Estonia (no.1)

I was really excited for our estonian trip in Oktober, because the theme of the project really interested me, and I think refugee crisis, advocacy and tolerance are all very important topics to talk about. We spent 9 days in an old castle in Estonia along with 6 greek, and 20 estonian students. On the first day we played a lot of ice breakers and funny games to get to know each other better. On the days after, we didn’t play much, but worked. Our programmes started at 10, and we had them until 7 with some coffee breaks and a lunch break in between. On these programmes, we mostly brainstormed, and shared our ideas about advocacy, refugee crisis, migration, tolerance. On the forth day we had presentation about the refugee crisis in our own country. It was interesting to see what is going on in other countries, hearing the informations from people who actually live there, and see the problems more clear than we do. I also liked that I could tell about the situation in our country, and that everyone was curious about it. We discussed how we, as individuals, and in a group can help others, and learned about our influence. Also, we had a simulation, where we had to think as we were refugees, trying to cross the border. Thinking yourself into a situation like that was horrible, but some of the kids didn’t take it seriously, and the leaders overreacted our ‘faliure’ a bit, I think. It was really interesting as well, when we had ‘tolerance day’ and we talked about most minoritis situations, and we played the ‘privilige game’. It was shocking to face how many people can’t do certain things. Also, there was an evening for each nationality. On the greek evening we ate greek food and danced, on the estonian evening we danced as well and saw a presentation on estonia. On the hungarian evening we made a quiz about our country, and baked some goods for the others. I think it was really important to show our culture, and habits to each other. I always like to learn about other cultures. We also had a day off in Tartu, where we had freetime. We went sightseeing and ate pencakes in a cosy restaurant. We also went hiking into the forest for a few hours, which I particulary enjoyed, since the weather was really nice, and every part of the woods was beautiful. On the last day we talked about how we, students can write our own project, and we were really inspired to write another project to be able and visit each other again with the participants. We also got some help to write our youthpasses, and we had a ferewell party. Each night we played silly games with the greek, and estonian kids. I made some good friends on this 9 days, and I really hope we’ll see each other soon. I really enjoyed this project, thank you for the opportunity.

Bori