Author: busrakdogan0

This week started so sad. Because we went to airport to say goodbye Nathan and Enes. It was quite hard to see them while crying. I want to meet and see them happy together again. Same day, we celebrated Michele’s birthday in the youth center and we met with his girlfriend who is so lovely. We had dinner together.

This week, I was always in the office so it was not that so productive week for me unfortunately.

Buuuuuuuutttt! Some miracle happened and we started to travel with Esra and Mustafa. I was so happy before the road because we were planning to go Macedonia and there one of my best friends-actually two- doing their Evs. So this meant that we were gonna see each otber!

Our small Balkans tour started with Serbia! That was my second time in Serbia but I had the chance to see the places that I didn’t see before. It was short but funny trip. During two nights, we stayed in a house by riverside. They were two lovely guys from Turkey and they had a small cafe there. We found then from Couchsurfing and thwy showed very nice hospitality to us.

Later on, we went to Kosova and stayed there just one night. We just saw Prishtina but everyone said that Prizren is more beautiful then it. So many Turkish people live in Kosovo. We drank Turkish tea which we miss a lot, the taste, ofcourse, was not the same 😀 but anyway, tea is tea in the end…….. That day was very rainy and we went to top of a church to see the cityscape. While leaving, we were a little bit regretful that we didnt go to Prizren but we had to leave. We decided to come back here one more time both to see Prizren and because Kosovo is so cheap 😀 you can eat one good meal with 2 euros only! Amazing! And the guy who hosted us Furkan was so nice, he invited us to a pub and meet us with his friends.

From Kosovo to Skopje, we paid just 5 euros to the bus. When we arrived to Skopje, we were supposed to meet my friend Begüm. While waiting her, we sat near the bridges on the river. I realized how much I miss her when I saw her. :)) Before finding an accomodation, we were so hungry that we wanted to eat something and we ate Pleakavitsa which is a traditional food for Balkan countries in a Turkish restaurant. It was sooo delicious. There were so many groups from Turkey. And remarkable amount of Turkish people are living there. So many shops are using Turkish as a second language instead of Turkish. There is a big monument of Alexander the Great in the old town square. There is a conflict about the between Macedonia and Greece thats why Macedonia had to change its name as Republic of North Macedonia. There were so many other sculptures in the city and because of this, it is called “city of sculptures”

In the first night in Skopje, it was Orthodox Easter and we wanted to see the ceremony there and we went to the biggest church in town. I and Begum lighted two candles, one for putting togethee with the other people’ candles and one for our wish. We waited for the candle to end. According to the belief, if the candle that you put with the others die. Your wish is gonna happen. But they didnt die because the weather was windy 😀

The church was so crowded, first we went inside to see what is going. They were putting the painted eggs and some money, then they were passing under the table. After watching this, we went to outside and priests started to walk in fromt of the community by holding a big cross and the picture of Jesus. We walked behind them. Afterwards while they were going to stage to pray and read the things from Bible, people were touching and kissing Jesus and Mary’s feet. Finally, they ate their eggs while we were leaving the church. It was one of the most strange and complicated nights in my life. I questioned the religions one more time and i decided again that they are useless.

For the breakfast, we bough traditional burek and ofcourse Turkish tea (what did you expect with 6 Turkish people in a breakfast :D) We travelled all around the city and the buses were doubledecker because England giftes them to Skopje. We watched the breathtaking scenery for a while, later on we went to Central Park on foot.

On the road of Ohrid, we stopped by Canyon Matka. This was the most beautiful green I have ever seem in my life. It was so eye-catching beauty. We took a small boat there. After having lunch, we left this amazing place.

Seeing Ohrid was an unforgettable experince for me. You can see the blue and green at the same time laying together to the horizon. Here, my the other friend Sevim joined us. Now, the ekipa were gata! 🙂

After spending two full days in Ohrid, we went to Bay of Bones in the road for Bitola. I learnt that it was the first settlement there and all the place is on the water. It was amazing.

When we arrived Bitola, we directly went to Manastır Askeri İdadisi. This is the school of the founder of Turkey Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. They prepared special room in commemoration of Mustafa Kemal. Seeing this af their respect to him made us so proud!

Finally same day, we went to Prilep with my friends. After spending 2 days in that pleasant place, we came back to out cityvillage Reşita back from Serbia.

Being a wanderlust, sharing the memories, living the life as a dreamer are so nice!

Being alive is soooooo nice!!

From this week, I just started to go to the schools. My first school was Mociur. I went to kindergarden part and it was quite nice. We did some drawings about animals and played games. It can be clearly seen that they need to be loved. They live in the poorest part of the city and they are very disadvantageous. When they see you in front of the school, they run towards you and hug you or they want to climb on you. That school is like a Jurassic Park 🙂

The second school in this week was Traian Lalescu. It is known as the best school in the city buy you can already recognize it at first sight. Their educational level is also higher than the others. We did a painting activity again but this time it was more complex than Mociur. We combined the colors, Maths and English at the same time. They have to do the four operations first and according to the result, they was supposed to paint the sections. In the end, they were going to find the animal. Because they love painting, this activity was so suitable for them.

