Simone Schirru
Italy – EVS volunteer in Europejskie Forum Młodzieży
Simone’s EVS in music mode 🙂
Almost five months later here I am writing about my experience with EVS in Poland. Another experience that comes to an end… Usually what scares me the most about starting a new experience is not when I’m moving into a new environment but when I have to move back to the older one. This time is of no difference. When you first move into a new place abroad everything for me is new and exciting, the people are different, the culture is different, the time you have in front of you is just a concept to indicate boundless opportunities available. You start a new routine and sometimes you forget that your daily life used to be so different just until few weeks earlier, as if you were never your past but you were born into the present.
One quote says “Don’t be sad cause it’s finished, be happy because it happened” and even though it might not seem like it from what I wrote, I’m currently more happy that it happened than sad that it’s finished. I’m happy and grateful that I had this opportunity I would have never imagined doing in a country like Poland just until last December. Time limits make you appreciate the moments you have and 5 months with EFM just feels right. I’m grateful for the things that EFM Poland gave me the possibility to do, having met so many new faces in comparison to such a short amount of time, travelled in new places and countries with many people, only one person or by myself, being immersed in the rural reality of Southern Poland and so on. This experience taught me so many new things in the highs and lows, which were both abundant, meaning that together the experience has been a very full one and the lessons many.
There are so many ways that I’ve challenged myself during these months, taking on new tasks that I would never thought of doing, trying to be more patient with others, travelling completely by myself for days to other countries, having to share my personal space with so many people all the time, etc. that I want to avoid to write this as if it was a list. Although It might be sad to say goodbye and that everything is for real coming to an end, I will go home excited for my future plans and confident to have become another person, presumably better, knowing that my memories will be alive in my head and hopefully to those whom I met and especially connected the most.
It’s indeed when you know that it’s coming to an end that the human psyche triggers those awakening feelings in my body that make me realize it will be one of the very last times that I see the imponent house in Długopole, the large kitchen which is basically the common room of the building, so many space to offer that cooking there was always enjoyable and sometimes we would stay there for hours in the long yellow wooden tables, the people from the office in Bystryzca Kłodzka, its Biedronka, walking to the train station in Domaszkow and so on. So many things that became routine and that I know that, even though I could always come back, it will never be the same, there will never be the same amount of people, we would have gone through other different things in life in the meantime and the context would generally be different. I’m sure that memories about these 5 months will just pop up into my mind for no apparent reason, and in other occasions for very clear ones both bringing me back to this time in life.
The house in Długopole will continue having new volunteers, with the same expectations, fears, delusions and on top of the world moments just like me and the other volunteers who arrived in the same period and the cycle will repeat itself, hoping that I would have contributed to it in some ways.
So I won’t be sad that it’s over, I’ll be happy that it has happened, that I’m coming back being a richer person than before because of what the experience taught me through the things I’ve done and the special people I’ve got to come across, confident also that in this moment of unique routine in a huge house in such a small village in rural Poland with such a strong multicultural environment, coming back will allow me to step my feet in the ground after months of floating in the sunny and stormy clouds of Poland, learning more lessons that this unique crazy amazing experience with EFM Poland had to offer me.
Hosting organisation: Europejskie Forum Młodzieży
Sending organisation: Associazione Culturale Strauss
Erasmus+ Programme
Photos provided by Simone Schirru and/or taken by EFM
or other volunteers during his project.
