Mid-term trening u Splitu

IKS-ovi dugoročni EVS volonteri; Alice koja je u Petrinji na projektu Smile&Go u suradnji s partnerskom organizacijom Cemea del Mezzogiorno Onlus iz Italije, te Orhan i Neslişah koji volontiraju u sklopu projekta WE ARE COMBINING GENERATIONS s partnerskom organizacijom Şişli Kaymakamlığı iz Turske vratili su se s midterm treninga.

Mid-term trening u Splitu, održan u periodu između 18.-21.02.2020 organiziran je od strane Hrvatske Nacionalne Agencije za sve EVS I ESC volontere na području Hrvatske.

Iskustva naših volontera s treninga i naknadnog putovanja u BiH I Crnu Goru pročitajte u daljnjem teksu 🙂 

Midterm in Split and our journey

   ‘’We went to split for the midterm meeting. Our journey, which began early in the morning, ended when we arrived at Split at noon. We chatted with other volunteers before starting the first day of training. We chatted with volunteers about what had changed since our last meeting. It was lunchtime and we all met in the dining room. After dinner, training began. First, we made presentations about our evs life. Alice, Orhan and I did the presentation together. Our presentation included petrinja, udruga iks and our life outside of work. They then introduced themselves in the same way as other volunteers. After the presentations, we finished the first day of training with a few discussion events.

We started the second day of training with a little exercise. We created ourselves notebooks after exercise. After we created the notebooks, we went outside to do the activity. Everyone formed groups of two and we talked for 5-10 minutes on the questions given to us. Meanwhile, we had the opportunity to take a little walk to split. This way, five or six times we’ve been in groups with different people and talked about different questions. We took notes in our notebooks after each conversation. By the time these conversations were over, everyone had written a notebook that made up their own EVS life. We went back to the hostel and talked about what we had written and introduced our notebook to everyone. These were not notebooks anymore, but books we wrote.

We all made the plan for the third day of training. We thought about what topics we would like to work on and what we would like to learn. We have prepared workshops accordingly. We started the third day after breakfast with an event on the topic of after EVS. A volunteer briefed us on this. We then took part in a workshop on international flirting. Dinner consisted of a traditional Croatian menu. We tried a variety of fish dishes, all very nice.

On the last day of training we were informed about how to write the Youthpass certificate. We learned about what happens after volunteering. We discussed our options after volunteering. The training, which lasted until noon, ended around one o’clock. We were very excited about the holiday after the training and packed our things and set off for the holiday.”

Neslişah TAŞKIRANOĞULLARI

Midterm Meeting in Split (18-21 February) + Post Meeting Trip through Montenegro and Bosnia (21-28 February)

‘’On the 18^th of February I left Petrinja along with Orhan and Neslişah to go to our scheduled midterm meeting in Split for the next four days, and after that we went on a trip for another week to Montenegro and Bosnia.

The Midterm meeting in Split was quite an entertaining experience where we met with a lot of volunteers that we had first known in Orahovica for our training in October, it was like going on a school trip with some old friends and we managed to have a lot of fun. This meeting had the goal to help us share our experiences and also help us learn how to write our Youthpass and final report at the end of our volunteering experience. We also had an entire day where we could do our own workshop and organize the schedule of the day ourselves, so we put down some useful interesting ones like “What are my options after EVS?” alongside “Differences of Flirting in Europe” and “Capoeira on the Beach”. Overall the meeting was pretty fun, but also informative and I’m really glad we went there at the same time as the other volunteers we had previously met.

Our trip afterwards was some sort of adventure where we only took buses to move in the whole Balkan area for an entire week. On Friday we left Split to go to Dubrovnik for the night. Split was relaxed and sunny in mid-February, while Dubrovnik was already more touristic and pricey, but we only stayed one night and one day, just enough to see the famous Game of Thrones locations and a series of typical local dances in the main square on a Saturday. The next stop was going out of Croatia and into Montenegro, to Kotor, which only took 3 hours by bus and already looked quite amazing even at night, when we arrived. We stayed in Kotor for two nights, to relax and have enough time to visit the Fortress on the mountain -amazing view, completely worth the effort of walking up the mountain for three hours- and the close town of Budva -very nice, but incredibly windy-. Kotor was the place that most closely reminded me of a painting, with the sea looking like a lake and the mountains all around; we also managed to see a Karneval parade on Sunday and a wonderful sunset on the sea the next day.

