Hey guys! So today it is Baru writing this small and tiny article about the May. Hope you will like it
May was our 8th month. So we have just last two months to go which sounds just crazy. Well, let´s leave this thought for a while. Now it is the time for a review! So… let´s follow our schedule and I will try to pinpoint the highlights, since there was so much happening!
At the beginning of May, Tina and Baru went together to the Midterm training to Poiana Mica, Brasov. Tina already knew few volunteers from her On-arrival, but Baru knew nobody, yet that wasn´t problem at all. And you know why? I will tell you about it, because you must learn about the amazing outcomes of being EVS volunteer.
This experience teaches us all a lot, but what I feel the most, it teaches us to become much more open to the others than ever before. It is easier to relate, to feel each other very close. When you compare the feeling of On-arrival training and feeling of Midterm training, the difference is just so visible. Everybody is more dare to share and to show how much in common we all have. Everybody is so much more ready to learn and also ready to teach the others. And I would like to share my personal impression here with you. I was just amazed by all my Midterm training colleagues. Those very often 19 or 20 years old guys are just amazing and so inspiring! How much they grow, how much they matured, and how much they DO reflect and care about their own growth. Also how much they care about their surrounding, people and how much they learn because of it. All of us, we are still crazy young people who want to have fun and parties, but the dialog and thoughts within are so deep. Either they got deeper throughout the EVS experience, or the other option which comes to my mind is that the people share their thoughtful inner experience much more than they used to be doing ever before. Both of those options are just awesome and I am so happy to see this and experience it. I might be wrong, but that is what I felt and perceived, and I felt proud of all the guys and so happy to got to know them and learn from them, and especially, it gave me so much hope into future.
Well back to what is Midterm training about. Basically the idea of Midterm training is to reflect 
upon our ongoing EVS experience, to slowly start closing it but also to find out what more we can still learn further. And I would like to share a bit of Tina´s and my reflection.
- We were asked to describe our project with one word, well we failed, and used bit more. We agreed that both of us we would describe our project like: Exploring, learning about, and delivering our gifts! <3
- And we realized that apart from many other things, the community of people we are surrounded with and the freedom we are given to be initiative in creating our personal projects is making this project just extraordinary for us!
And you know what? When we were in Brasov, it snowed! On the 7th of May! How awesome for a mountain girl as I am. Just pure happiness.
And now let´s get to our Cluj-businesses.
During this month we have already finished the workshops at Technical school. We had really nice 
last farewell workshops, also a bit evaluating what we have managed together and what it has brought us all.
Regarding workshops for General Public, which is another step of your development as facilitators, there is to say that two workshops (facilitated by Andreea & Baru) have already happened and during next two months there are four more to go. Just to explain a little bit. General Public event is happing in Minte Forte Organization office, we create public Facebook event, and this way we reach big variety of adult people. So after working with children and adolescence, this is new experience of working with adults.
We still keep going to the hospital. It is not always that easy for us to find motivation for this activity, since in the beginning there were problems to have patients to work with, but with some practical changes, it has grown better. We speak a lot of Romanian, which help us a lot to practice our language skills!
And as last, our personal projects! Tina and Gloria has managed to already finish, Baru has just her
first workshop out of 3 done and Joana will start hers bit later, so there are not that many workshops at the same time. Tina´s program consisted of 5 workshops and was called Soul Expression via Art. It was great journey
of self-exploration indeed! And off course, also Gloria´s program “By the artist, with love” used a lot of art techniques. In this case mostly drawing/painting/collage creating. The specialty of this 3-workshops Program was the connection between learning information about artists of those huge and famous names as Pollock, Matisse, Van Gog; and 
actually using the art techniques of theirs for discovering our own inner world. I believe that Gloria brought a lot of inspiration for us! For sure for me! And last to mention for now is my (Baru´s) personal project which is aiming at teachers. Hopefully, I will create workshops which will help teachers to reflect on their carrier, bring some new ideas and practices about self-care techniques, and touch topic of Mindfulness and its use in school setting as well as for personal care. But basically my intention is to give them and offer them the care and attention they deserve and which they are not very much given by the system.
What more to mention? The week from 13th to 19th May was the International Volunteering Week. 
And thanks to our friendships with the EVS volunteers of the Volunteer Centre of Cluj and their great initiative during that week, we had opportunity to join their activities and help them a bit. Gloria participated accompanied by our new Minte Forte colleague Teo, at the NGO fair in Central Park. And we also joined “Padurea Verde” event, in which together with about 20 volunteers, we were cleaning a green area of the city from trash.
Aaaaand we still travel a lot, host many friends, either other EVS volunteers or our friends from home, and we keep discovering new places either in Cluj or bit further, but to tell you all of this, we would be here another at least 10 min, yet you can be sure that we are not forgetting about this!
Have a wonderful day! <3