EVS Express

Just behind micalaca, few meters far, there is a very nice place where you can have a walk and relax yourself if you are tired of the city.

This place was already object of my attention about one possible ecological activity..

even if affected by pollution, you can find there a relaxed atmosphere, like in the countryside...cows, dogs, pigs, goats, sheeps and fishermen...

it s an ideal place for having abarbecue or spend warm evenings of summer together with your friends..

A few moments of work in forest, Natural park Lunca Muresului. Aim of our work is to make model of Mures river and area which is around this river, with all villages and forests. Scale 1:30000.

We started on 10 of march, day by day we are working there. In the begining we were 10 people, now about 5-6. Our work consist of cleaning area from small trees, bushes, digging riverbed, work on level of banks of the river, digging pond for water pump.

Next steps:

making path on both sides of "river" for visitors;

puttingand sand, membrane and then stones in riverbed and pond;

putting pipe for pump, for circuliation of water;

planting some plants and trees to make area more beautiful..

mid term meeting predeal

In these days are taking place many ecological actvities in Arad city.

Some of them regards the riverside, behind the city hall, in the city centre.

Some other could be located, with a little effort of each one of us, in the less known places of the town, for example the riverside of Micalaca's neighbourhood.

My task there was to collect pictures of that wich could be one of the nicest places for people to spend their own free time.

These activities are useful when they involve the community and the so-called "active citizenship".

It is to be hoped that new activities will concern those areas very soon.

Hello,i'm Mariangela from italy.The first three months here are was very interesting for me. Hello.I seen very events in Arad and around arad.I was in the park here for to see the nature and the river,i was also in the outside the Casino in Arad and i known some elements for the history and the nature about Arad and Romania.The my idea is here in Romania to make a good job and to respect the communiti peoples.This Parc is very interesting because  you can to understand as the history romanian to developed in the city. In this parc you have the possibility of to see some elements for the natural evolution of the animals here in Romania.In Arad you can find the some place as for example the teathre,the cinema and some homless center for childrens,because in Romania are places many nice and the peoples nice. I like ecological activity.

I would like especially to thank Triin (for the weird bird and the hedgehog), Dainius (for the mushroom) and Antonia (for the most beautiful flower i have ever seen in my life!)

The tree is my masterpiece..

On the 21st and 22nd of april in the "Sala Polivalente" we had the Special Olimpics, I was there with the people from the disabled center and we participated in football and atletism. I didn't know that in a city like Arad they do that every year and of course the best ones they go to the nationals!!!we weren't the best but it was fun!!!A smile is much better than thousands of words,...

I organized a workshop about making the pinhole camera from an ordinary matchbox during the "ecological week" in the Aurel Vlaicu secondary school.

There was a moment when we met children to explain volunteering in general. We started from brainstorming the ideas. What a great surprise it was when the kids told us almost everything we wanted to say!

Some moments from a meeting of volunteers. Work in progress.

Ceala forest is a flat floodplain forest, which begins right there, where Alfa district's house blocks end. There are faintly distinguishable bicycle trails, so I joined Eve and Magda to explore this area, which is so nicely green in this season of the year.

Do you sometimes feel when travelling around in Romania, like never left from Arad?

Me, Magda and Sabine decided to visit Sibiu once more and besides beautiful city we also visited an open air museum with old village houses from all over Romania. If you have the chance to visit that, I recommend strongly..

We went to an orphanage for the mother's day as an activity with the kids from the kindergarden were Lina and me work!!we had something to eat and drink, we brought mărţişoare for all of them and we played games!!!

was a nice activity!!kids enjoyed that much!!!;)

Neptun Swimming Place (Neptun is a Roman god of the sea), in Romanian known as "Strandul Neptun", is amusement area in Arad. It's the most popular place in the city during summertime, with swimming pools, terraces, pubs, beer gardens, clubs. In wintertime.. not so much :P

On 6th of February there was an intercultural evening in Semlac and some of us decided to go. Unfortunately we missed the train and tried to hitchike instead...weather was very bad, raining a lot...but anyway, volunteers are not so easily intimitated by bad weather. On our way we saw lot of interesting things - a lot of sheep crossing the road, met people, who were not afraid to take 3 of us in the car where already 3 people were, got picked up by a bus on a country road where there were no cars at all. And when we asked from the bus driver: cat costa?(what does it cost), he answered: nimic (nothing). So, finally when we got there, totally wet, took the place closest to the oven and enjoyed the show...and it was a very interesting show with a lot of different romanian dances, starting from the youngest ones, finishing with everybody dancing the famous penguine dance. Although it was called intercultural evening, it was mostly about Romanian culture, but we were really happy to enjoy all of that. And even more, after all the dances we got to taste a lot of romanian national dishes, tables were brought out and food was carried to the table.