We spent Monday night travelling to Mostar, Bosnia, in what could be described as an adventure that we managed to survive: uncooperative bus drivers, a winding road that did its best to not help us sleep, and an interesting border check where they checked Neslişah for non-existent drugs and me for corona-virus, just based on the fact that I’m Italian. Thankfully our arrival in Mostar was met with some incredibly nice people that allowed us to use the room we booked for that night even in the morning, probably because they could see how tired we were. We spent the rest of Tuesday and half of Wednesday relaxing in Mostar, with some Bosnian ćevapi, Turkish tea and visiting a couple of old Mosques. On Wednesday’s afternoon we left Mostar to go on the last location of our trip, Sarajevo.

We arrived with rain pouring down on the city, but we were determined to go out and eat some nice food, which we did even after arriving at the restaurant completely drenched. After some much needed good Bosnian food, we went out again to go back to the apartment to sleep and found a pleasant surprise: it was snowing, something that kept happening during the whole night and allowed us to wake up in a nice snow-cowered Sarajevo the next day. We powered through the snow with some ill-advised shoes and visited as much as we could of the capital, going up the hill to see the panorama (truly the “Best View!” as we were told), the Bazar, the Mosque on the river and the old library. That night, we took our last 8-hours’ bus to go back to Croatia and finish our trip, arriving in Zagreb on the 28^th of February, exactly 10 days after we first left Petrinja the week before.

It was quite an amazing trip, with some really nice people, great food, wonderful places and also a bit of adventure to keep us entertained through it all.’’

                                                                                                                                  Alice Bariani

Mid-Term Report

‘’We set off on 18 February for midterm training. After about 8 hours ‘ journey, we arrived at Split.  After 5 months, the sea air made me feel very peaceful. We left our belongings at the hostel and went to the beach with other volunteers. We hadn’t seen most volunteers after On-Arrival training and were delighted to see them. We spent our free time chatting together until training.  When it was time for the training we had prepared presentations on our Evs process and life to introduce ourselves and our projects to other volunteers. Neslişah, Alice and I prepared our presentation and we presented it together. So we learned about each volunteer’s project and what everyon was doing. So we made a quick start to training. Then our first day was over and we all went out to explore the city and hang out.

The next day, we got up early and went to breakfast, and then we started the training. On the second day we did an event where we toured the city of Split. By forming bilateral groups, we shared experiences in our projects and EVSprocess. We have written an EVS process book with this information. Then we talked about it. After the event, we designed our own workshops for Thursday. We chose the events for Thursday. After the training was over, we went out for a stroll and explored the city. At the first event in the morning on Thursday, Francesko gave us information about the projects we can participate in after volunteering. It was very useful information. Then we played Capoeira and Picigin on the beach. We talked about our EVS experiences in the other workshops. Thursday’s finest moment was the traditional fish dishes prepared at dinner. We ate a lot and then we had fun together.

We talked about Youthpass on the last day of training on Friday. It was also explained to us what projects there were after volunteering. We also said goodbye to all our volunteer friends after lunch on Friday and then started on our journey.

After training on Friday, I, Neslişah and Alice travelled to Dubrovnik and stayed here for 1 night. We wandered the Old City in Dubrovnik. It’s a really charming city, but it’s very expensive. Then we moved from there to Kotor and stayed 2 days in the city that impressed me the most. In the meantime, while we stayed there, we went to Budva and traveled a bit. After Montenegro, we went to Bosnia and Herzegovina. We stayed one night in Mostar and wandered off. Then we went to Sarajevo. After travelling there, we came back to Croatia on 28 February on a night trip. It was an exhausting but fun trip. We will now enjoy our remaining time in the last 1 month.’’

Orhan Beratoğlu