Carried out activities :)

This thrilling project started the 1st of May, the day we arrived to Sofia for the first time (less Bora who had to arrive later for visa problems), I still remember meet for the first time our mates and mentor, and our first impression of the flat, very old at the beginning but now is our second home.


First days in Sofia.

Our first days in Sofia we met the member of NART Paulina, Miglena and Dimitar and they explained us our tasks and  activities that we were gonna carried out at the begining of the project, that unfortunately was almost everything office work.

In these first days, we discovered Bulgarian food( and we still do), like tarator, lutenistsa, banitsa, moussaka or rakia, is strange for us, because we come from Spain, France and Turkey in which the plates are very differents, but that doesn't mean worse.

We visited the city, especially the city center is very beautiful, with a lot of parks and interesting monuments like the most emblematic one, Alexander Nevski Cathedral, or NDK and National Theater, but the buildings are very different from our home cities, because you can still see in them the marks of communism. And we started our social life there, Sofia is a city in which you can always find something to do and every day we still continue discovering new places where we can take some drinks and have a nice time with friends.

Starting school

Finally, the second week arrived the moment we were waiting for, we visited the schools (Grigorii Tsanblak and Ivan Bogorov), we met with professors to talk about the activities we were gonna carried out in the school, since the first moment they were very kind with us and they encouraged us to propose ideas and be active in the activities of the school, but we faced the language problem that we solved with the help of the kids always open to communicate with us thoughout gestures or mix of English and Bulgarian, and the teachers.

For the moment, we didn't do a lot of things in the schools because the academic year finished soon, but we have played football, ping pong, dance, explain our culture,... And from September we expect to help them to set goals and perspectives for their future, encouraging them to study and giving them some information about how to prepare CVs or do interviews so we are sure that from September our work in the school we will add way more value to this experience.

Trainings

The best one was the arrival training in which we spent one week with all the volunteers that recently arrived to Bulgaria and gathered together in a hotel in Sofia, we met a lot of volunteers that were more less in the same circumstances than us, and thanks to that we hang out with them a lot of times and we know people from all around Bulgaria with all the benefits that entails.

In Addition, in this arrival training we learnt( in the classes we went and we don't keep sleeping because of the night before...) which are our rights and obligations, the role that we have to play in the project, the encouraged us to play an active role and to make activities for our own, and learn a bit more about EVS , Cigna,...
 
In Addition, we have made a couple of training with NART, the first training we made in the the resource center with Miglena ( one of our mentors), in which we learnt how to work with people with disabilities and how to treat them, and we were with a lot of professionals.The second was the team building in Blagoevgrad, where we met better NART's member that are working with us, and we did feedback about our first months in the project and we set the basics to the next activities. Furthermore, in this training we had a very interesting meeting with Vladislav who teached us how to approach and work with kids and introduced us the energizer work. 

Summer School NART

In July, we collaborated with NART in his summer school in the resource centre, we were working with children with special needs.

Since the first moment we felt welcome for the teachers and mostly for the kids, we made a lot of activities with them and we have had a lot of fun, and was a enrichful experience because we learnt how to work  and connect somehow with them.

We had too the opportunity to participate in the Roma academy teaching English orientated to geographical and historic fields.

Summary

As a summary, we could say we have get out of our comfort zone and we have lived a lot of experiences, there have been good and not so good but we have overcome the adversities together, and we have good perspectives in what is about to come.