I am a character in an animated video! Isn't it awesome?
What's the story behind it? I have been working with my dear and talented friends from Skeptic Dog Animation for creating an animated video about OpportUNITY, the organisation in which I am now a volunteer. Have a look and tell me what you think!
Yes, I am moving abroad for the first time in my life and I cannot be more excited about it. I have wished for this for so long and now it is finally happening.
I have been travelling quite a lot this last year, but I have never had the long term international experience. Now I have my first one way ticket and it is to the beautiful city Newcastle upon Tyne in UK.
Newcastle upon Tyne by night
I have posted some photos from the city in my article, from when I visited it for the first time this January. Until new updates, I leave you with this amazing video that shows just how wonderful Newcastle is:
I have just returned in Romania from Münster, Germany where I attended one of the best international projects - Social Media Bridges connected with the Digital Participation Camp & Summit. I already miss everybody from the camp and everything related to it, but I am extremely happy for the experience that I had, for everything that I learnt and for the all new beautiful friends that I made.
The Digital Participation Camp (DPC) aims at creating an active international network of digital innovators, social entrepreneurs, designers, developers and content creators to unite skills and work together on digital projects for social good. This year 90 participants from 33 countries worked together and developed 8 amazing social projects.
Besides the projects that come to life during the camp, DPC is also about living for 12 days with a group of beautiful people from all around the world, discovering and understanding other cultures and traditions, sharing experiences, making friends for life, creating great memories, learning and developing skills, getting inspired and motivated to bring a positive change into the world. I came back home more rich in experiences, knowledge and relationships that have been created.
The following video is full of beautiful memories and brought tears in the eyes of many participants, including in mine.
I am truly grateful for having the chance of taking part in this life-changing experience. Special thanks to Carina Schmid from The Global Experience and Mathis Haas from Super Social for your beautiful work and for making all this happen, and to our dear Ingrid Gázquez who worked hard and took good care of the European participants, who attended the project through the Erasmus+ programme.
I am in Łódź, Poland
and last night I came across a concept that I really liked so I want to share
it with you. We went to a bar on Piotrkowska
Street 102, where every Thursday night there is a Language Exchange
meeting. What is a Language Exchange?
A nice opportunity to interact with people from different countries, have
interesting conversations and maybe build friendships. If you enjoy meeting
people, especially from other nationalities and like sharing life stories and
experiences, this kind of event is perfect for you.
When you arrive there you
have to put on a sticker with your name, your native language and the other
languages that you know. Then you just start approaching people based on the
common language(s) that you can speak. I also read somewhere that some nights tables
are arranged by language – another way of connecting the people that are attending the meeting.
I found this concept
really interesting and fun. Plus, the place looks really nice. So I searched
whether there are such events in Bucharest as well, and I happily found
something similar: Language Exchange Bucharest.
Language Exchange Bucharest is a bit different, as it is focused on learning
and practicing foreign languages by speaking them with other people. The
meetings are organized weekly or once every 2 weeks in coffee shops and tea
houses and the languages used are English, German, French, Spanish, Russian and
Italian (only one language used per meeting). During the events you can communicate
in the meeting’s language but there are also other activities that you can
attend like film, karaoke, game night meetings, trips and parties. This idea is
also nice and all the meetings are free of charge. If you want more information about Language
Exchange Bucharest, follow their websiteor their Facebook page.
Do you have this kind
of meetings in your city/country?
“Time is what we want
most, but what we use worst” (William Penn).
When was the last time you thought: "I don't
have time for this"?
Today we say this so
often. But did you notice what are the things for which we cannot find
time? Usually for what makes us happy. We don’t have time for our family, we
don’t have time to read, to exercise, to
travel, we don’t have time for our hobbies, for our passions, for our dreams. Is
this normal? If we only live once, shouldn’t we live doing whatever makes us happy
and laugh until our belly hurts, whatever makes us falling asleep with a smile
on our face, whatever makes us feel loved, proud, accomplished, alive?
In November 2014 I had the opportunity to bring a change and a touch of happiness in some
persons’ lives through an action in Lisbon aimed to raise awareness about this
issue. I was in Portugal as a participant in an Youth Exchange about social problems
and design-based social activism campaigns. At the end of this
exchange we, the participants, organised the action I mentioned above and we
named it “Take your Time”.
With this action we
wanted to remind people that we should invest our time wisely, thus we should work
to change our bad habits and invest more of our time in the things that make us
or people that we care about happier.
The event took part in
the center of Lisbon - at Praça do Comércio – and we tried our
best to offer people a complete experience – to make them realise that it is
important to make time for those things that bring happiness into their lives,
to make them remember what are those things that truly matter for them and,
finally, to help them find solutions in order to make time for those activities.
At the beginning of
their experience, people who joined the action were invited to write on a
poster the things that they would like to do, but don’t have time for. Then
they received a small bottle and a paper to do the same. After that they were
invited to walk through our installation where they found posters with suggested
solutions of how one can solve the problem of time and manage to do those
things he/she would like to do.
