{"id":23023,"date":"2020-02-25T11:20:38","date_gmt":"2020-02-25T09:20:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.arsis.gr\/?p=23023"},"modified":"2020-02-25T11:20:38","modified_gmt":"2020-02-25T09:20:38","slug":"corina-chircea_january","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arsis.gr\/en\/corina-chircea_january\/","title":{"rendered":"Corina Chircea_January"},"content":{"rendered":"

January- the journey of discovery<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I entered in a new year abroad, for the second\ntime in my life and I felt loved and lucky, thankful for what I was given and\nfeeling a lot of love from and for my dears\u2019 ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everything started full of hope and good\nenergy. I felt for the first time in all these months that my work matters.\nThis time I did not try to force myself to do something special, I was just\nspending time with the children and speaking a little bit in Greek and in\nEnglish. We were playing, doing paper boats together for them to learn the\ncolors, going to cinema and having a good time all together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I felt very useful helping two of the children\nto do their math homework. I felt so nice to be responsible for this task and\nto feel trusted. And after we were going to play football. I realized how a\nsport can motivate them to do something. It is very interesting to see that the\nchildren are reacting in different ways, but even so they are influencing one\nanother. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Since I was spending a lot of time until now\nsurrounded by the children and the social workers, I reached to the conclusion that\nthe social workers deserve a lot of admiration for what they are doing. One of\nthe social works was alone in the shift one day and\u2026 surprise\u2026 we had a party.\nJust imagine, if one child in a party can be sometimes hard to control, ten\nchildren means ten times more effort. I felt it also, at the end of the day, I\nfelt extremely tired, but in the same time I felt very good because I knew that\nin that particular day she really needed my help and what I did was at a real\nimportance for someone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The third Monday from January started with a\nlot of emotions mixed. A new challenge was rise upon towards me, I became a\nteacher and not only a teacher, but a teacher for adults. I started being very\nnervous before my first lesson, I was having a lot a questions. I entered in my\nfirst class without preparing anything, I didn\u2019t know what to prepare, nobody\nhelped me, I had to discover everything by myself, but in the end maybe it is\nbetter like that because I can value more what I gain at the end of the\nexperience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started being very nervous and it could be\nobserved from my speaking way and the rapidity with which I was teaching. It\nwas a new environment for me, but I loved the first class and so I did for the\nnext and the next one. I realized in that moment that it is something that makes\nme very happy. I love to give back something that I learnt in years and to make\nit easier for the others to understand the information even better than me. I\nam totally aware of the fact that I have so many things to improve in this\nfield. I have to be more organized, to transmit more energy, to involve more\nthe people from the class, to make the information clear and easy to be understood\nand so many others, but the fact that I have to work for becoming better is challenging\nand interesting for me. I finally love what I do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The positive attitude towards what I am doing\nreflects in more projects that I am doing also with the children from the\ncenter. I found out that they are very interested in painting because through\nthis they can put their creativity into play. The best part is the exposition\nof their work, seeing their work displayed somewhere, even on the fridge, makes\nthem feel important and rewarded. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I am aware now more than ever that time is\nessential in building relationships and that people have so diverse ways of\nshowing how interested they are in something. Just by listening you become\naware of the surroundings. If you pay close attention, you can find out what\nthey need and like to do. In the case of the children it was a real pleasure to\nhave done some masks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a volunteer, like in any other profession or\nexperience, life is not always pink. There are moments of stress and moments of\ntesting the limits. There will always be something that you will find difficult\nboth in the personal and professional level, but this is the moment of discovering,\ntrying to improve the place where you are and being more solution oriented. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Last days of January just flew. I discovered a\nlot of stories, a lot of things about refugees\u2019 life and about their\ndifficulties. It is like a total new world out there from our safe houses,\ncountries and it does not look good at all. All these innocent people are\nrunning form the war, from one war to another. And when they think they are\nsafe enough they become refugees who are facing much more difficulties because\nthey are jumping from having their lives to having nothing and starving, from\nnormal lives to lives in poverty. Each of them has her\/his unique story. The\nones that are usually coming to the center for receiving help are the bravest\nones, from my point of view, because despite all the difficulties they are\nfacing, they are optimistic and they want to learn and to integrate themselves\nin another society. I have all my respect and admiration for the people that\nwithout knowing anything are fighting for a new beginning and keeping\nthemselves dignified by accepting the difficulties and searching for solutions.\nOf course that out there are also people that are reluctant to integration,\nthat are conservative and cause problem in the society. Just walking in the\nstreet I could observe several cases of these people. But it is very sad to\nconsider them as the representative of all the refugees, because it is a threat\nfor those that are good people and try hard to have normal lives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I understand that this world is about\nperceptions, but I would like that our perception to be broader to see all the\npicture of a problem, to see the cause and the future implications of our\nactions. It would be wonderful if those several people that are in the leading\nposition to stop placing the power higher than the humanity and feelings,\nbecause in the end there is not power without people. To have a devastated\nterritory it is useless, the people means the power and losing them means losing\nthe power too. But here my duty is to make myself useful at least a bit for\nthese people and to give them at least some help for adaptation namely teaching\nthem a language, as good as I can. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can\u2019t say that teaching is easy, not at all,\nbut it is rewarding to see the progress of the people around. It is very\nrewarding. There are still many things to be improved, but this is the part\nwhen I feel useful and in the right place. Proactive mood on!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Corina Chircea,
ESC volunteer in Arsis (October 2019 \u2013 April 2020) <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

January- the journey of discovery I entered in a new year abroad, for the second time in my life and I felt loved and lucky, thankful for what I was given and feeling a lot of love from and for my dears\u2019 ones. Everything started full of hope and good energy. I felt for the … Read more<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23024,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-european-solidarity-corps-solideers-i-solidarity-actions-empowered-volunteers"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arsis.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arsis.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arsis.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arsis.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arsis.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arsis.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arsis.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arsis.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arsis.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arsis.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}