Short term EVS volunteers from Poland

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Hello everybody, we host group of twelve volunteers from Poland. They came for two months of summer vacations to organize games and other outdoor activities for children who had to stay in Donetsk for holidays. We would like to present:

Hi! My name is Maria. I come from Poland. I study finance at the University of Gda?sk at the Management Faculty. In my free time I cooperate with the Centre for Youth Co-operation and Mobility in Gdynia as a mentor. This way I got to know about the EVS project in Donetsk. During this project I discovered that I really enjoy spending time with children. I treat it as a challenge because I have never learnt Russian or Ukrainian before;)

My name is Kuba. I am 22 years old and study finance at the University of Gdansk. In my free time I like travelling and doing sports especially swimming and roller-skating

Меня зовут Мартына. Мне 22 года. Я закончила факультет Россияведения, а сейчас обучаюсь на факультете Русской филологии. Я интересуюсь фотографией, Россией (культурой, искусством, литературом) и русским языком

Привет всем! Меня зовут Магда и мне 23 года. В общем я студентка 5 курса русской филологии и люблю Украину :) Моё хобби – фильмы, путешествование и знакомство с новыми людьми.

 

Хэй Хоу!! Меня зовут Моника, мне 23 года. Я студентка пятого курса русской филологии. Моё хобби это игра на скрипке и катание на роликах. Больше всего люблю знакоинться с новыми людьми, путешествовать, танцевать, играть в групповые и спортовые игры. Очень люблю общаться с детьми.

 

My name is Ola. I live in wonderful city Gdansk, situated on the north of Poland, close to the Baltic sea. The biggest love of my life is cinema and everything that is connected with it. So I am spending a lot of time watching weird independent movies and trying to convince or explain my friends to watch it as well.

привет!Я Наташа, но нет from Russia:), а из Польши. 23-летний житель города Гданьск. Я спонтанный, “стадный” человек, который заинтересован… во всем. Со мной можно путешествовать автостопом, учиться инностранному языку,пойти в горы, поиграть в воллейбол, посмотреть футбольный матч, поболтать. Я не люблю рутины. Мне постоянно хочется делать что-то новое, в чем я ещё не так опытная. Сейчас я сделала себе очередной вызов- забыть о возрасте и опять становиться ребёнком! Работать волонтёром на разных, донецких площадках -одна радость. Мой девиз: только ваш образ мышления и ваши взгляды на мир создают реальность вокруг вас.

Привет! Меня зовут Ивона. Мне 20 лет и я самая младшая из польских волонтёров. Ялюблю путешествовать, встречиться с друзьями и слушать музыку. Я приехала сюда, чтобы практиковать языки и познакомиться з восточной культурой

Я Марта мне 21 лет. Я очень люблю веселиться и смеяться. Я открыта для новых впечатлений. По-моему играть с детьми это лучший урок культуры и языка.

 

 

Студентка культуроведения и россиоведения. Я специализируюсь в экономике России и бизнесе, с чем я связываю моё будущее. Мои интересы вращаются вокруг культурно-исторического наследия восточных окраин, особенно в Вильнюсе, где корни моей семьи. Наукчно занимаюсь тоже Львовом. Также близка  мне история и культура Вармии и Мазур – моего региона. Люблю футбол и гонки Формулы-1.

Меня зовут Эдыта, мне 22 года. Для меня Украина это страна, где я всегда хочу возвращаться. Первый проект, который проходил в западной части страны, побудил меня провести исследования, которых предметом стал мой любимый город Львов. В свободное время я люблю плавать в бассейне или послушать хорошей классической музыки. Для тех, кто хочет учиться жизни более того, проверить и дать другим что-то от себя рекомендую EVS!

