Salut dear readers! Here we are one more month the international team to update you about our activities and events. This time it’s Bea taking care of it 😉
July has been a wonderful month: a lot of events are happening in the city, sunny and warm long days, new collaborations and activities are starting, sounds good right?
We started the month with an intercultural evening, and this time was a Brazilian celebration called “Festa Junina ou Arraiá de São João”. Gabi was the international volunteer in charge of coordinating the event and the Brazilian representative. We celebrated it in Faget Forest and it was super gratifying to see so many people interested and assisting to the event. For creating the environment, the international volunteers prepared some typical decoration based on colourful flag garlands and, of course, a bonfire. During the evening, we learnt the traditional dance called “Quadrilha”, some of the assistants interpreted the theatre of the marriage (a typical funny performance) and we tasted some delicious Brazilian food like caldinho de feijão, bolo de milho, paçoca, and quentão (wine with spices). Everything accompanied with Brazilian sounds and movements until the sunrise. I am looking forward to the next one!!!!
In the middle of this month, Carmen, Gabi and I (Bea) started a new experience participating in some projects that give support to Pata-Rât´s Romany community. The context is really hard and heartrending, a community marginalized living around a garbage dump in precarious conditions, and just a few steps from the city. These projects are focused on giving support and cover basic needs of kids and young mothers with their babies. In the facilities, they receive lunch, can take a shower, some clothes and diapers for the babies, and they have different activities to revise school subjects or just have a little of fun together. This experience is a huge challenge for us, but we really feel grateful for having the opportunity of knowing this other reality and can spend some time with them giving our care and best energy.
The third weekend of the month, the international volunteers visited Mada´s parents´ house, our coordinator in this project. We were in a small village in the surroundings of Zalau, enjoying walks in nature, tasting typical Romanian homemade food and drinks, visiting traditional houses and sharing some typical dances of our countries, among other things. It was great to spend more time together and we had a lot of fun!!! ☺
After that wonderful weekend, we had the Mid Term Evaluation, a week in which we assisted an online course to reflect and share our volunteering experience with other ESC volunteers in all Romania. During this time, we presented to the other volunteers our project and the activities that we did until now, knew about other projects happening in Romania, revised basic concepts about the youth path, talked about the personal learning goals, and a bit about future expectations after the project. Unfortunately, we couldn’t do it face to face in Bucharest because of the Covid restrictions, but it was nice and interesting to know more volunteers and projects.
Aaaaand last but not least, we concluded the month by organising a theatre with Pahumi volunteers. The theatre was about the Jungle Book, and we were taking care of the artistic part, mostly the costumes, decoration and choreography included in the play. Tero, Carmen and I were the team in charge of the costumes and decoration, while Gabi and Kitty were preparing and rehearsing with the kids the dance. It was super funny to create with the kids the mask and other complements and finally the performance was all a success!!!
During this last week also it was happening the TIFF, Transylvania International Film Festival. I have had an intense weekly session of films from different nationalities and styles, indoor and outdoor. I really loved this event and the environment in the city centre, everyone was moving to a different spot to watch a movie or just hang out with friends. The city never stops!!!
And that’s all for this month dears. Next month more and better! ☺