Trust your decision, Trust yourself

Taking this decision to be a volunteer was one of the most encouraging things I did in my life. Being a part of SFERA International Organization in Bitola, North Macedonia made me put faith in all my future decisions. So I want to tell you a little about my first month with my first volunteering experience. I came in the beginning of October 2019 and I will stay for 3 months. Our responsibilities will be working as English teacher assistants in a Primary school for kids (2 days a week) and office work for the rest of the week.

First of all, I would like to mention that the most interesting thing through this experience is meeting new people from different countries. I mean I don’t have a routine in my life because every day look likes new exciting story in my life.

Our first days in the school were great with a very nice teacher and nice students who I loved. We started cooperation with the school teachers in different lessons subjects such as History, Macedonian, English …ect, and we made some presentations about the culture of Turkey, traditional food and touristic places. We did this and much more with varying grade levels. I can assure you that was amazing, when you feel that all students are happy to meet you.

Also, I can tell you about our time in the organization office and the things we do. The organization prepares a lot of Erasmus+ Project and we help them with that, if needed. They always have different interesting workshops in varying areas and sometimes we join them as participants, sometimes we do the workshops and invite people to participate. We had intercultural night as a Turkish team with others from Spain. We talked about both of our countries and presented multi traditional foods. New people, multiple languages, different foods (sometimes strange but still), I recommend everyone try these events and join (Don’t be afraid of meeting people from different cultures) trust me.

Last, I can tell you about some of our time out of work time. Bitola is a simple small city in North Macedonia and I like it because I don’t like huge cities such as Istanbul and I hate being crowded. So this experience came to me in the best time to go far away from Turkey and relax somewhere. Macedonian people are so friendly and kind, I knew that before because I met some friends when I was studying in Turkey. Also, we started to have Macedonian language lessons and I love this part because I love learning languages. It’s similar to Serbian, Bosnian, Bulgarian and Russian languages, till now I don’t find it difficult and I’m glad to get all these benefits from this volunteering during 3 months. Of course I will write to all of you next month again and tell you more about my life story in Bitola, wait for me…