Beginning of Tanya’s Story

During the last month and a half I’ve had so much fun exploring more deeply the Romanian culture, getting to know better the other volunteers, the people and children from “Inima pentru Inima” foundation.

The beginning of my experience here was amazing. I arrived first and the welcome of our project manager and the president of the foundation was so warm. We had dinner together on my first evening in a wonderful Italian restaurant, very close to our house. Thanks to them, I tasted traditional Romanian dish and wine which were both just delicious. Perfect start of the 9-month adventure 🙂

Next day I met a super lovely Italian girl who helped me a lot to understand what are we going to do with the children, what exactly is our role, how is the town, the foundation, the people. Basically she gave me the first introduction to everything here. It was such a nice transition which later on I could continue to the other volunteers that arrived in the next few days.

We got the chance to witness an amazing baptism party ceremony – wishing good fortune for the baby in Sleeping Beauty style. It was so interesting and so different from anything I’ve seen before. #gallery-141-31 { margin: auto; } #gallery-141-31 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 50%; } #gallery-141-31 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-141-31 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

We tried a lot of yummy traditional Romanian food. Also we danced a lot of typical Romanian dances which was super much fun.

I feel so lucky with the other 3 volunteers in our team. Living and working together is just pure joy for me. We really get along very well. They’re quickly becoming like my second family.

Of course, we have our conflicts but they only help us to grow as a team and as friends. We’re having so many team-building activities in our everyday life, especially in the house when we are cooking, cleaning, dealing with some emergency 😀 #gallery-141-32 { margin: auto; } #gallery-141-32 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 50%; } #gallery-141-32 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-141-32 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

Traveling is our favorite thing. So we do it a lot. Transalpina, Calimanesti, Bucharest, Sibiu are only the start places that we visited and that are part of our many planned adventures for the future. #gallery-141-33 { margin: auto; } #gallery-141-33 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 50%; } #gallery-141-33 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-141-33 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

Also, my parents visited us the last weekend and it was great to see them. They brought a lot of Bulgarian food so everybody was very happy 🙂

The trip to Bucharest for the On Arrival Training was very good. There we met a lot of people from different countries and we created a lot of new friendships. All the activities and sessions we’ve had were useful, dynamic and really helped me understand what stands behind EVS projects.

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Working with the orphan children here, I cannot describe how wonderful, heartwarming and inspiring is for me. Hugging them, loving them, playing with them, just having fun with them fill my heart with so much love, appreciation and joy. The foundation is really doing such a good job providing them with variety of activities, much care and very good living conditions. I’m truly impressed and inspired to transfer everything I learn here maybe one day to Bulgaria and our orphan children.

Preparing different activities for the school, the family houses and the social apartments sometimes has been a challenge that definitely helped us build up as a stronger team and it’s continuing ti develop us in this direction.

The final evaluation of the time spent here so far is that I feel at home here. I like the country, the language, the work, the people. I love our foundation, our project, our children, our team.