Hello again, I’m Berna and I have completed my second month in Orta Nova as a Beyond Borders volunteer. I can’t believe how fast time flies. I have packed so much into the last two months. It has been a journey that has been full of surprises every day. At the end of the first month, unfortunately we had to say goodbye to Irem, but before we left, we took a day trip to Bari together and had a lot of fun. I also had the chance to visit Trani and Naples on my days off this month and I loved it. I don’t think I will like any pizza after the pizza I ate in Naples. Trani was a peaceful city by the sea.
During our second project, we had a date night. I had the opportunity to talk to the other participants for a long time. During the day, due to my work and the activities we did within the scope of the project, I didn’t have the opportunity to have one-on-one conversations with the participants. That’s why I liked the date night very much. I had more personal and individual conversations with 4 different people on different topics. It is comforting to be able to share the same feelings and thoughts with a person from a completely different culture, age, language, etc. It is comforting. We are not that different from each other. The culture nights we do every week are always my favorite nights. I love to try different countries’ sweets and it’s so much fun to learn different cultural dances. I loved the traditional Polish couple dance. At the end of the second youth exchange week we prepared a song, dance and video clip. I am in the video clip team so I am in many parts of the clip. The third and last week was the most beautiful youth exchange. Both the topic and the participants were great. I made a lot of new friends. This week we had the opportunity to have a second Turkish night. Luckily I found an intercultural market in Foggia and found Turkish delight and some snacks for our night. We also had some leftover hanna from previous Turkish participants. For the first time in my life, I did henna for myself and many other people at our cultural night. I hope it brought luck to everyone. I led the halay with a group of people from different countries and taught everyone the groom’s halay. Everyone seemed to have fun and learned quickly. At least if they attend a Turkish wedding in the future they won’t be foreigners. After the dance, I divided people into groups and had them play handkerchief grab. The game didn’t last long because people were so eager to win that they started injuring themselves. But we finished the night having fun without any damage or accidents. Our French and Italian volunteer friends introduced their cultures to us. Since I have been exposed for the last 3 weeks, I now know all the dances and games performed at the Italian night, but somehow I have not managed to win a game at the Italian night even once in the last 3 weeks. It doesn’t matter which team I am on, I have accepted my lack of you, but it is still fun to be part of the games. On the Danish night, we played a very interesting game; it was a fun game where we had to roll the dice to collect the gifts in the packages in the center. At the end of the game, I won a lot of snacks and candies. This week’s topic was drawing and graffiti to draw attention to hate speech. I tried graffiti for the first time in my life, and it was difficult, but it was a very nice experience.
On our last night, I stayed at Kiyathos with the participants until the morning and chatted with them. It was the first time in this week’s project that I met people with whom I had such a deep connection and with whom I enjoyed talking and I know that our friendship will continue. Now that all the projects are finally over, it’s time for a vacation. I traveled all over Italy starting from Bari, meeting new people and making new friends on the way. Rome, Venice, Milan, Florence, Florence, Siena and Pisa… It was a great 2-week trip. Luckily, in Rome, I met one of the participants that I met in the last week and got along well with, and I traveled with him for two days. It was great to spend time together.
I have now come to the end of my whole volunteering period. During this whole process, I saw amazing places, met so many lovely people, and had a lot of new experiences. It was an unforgettable experience for me and I am so happy to come home with a lot of funny and fun memories.