Меня зовут Агата, я на втором курсе в Университете Гданьска россиоведения. Я люблю петь и танцевать …. и слушать русскую музыку :-)

 


How does Peter read сказки to children…

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“You read fairy tales …. :-) )
You do not know how happy man you are! ”

Message with such a content I got from a friend. I allowed myself to paste it and quoted in, because, as the Anglo-Saxons say, “it made ??my day”! :)

Indeed, since I’m back in Ukraine, I started reading stories to little children! And although I was terribly afraid, because I read them in Russian and not as Pope, that is phonetically written, but just as Cyril and Methodius precepts! :)
I have the impression that I read worse than those little kids who listen to me. But how they are listen! With open mouths, and.. Minds! Because it happens to make a fatal mistake, but no one interrupts me, and not even laughs! Forgiving creatures! :)

(All the malicious commentators be warn, that after each reading I ask them, if they still wants me to come and read further – so far the answer is one, the choral DA :) )

To take it further, I asked them to draw about the story. After few months, I already have material for a nice gallery!
Thus, the sample of Donetsk kids arts skills:

Tale to which drawings are related, is called “Cat – traveler” by Gianni Rodari.

Generally, the guy wrote a great fairy tales. Some of them ends with three alternative ways. Children can choose, which they like best! Although in my group, one boy wrote his own!
I would recommend them to read to all parents! :) May the whole Poland / Ukraine / World reads to children!
Post Script:
When I was riding this day on marschrutka (for reading fairy tales!), having in mind just received mail from a friend and thinking to myself about it and all the vanities of the world, my attention got caught by a piece of paper glued by a gray tape over the door (inside , out was – 20 degrees) with a poem printed on it:

Не зли других, и сам не злись,
Мы только гости в этом мире.
И если, что не так – смирись.
Будь поумнее – улыбнись!

Холодной думай головой,
Ведь в мире все закономерно:
Зло излученное тобой,
К тебе вернется непременно!

Мы не сказали про добро.
Добро ведь лучше нам, чем зло.
Давайте излучать добро,
Чтоб возвращалось к нам оно.

Омар Хаям.

Such a signs the ABSOLUT (and not the Swedish one!), gives me constantly! (BTW The author of this poem is recommended to your consideration!).

And answering to friend, I will say that it is interesting that our own happiness we often do not notice (After all, there is nothing that pleased us more than misfortune of others) until it won’t kicked us in…  :)

I am trying to be aware of my personal happiness as much as possible, especially because it is partially planned! :)

 

 

GAS STORY

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I have short story for you for today. And how it is mostly with stories, there will be not that much comments . Commenting I’m leaving for you:P. I will just say that for me the level of complication whole that adventure was surprising.

As some of you know, we live in quite big flat at Kirova street. What is important for the story, the flat consist of two smaller, combined into one big. Also, the arrangement of the rooms in the flat is completely different than it was. In the bathroom there was also a kitchen before, kitchen was divided into bathroom, kitchen and something else. How it is with the rest of the rooms I have no idea, I haven’t seen any other flat in our block, but probably also changed. Result of it is that we have big and nice place to live. So that was small description of the flat. So now let the Gas Story begin:

START:

The end of February, Thursday. There was big gas leak found somewhere close to our block. It was no problem, nothing dangerous for us, but as it needs to be done, ГорГаз decided to control the condition of installations in whole neighborhood. And that is the moment since when problems started.

Gas was cut off because of the leak, but just after control ladies saw what was done with gas pipes in our bathroom during last repair works, they said, that gas is not going to be back until everything in our flat will be done as it need to be.

First of all, all installations  in the bathroom and in the kitchen were illegal. Nobody checked it after it was done by construction team, what is more, it looks like they had no idea how to make it right, or just they wanted to plug everything in the cheapest way it was possible. Nice way of dealing with gas in the big house, right? It’s not allowed and totally unsafe to put gas БОЙЛЕР in the bathroom, or to have gas pipes hidden deep in the wall. We, of course had it that way.

