Who are you and where are you from?
Hi all, my name is Anne van der Sluis and I am 23 years old. I am from the Netherlands and I joined OPEN MIND for 2 months (8 weeks, 16th of September – 11th of November).
Why did you decide to join this project?
I was looking for a project with a lot of outside activities like gardening. Also working with children seemed really fun, but I did not wanted to do it everyday. There were a lot of projects where you could work with children everyday. I know from being a scouting leader that it is really exhausting. In this project I got the change to work with children but also do a lot of other activities what really got my interest. Also what the title of this projects recalls: OPEN MIND. I really want to be more relaxed and open minded, so the name got me as well.
What did you learn in your EVS? / What was your benefit?
Because I was here only for a short period, I had to adjust my goals a bit. I learned a little bit of Bulgarian, mostly basic words and sentences. We also did not have that much time to plan Bulgarian lessons in the planning, we tried to do it twice a week.
Giving lessons once a week at the school, together with Fleur was really fun. We did basic science and physic experiments, which was also interesting for me. We explained some basic experiments/theory, for example about: how to use a balloon to attract water, how a rainbow is created, how a candle can rise the water in a glass and we also showed different objects under a microscope. Giving these lessons made me more comfortable in front of the classroom and gave me more confidence to not really plan the lesson minute by minute but just interact with the kids and see what they already know.
We did not really learn as much as I wanted about gardening and permaculture. But we had a whole weekend of permaculture lesson which was fun.
In Bulgaria people seem more relaxed or they just don’t care as much. I am really a planner, so in the beginning it was really annoying/stressful because planning something is kind of impossible. I tried to be more “Bulgarian”, just see what happens and let go of the planning sometimes!
What were the best memories?
My best memories where mostly doing our trips in the weekends. We did the hike to the Shipka monument, going to different cities (Sofia, Plovdiv, Sara Sagora, Veliko Tarnovo), wild camping on Irakli beach, did the 10 km run in Sofia, hiking the seven lakes and sleeping in a mountain hut where we saw a fox and my mom visited for that trip as well!
I took a lot of amazing pictures that weekend. Then I also realized I would really love to do something with photography.
Also at Tatyana’s house, 4 kittens got dumped. I decided to adopt 2 (Buddy and Izzy) and the other 2 came eventually to the UK with Lillian-Beth 😊. They were checked out by the vet, vaccinated and arrived safely with me in the Netherlands.
What were the downsides? / What did you regret in hindsight?
The downsides while begin here was getting corona the first week ☹. I never had Corona but of course on the plane to Bulgaria I got it!
Sometimes it was difficult with the other volunteers, everyone has different stories and when you are with so many people, disagreements can occur. Downsides of the project was the planning and organization. In the beginning tasks where not really organized, but after that we did weekly planning meetings where we discussed the tasks of the week.
What were you the most proud of? / And what could you have done better?
I am proud that I did volunteering in the first place. Learned to be more comfortable in front of the classroom and with myself. What I could have done better, just finishing small task like this article and the youth pass document sooner.
Would you do that again?
In the future I would like to do another project for around six months. So yes, I would do it again. Also the experience here in Shipka I would do again. But for now I am happy that I only did a short term project here, to gain the experience.
How is your life now? What are you doing? Does the EVS has an impact?
I am now 3 months back and I really miss my experience in Bulgaria. I am working again as a technician (in chemistry) and I am still not sure what I want to do next.