Our way back was with the train...almost missed that one also, after eating had to run...but we made it:)

when we visited this place, more of 10 little dogs were barking at us...we were scared but then we recognized most of them didn t have teeth, 3 or 4 were blind of one eye, one was epileptic, most had problems in walking and one was rachitic...after few moments we recognized also that they didn t want to byte us..they were welcoming us and asking with their deep dark eyes just "touch me, touch me, touch me!!!"this's not just a dogs shelter..it s an house..this woman lives with more than 20 dogs and 10 cats..all the dogs have some problems..epilepsy, bones fractures, bones problems, blindness, rachitism, leishmaniasis, dystrophy,psycological problems ("sometimes that one, the big white one can byte", she said..but for Dainius was to late :)), ecc..but they are so cute..so sweet, so nice..if you want to help them just take one of them for a walk...they don't ask so much...

Moments of the second month of work. Activities panel, trainings, carnavals, homeless dogs and cats shelter, Casa de copii "Oaza" and so on.

sleeping and squinting eyes...roofs of transilvania...

In this neighborhood behind confectii there arent streets or drain system. Even in a normal day without being raining for days (like in this pictures) is pretty impossible to pass trough some place. A lot of people lives here and have to cross ir everyday (including us) and sometimes it can take you almost half an hour to make seven blocks. In the last week we have seen some machines working on the site but so far it seems even worse. We hope that someone from the city hall is taking action of it.

On Friday, 19th of February in Liceul Teoretic "Adam Müller Guttenbrunn" (also known as German high school) took place a handmade festival, where we organized also our own workshop with recycable materials. Recycling room appeared to be surprisingly popular and though spray paint and glitter glue isn't really typical example of recyclable, were most of materials paper products or collected freshly from Arad's nature. Sun was shining since morning and it was nearly 15 degrees outside, and kids had enough patience to mess with handicraft for hours inside, so I think they liked it.

This is newsletter of January of Triin, Mariangela, Sabine, Michele and Nicola. It's the first one and therefore consists of introducing ourselves, our previous thoughts and first impressions in Romania (and visibility elements). Next one will be published in the end of February with probably even more interesting articles. The January's one got printed in many copies, but if you manage to find us somehow to ask for a newsletter we still might not have an extra copy for you. If you're interested in reading newsletter on real paper, I can send you a pdf file and you can print it by yourself.

Stop, take a seat, at least for the moment.. Try to listen, to hear, to feel the place which surounding you, the silence.. Only then you can hear that your own minds, thoughts, which usually you are hidding  from others, from yourself, in the corners of your soul.. Life is short, you dont have a lot time to understand, to feel, to be yourself.. Take chance, have change..

meeting with volunteers. social exclusion in arad. change is possible?

i love you dogs...my sweet "smelly" friends of every morning...

Non formal education training

predeal. moment of the training.

I was 20 minutes late to Romanian lesson, because on my way to city I had to stop all the time to take pictures of fog.

carnival day, arad.

Presentation of our countries

holes on the road, critical infrastructures in arad

Everyone of as have some style of making photos.Some of us have more or less expirience in that. Try to answer on question "Who has a control,your camera or You", can you express yourself in one hundred procent? Can you make photos and make people to fill emotions which you are aware? Or its only coocidence when you have nice photo? If you wish to know more. How to make people feel happy or sad when they will watch your photos and how to have full control over your camera...join to Advance Techniques of Photography. We are starting soon.

Siria is about 27 km from Arad when you hitchhike. It takes 40 min with train personal, which costs 3,95 lei per one direction. In train station of Siria you can see fortress on the mountain. Then you just have to take right way and be ready for an hour or more walking uphill. To get back you can go by shortcut behind the fortress which takes about half an hour :) On the road can visit green empty house, we guessed it had been a hotel or something. Anyway it was beautiful view from there and we came back with lots of good emotions.

Here you have a selection of our best moments in the kitchen so far,.....

we are preparing stuff for our first day of work (at least!!)

in the meantime...

