yellow Shirts contacted me to subscribe to a form to prepare all documents necessary to let me in.
On those days, I discussed about this project with my parents and they were, of course, not happy at all: “what if they won’t give your money back?”, “why Romania?” etc. I mean, they were reasonable because this was my first time travelling and so taking the plane, going in a foreign country alone without knowing anything about it. I started asking Yellow Shirts about every kind of thing I needed to know to convince my parents in letting me go.
After my form was revisited, we established an online discussion on the 30 of May and this day I met Donia and Ipek, two group leaders, and we had a chill friendly discussion.
I was kinda anxious because it was the first time for me speaking in English with other people and I felt embarrassed too because I was at home and everyone could hear me and be like “what is he saying”.
So after the discussion my mom came in my room shocked saying: “Did you really succeed having a conversation in English?? And you can speak it so well?”. Then she hugged me proudly and that was the moment she got convinced in letting me in this project.
After I accepted the project I immediately went to a travel agency and book the flight, signed the contracts and sent everything to Yellow Shirts.
Then last thing I was worried was the bus, wrote to Yellow Shirts about it and happily enough they booked me the bus roundtrip. I don’t know where I could’ve been these days if this wasn’t going to happen.
So, I get to Budapest after a good flight, had a little of stress moment for the bus and after I got in finally I reached Baia Mare. I arrived in the morning and Donia took me to the Yellow House, we had a little funny conversation about my trip in the bus and then went to sleep.
I woke up around 11 A.M, met Ipek and Santiago, another group leader, and after some hours I went with Donia around Baia Mare.
Then at 8 P.M she took me to the dorm and there I met the president of the organization Andreea and the other volunteers.
Day passes, after memorizing some streets, know the other volunteers we started the project. We played group bond games, we went eco hiking, prepared for the tournaments where with teamwork we made a good job in our roles.
On Monday 27 I get to know about Somaschi organization, went there and saw the other side of Baia Mare. I had fun playing with kids and through them I learned a bit of Romanian words and numbers. From 30 June until 6 July we had cultural presentations and the last two hikes.
In conclusion I'm really happy to have participated in this project, I made good friends and I have to thank Andreea and her patience for dealing with me and choosing me.
-Cristian