My On Arrival Training

I was very happy and excited to participate in a training program where I made good friends and learned new information for me. I would like to share my thoughts and what I have experienced in this seminar. When I heard this seminar, I thought it would be a useful seminar for me. It was a five-day seminar and it was in a really good location. Together with my Italian volunteer friend, we made a plan and program about our trip and we took the bus to Zagreb on the 10th of June. After about 5 hours of journey, we reached our hostel. The hostel was truly wonderful. It had a lot of people from different countries and also had different activities. I strongly recommend this hostel (Whole Wide World Hostel). After staying one night, we went to the train station in the morning and got our ticket. Then we started the train journey which will take about 3 hours. We had the opportunity to meet someone who was attending this seminar on the train. He was coming from France, but he was working as a volunteer in Bosnia and Herzegovina. We continued our journey by chatting on different and daily topics. We met with the organizers of the seminar waiting for us there and we went to that area. It was so nice area and, I would like to say that this place affected me. We stayed in an area surrounding trees. We met our new roommates and now it was time to rest. The next day we started our first meeting…

Everyone met in the meeting room on the first day. There were 11 volunteers. We made some activities to get to know each other better and to establish a dialogue. Then we finished the day by getting information about the seminar process. My roommate was a really good and kind person. I visited him in Split, where he worked voluntarily. On the second day, they presented us with various presentations about the definition and purpose of voluntary activities. After these presentations, we started the city tour. This town was very small but nature was impressive. On the third day, we tried to solve these problems by giving us some tasks and at times it was really fun.

After dinner, we played basketball outside. That's the first time I tried to play rugby. Although I'm not very successful, I would like to say that I have learned some rules. That evening we had a lot of fun playing games. There was a city planning game on the fourth day. Our group's task was to introduce the city of Orahovica to the tourists on the map. After drawing some shapes and surfaces on this paper, we went out again to see the environment. Because we have applied this method to make the right drawings and to rearrange the map. After these activities, we made a long walk to nature and climbed to a castle in that city.  After a walk of more than about 10 km, an incredible sight greeted us. The name of this castle was Ružica Castle. Ružica Grad is the largest castle fortress in Slavonia, Croatia, covering over 86,000 square feet. It was in a really beautiful ve special place. As an anthropologist, such places are very important structures for me.

We talked about what we learned along with the project and our expectations from the projects. After leaving the city, we stayed in the same hotel in Zagreb for a day. I also had the opportunity to discover the capital city with my volunteer friends. The next day, We were in Murter this afternoon.

It was very special and meaningful training for me. See you in the next blog post... :)