Since January I work in Arad community. New home, new flatmates and partners, new daily life.Here U can see a part of our working days...how we participate in rumanian lesson, fill home exercises, made mailbox, prepare informations for newsletter,some free time.

one month has gone away

Finally I am starting work in Forestier with makes my very happy... We have greats plans what we can do there, what we can improve.. Even now I can feel that it will be good and interesting time for us and also for students and teachers.. Now all of us preparing everything to work there like box with You can see on the pictures, we improving informaton panel there and another materials to work.. I hope all of us will find even small group to do ouers ativity there...  I like this high school and also I can feel that teachers whants to colaborate with us..     

The time runs fast and just less than 3 months left till the end of my stay here in Romania. :) In these 3 months I am will continue my previous activities and to start new one as well. The new activity is to make a play in English with children in the school. Sounds challenging, but I am sure, whatever time and energy it will take from, it will worth it... I and children are ready to make the best!

This week was full of positive emotions because of work I hade done together with children in different institutions and different subjects. :)

Moments of the first weeks in the school, presentations of our countries, EVS, inviting young people in our activities.

Its just my first impression about Romania, some random photos.

Four bridges of Arad, city on the shores of Mureş river.

Intercultural evening in Santana took place on 11th of December. To this event were invited all the people we met during first 3 in Romania. 

I was lucky enough to go home to Estonia for christmas time. Biiiig change of temperature, because it was -20 degrees!!! And a lot of lot of snow. We have a sheep farm with 800 sheep and with that cold we had to move them into a barn because some of them were already totally freezed. I took some pictures of chasing sheep:)

Also I visited the capital of Estonia, Tallinn, where I lived for 8 years. There was a christmas market in the old town and ice skating place with nice music. I also went to ski with my mother, cross-country skiing, that I´ve been doing since childhood with my family and that is really popular in Estonia. Don´t have any mountains, you know...

First time when I went to Children’s Palace I was really surprised. I’ve seen in classroom ten or more really fast computers, big screens and many young people and I’ve seen great opportunity to use my potential and teach kids more about Photoshop and photography. Till that time kids was searching for photos which they use in internet. Now they are making own photos and working on them. Results of that  experiment are really surprising, creativity with every next lesson is growing up and they have more and more fun than ever…

The preparation of Christmas started, and now we are waiting the arrive of Santa.

At school we making decorations for Christmas Muzic Event, also preparing theatre and sing the songs.

In last week  we went to Highschool for intraduction meeting but for our suprice it was small warkshops where we prepare xmass tree from one stick and many plastic bootles. Many students help us with this task  as you see on atached photos ;)

I love balconies.

Before coming to Arad to be a volunteer I spent one month in Barcelona, and all this time I slept outside in a huge balcony. More room, more air, rained really rarely.

In Arad, there is a balcony in our appartment, too. It´s OK, from inside at least. But there are so many interesting and beautiful balconies around Arad, everyone different, everyone with character. Some are very old and broken, but still one can see the fading beauty behind the cracks...like an old lady...who has a lot of wrinkles but is still possible to imagine how pretty she once was.

Some are modern, still with ornaments but more simple. Probably belonging to an appartment where lives a young couple, high salaries, no children.  

So I decided to collect the balconies. Well, not physically, with my photocamera. Some of them end up in an exhibition of Arad´s urban estetics.

This is a short overview about our first day at Kathy center - a day center for people with less opportunities, poor people, homeless people and so on. First day we spent mostly with kids, trying to understand what kind of people go there. We were also singing together, some songs in English, some in Romanian. Guitar was a total hit. But because of that I learned 2 important things in Romaneste: ai grija, incet (be careful, slowly/quietly). We also helped with some cleaning and organising the boxes.

Generally theese pictures r a part of documentary. There  U can see courtyard, our house and our Host familys house like 2in1, youngsters house, building where to keep cows and food for them and other important buildings, where our mentor made mailbox, second-hand, worskshops. As well U can see lovely dog - Laika, whos husband Bobii is in cage, cause of bad attitude :), they have a white puppy no name.

Pictures from first week, when we arrived in Santana, met our local facilitator Cristina, and went to most important places in town.

The first introductory training course was held in Lunca Muresului during 27th and 29th of August 2009.

The volunteers participating were: Alina, Manuel, Tony, Seyran, Ravan, Mart, Zane, Sabine, Shirley and Reinis.