"Take your Time" beautiful organising team
Watch this for a better understanding of “Take your time” event.
Because our event took part in the center of
Lisbon, there were many tourists passing by so we had participants from different parts of
the world. And do you know what I realised? No matter where we are from, what are
our cultures or traditions, we all forget to invest time in the same things:
hobbies (painting, playing an instrument, sports etc.), our families, the persons we
love, adventure, having fun.
Now think about it: what
are the things you would like to have more time for? And what can you do in order to make time for them?
In September I participated in an youth exchange project and I
spent two weeks in Hungary together with other 28 participants from Romania,
Ukraine and Georgia. The project was called "Be entrepreneur" and the
purpose of it was the exchange of experience and knowledge among young people
from the participating countries interested in entrepreneurship. I liked the
fact that among the participants were also young entrepreneurs, including from
Romania, which were open to share with us their experiences, give us advices
and encourage us to put our ideas into practice.
The project was held in Vásárosnamény, a city in eastern
Hungary I didn’t hear about before and whose name we didn’t know how to
pronounce. Therefore, on the road it was really funny how we were replacing the
name of the city with "there", "in that town", “at the
destination" etc.
We were 10 participants from Romania and together we formed a
beautiful and united team with whom I felt great during the project. It was a
nice feeling of friendship ever since the first time we met, and during the
project we were like a little family – everybody kept asking us if we knew each
other before the project and were surprised to find out that we met for the
first time just before it.
Romanian delegation
I had the pleasure to meet smart, friendly and talented young
people with whom I spent the most fun and interesting two weeks in a long time.
I still keep in touch with some of them and I hope that we will see each other
soon, maybe in another project, discovering together another country in Europe.
"Be entrepreneur" project participants
I miss so much this experience, but who wouldn’t? I felt so
good and free. We had a large yard with green grass and the weather was great,
thus we did most of the activities outside. During the project we had bikes
available and the organizers encouraged us to ride them as much as we could and
discover the surroundings - one of the aims of the project was also promoting
of the area.
Every day we were playing the guitar and listening to many
beautiful songs from Ukraine and Georgia. To our surprise, the Ukrainians
already knew how to play Andrii Popa (a Romanian song) and we were so happy to listen to it and to
sing along. Of course, I took advantage of the opportunity and took some guitar
lessons for the first time. In the category "what new things I
learned" are also included the Ukrainian and Georgian "lessons" that I
took (and, of course, in return I also taught them some Romanian words).
Vásárosnamény
Vásárosnamény
Vásárosnamény
Vásárosnamény
During the project I had the opportunity to visit some areas
in Hungary; besides Vásárosnamény, I
visited Debrecen, Nyíregyháza, Tokaj
and Erdőbénye.
Debrecen
Debrecen
Debrecen
Tokaj
Erdőbénye I liked the most, where we visited a local wine
business and after that some tasty traditional food and wine tasting were
prepared for us. The atmosphere was so special, the food delicious and the wine
really good.
Erdőbénye - wine tasting
Erdőbénye - wine tasting
Erdőbénye - wine tasting
Erdőbénye - wine tasting
In the agenda were also included intercultural nights. There
were presentations about the culture and customs of each country, we tasted
traditional food and drinks and learned traditional dances. During the
Hungarian evening, besides the traditional food that was prepared for us, we
also had the great surprise to learn some specific dances from two professional
dancers.
Intercultural night: Romania
Intercultural night: Romania
Intercultural night: Georgia
Intercultural night: Georgia
Intercultural night: Ukraine
Intercultural night: Ukraine
Intercultural night: Ukraine
Intercultural night: Ukraine
Intercultural night: Hungary
Intercultural night: Hungary
Intercultural night: Hungary
Intercultural night: Hungary. Traditional clothes
Intercultural night: Hungary. Traditional clothes
Intercultural night: Hungary. Traditional dace
At the end of the project, Tim – Ukrainian participant -
wrote a song about Vásárosnamény - the city whose name, as I said before, no
one knew how to pronounce it initially - and we made a funny video for the
song. The result is the video down below (Andra, Romanian participant, helped
with the voice - I told you that I met talented young people):
Also, Katia, a participant from Ukraine and one of my
roomates, surprised us with a short video about the experience we had in
Hungary:
"Be entrepreneur" project was organised by Ajak Ifjúságáért Közhasznú Közalapítvány and was funded by the European Commission. I attended this project through GEYC. I highly recommend you to take advantage of such projects because they are a very nice experience and they help you develop in many ways. You have the opportunity to travel, to interact with other cultures and with different young people from Europe with common interests, practice English, practice other languages, benefit of training on the project’s topic, you develop your love for your country and you have fun! Oh, and all this is almost free. I encourage you to take advantage of them and believe me, once you go to such a project you will not be able to wait until the next one!
