July description

It has already been one month since I arrived in Turkiye and I am halfway through my journey. These past weeks have been full of people, activities, trips, children, and games, so let’s start from the beginning.

I remember my first night, arriving exhausted in Ankara, hungry, and sweaty. The following day I met with the other volunteers from various countries in Europe, Azerbaijan, and of course, Turkiye. We did the first activity and went to eat outside all together, the orientation week had officially begun. We were introduced to the youth center where the main of our activities would take place, we wrote down all our fears and expectations, and reviewed the schedule we would follow. We started to work with the children, painting, doing energizers, playing games and presenting our own countries.
I was pleasantly surprised by their enthusiasm during the activities we did and by their determination to learn English, even though it is not an easy language for them. After the orientation week was done, I was reassigned to another youth center, farther away, but bigger. That place impressed me because of its infrastructure, number of teachers and the many children. As teacher assistants, we were able to choose the classes we wanted to take part in, and we had a lot of options, from football, tennis, basketball, volleyball, cinema to drama, English, arts, music, robotics, and gymnastics. The place was so lively, full of energy, we have been well integrated thanks to the teachers who helped us.

            Ten days after the project started, my friend and I had a great opportunity to travel to another city of the country for over a week. It was still a volunteering project, working with children again, but they were from disadvantaged areas. There I met people from all over the country, we were more or less the same age, but with very different backgrounds. I am grateful because everyone from there tried to include me, get to know me better, to share their culture and treated me like a special guest. I took part of a wonderful group which helped me to understand more deeper the country of Turkiye. I did a ton of activities there, but the most common one was dancing with children. The smiles, the hugs and the small conversations with them remained printed in my memory and marked my journey here.

 We went to mosques, study places, and youth centers to bring joy and happiness. In addition, we did ecological actions, cleaning places around the city, a lake, a cemetery and near our dormitory. We visited many people who had lost their children in wars or terrorist attacks or people with disabilities. Nevertheless, we visited different institutions which offer emergency services in case of an earthquake, and the police authorities. We travelled a lot around the city and around the region in order to reach as many places as possible. We had a lot of fun too, we had the opportunity to see historical sites, local bazaars with traditional clothes and products, and famous tombs. We arrived in two marvellous natural places that truly amazed us: a waterfall and an ice lake. It was an unforgettable experience where I learnt and saw many things and left from there with many friends and memories.

   In the end I returned back to Ankara, where things seemed to have stayed the same, I continued my daily activities with the children, but I returned changed. Now I feel more confident, experienced, fearless and ready to face future challenges. Overall, I can feel the impact of the project on me, in the way I think and in how I see the world. It is not over yet, there are still many lessons to learn and places to discover, but I am entering the new month just as enthusiastic as I was at the beginning, with the same interest, but wiser.