In Reşita, second hand shops are so common, thats why we went to the other part of city to buy somethings and we managed it finally 🙂

We have a voting campaign for the European elections in Romania. I was involved in to the PR group and we had a meeting about it. After the meeting, our perfect Italian friend Michele cooked us risotto. It was very delicious. I like these kind of cultural experiences.

After risotto, for the campaign about vote, we decided to do a street theatre play. A local guy from the theatre come to the youth center and we talked about what we can do without talking Romanian to make the people vote and he gave us some tips.

For the weekend, there is a lake near here, Valiug, we went there for a picnic. It was quite good and the weather was so good. I am happy that finally my dreams came true and I am in another country not for travelling but for living alone.

From this week, we started to go Elderly Center two days per week. We will do some different activities there. Actually it is a little bit difficult without talking in same language but I am sure it will be so nice with the old people. This week is Nathan and Lara’s last week so we decided to have dinner all together. First night, Nathan cooked us mushroom risotto in Belgium way, it was too salty but in the end there was no risotto in the pan 🙂 The other night Carolina and Lara cooked Spanish omelette and it was amazing. When our turn came, I and Mustafa cooked imam bayıldı, a traditional Turkish meal, they all loved it. Finally, it was Simon’s turn and he cooked some crepes and we ate a lot 🙂

For this week, I had so many online courses, exams and homeworks. During this year, because I am not working officially, I will try to improve myself, my opinions, informations and way of thinking.

We went to Dealul Mare again this week and we tried to make a labirent game with them. They were amazing and they had so much fun. After Dealul Mare, we went to ABC Center which is an after-school place. We made an activity about Planets, it was my first time there but I liked it a lot. Both the children and the ladies there were so nice.

For the weekend, we went to Timişoara with Esra and Mustafa by hitchiking. We went to a shoppimg mall first and when we saw the fucking prices, we escaped by running 😀 When we arrived the city center, we wandered around and ate some Turkish food (finally!) and I liked that small city a lot. For me, Timişoara is more beautiful than Cluj. Some streets of it reminded me Rome which is one of my favourite cities on Earth! ( yeah because i travelled all around the world 😀 )

This week we started to go Elderly Center that I mentioned before. It was so pleasant with the old people. I found totally what I expected before. First, we made some sports to awaken our sleeping bodies and then we competed as two teams to complete the racetracks first. Some of the guys were so competitive but seeing them like this was very funny. Later on, they taught us some traditional dances. Learning these cultural differences makes me so happy! To see the other worlds with different eyes!!

Hellooooooo! My name is Büşra and I am from Turkey. I am 25. I stuided English Language Teaching in university. So we can say that i am a teacher, officially. I worked as a teacher in publich schools during 2 years after gradution. Then, I quitted my job and now I am doing my Evs in a small city called Reşita in Romania 🙂

I have travelled some countries before but this is going to be the first time living abroad for one year. I am excited and I am really curious about what is going to happen to me. Will I get changed or not? Is it useful for my life? So many questions in my mind… Actually, I am pretty sure that yhis experience will affecy my life in so many different ways.

For the first night, my project coordinators Clauidu and Oana came to the airport to pick me up. We had nearly two hours trip from Timişoara to Reşita. When i came home, i was supposed to choose a room, and i chosed the bigger one 🙂 My roommate’s name is Carolina and she is from Spain. I think we will really get on well with her. After dropping my luggage, I and Mustafa -the Turkish guy who lives with me in the same flat- went to the other apartment. As i knew before, Esra, the other Turkish girl, cooked something for me, soup and chicken which were so delicious. I met so many volunteers that night, we played some games and because I was so tired, I wanted to go home.

The other days, we went to Cluj with the others. That was my first trip in Romania so I was very happy and felt very luck that I was going to see a city that none of the volunteers saw it before! We started to hitchiking on Friday, I assumed that we changed 7 cars until there. We found an accomodation from Couchsurfing. First, we went to home to meet the guys and take the keys. Then we walked around the city center a little bit and had a cup of coffee.

In other day, we had a tour in the city. We went to art and history museums of Transylvania and Botanical Garden. We couldn’t see so different kinds of plants because of the season but the nature was amazing. I think, I can stay in that Garden for ages because I like being in the nature. Smelling the fresh air and sitting down the shadows of big trees make me relaxing.

While returning back to Reşita, we stopped in Deva to visit an old and big castle. There was a story about some Turkish guys (ofcourse from Ottoman) and it was quite interesting to see this information for miles and miles away from my country. This castle is one of the biggest castles in Romania.

My first week was observation week so I went to some schools with the other volunteers to see what they are doing and which activities they are using. I tried to understand the structure of both the schools and the city. Reşita is not a complicated city, it is so small and hasn’t so many things to do.. But it has beautiful landscapes, lakes and mountains around it. In order to do some positive things in our lives, we registeres a gym 🙂 I dont think that it will last enough long but lets see 😀

And for the last weekend, we went to Anina to get a train trip from Anina to Oravita. The train was so slow that you can go out and run next to it while it keeps going on 😀 They said that this line has the second most beautiful landscapes on a train trip in Europe. It was seriously nice to see those amazing trees and landscapes during two hours. You can sit in the door of train, you can take so many beautiful pictures and have a picnic in the train. I realized that I want to do it one more time in spring or summer. Because the trees will be green at that time and the landscapes will be getting more and more amazing. I dont want to miss this experience.