Moreover, I found something really interesting in the bathroom during making small demolition together with our neighbour Паша: in one place instead of small and cheap thing called ЗАТЫЧКА there was just a piece of gips in the gas pipe. I guess I don’t need to say how shocking for us it was.

Ok, one time we had small explosion there.  I lost some of my hairs then, actually nothing worse happened, but looks like whole time there was a danger of bigger BUM. With fireworks and flames.

And how it was with fixing the problem: During almost two weeks almost everyday (except weekend) we had a guests (:D) in the house. It was, as Piotrek counted, about 20 of different people, starting from ГорГаз repairing crews, landlady and her husband, to controlling ladies and neighbors. From some of them we were getting papers to sing (as we are not owners, our signs there were not valid, but we were signing anywayJ), from the rest instructions what needs to be done with pipes, and how всё узаконить. Of course in specialist language and very fast.

On the end, after 12 days, the Gas Story was over. Now everything is working and it is done in a proper way. Finally we had free bathroom and hot water there. The great relief for us of course, but also for neighbors living under and above us. Now we hope there will be no problems anymore. And what can I say, it was a good show of building in really cheap way and not caring about possible consequences.  Like somebody said: человек учится всю жизнь. And now after whole that I feel I know about life here a bit more.

Greets!!!

Let’s play!

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Although the prcursor of games evenings is back in Turkey, our team decided to continue the tradition of meeting every Monday evening in the Debate Centre office to play. Because we are not able to do this in the same way like Orhan did, Magda and me propose to play intellectual and board games.

A lot of people came to our meeting so we were able to divide ourselves into two teams. Firs one was playing a game called “Collector”, the other one was playing “Journey Through Europe”.

“Collector” is a game similar to “Monopoly”, but in this case you are buying paintings of famous painters like Da Vinci, Velazquez, Renoir or Picasso. You can even buy insurance against theft!

“Journey Through Europe” is about what I like most: travelling! Your task is to do your own “Eurotrip”, visiting 8 cities across the Europe that you have on your cards.

The last game that night was an untitled game with very simple rules, but very amusing. Short piece of having fun you can find here:

Oksana rules, isn’t she?

Here you have some photos of our players:

Although we didn’t play with our friends, we had a great time and we hope to repeat it every Monday.

Unforgettable trip to Kiev

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After the 5-day on-arrival training In Odessa, Ola and me decided to stay one more day in this city. At the last day of training afternoon with our volunteer-friends from Lvov we were exploring this city – full of amazing smaller and bigger streets and yards. But the most unexpected thing in Odessa was the street named Kaczynski, who was Polish president. Of course during this day and the next we visited Potemkin Stairs, Passenger Terminal and Sailor’s wife monument, Odessa Opera and Ballet Theater and of course my favorite writer’s monument – A. Pushkin.

On Monday evening we took a train to Ukrainian capital – Kiev, and after 8 hours we were in the best city in Ukraine. Now I can say it is the best place in Ukraine, which I was in (of course excluding Donetsk). We spent almost four days exploring Kiev and it was not too much.

What is the best in Kiev? Difficult to say, but it is big, crowded, everyone is in hurry – almost only we had time to appreciate the beauty of the city. Simply you can feel big city life here. We were surprised it is almost impossible to hear Ukrainian language on the streets – everywhere is spoken Russian, what I like because for me it is better to communicate in Russian. And for Ola it doesn’t matter – she more or less understands both of the languages, but doesn’t speak any of them.

First thing we did in Kiev was to buy a city map and find our hostel – amazing place with amazing, interesting, crazy people. First question was: are you from Katowice? No, I am from Gdansk. Everything because I said I love Donetsk and Katowice is also industrial city, but in Poland and I have never been there. After such an answer they were really surprised I can love my city – Donetsk. Of course because of place where we live in Ukraine they suggested us to visit industrial district of Kiev, what we did. But it is not the same what Donetsk, there is no mines, spoil tips and so on… .

We started exploring the city from Khreschatyk Street and Independence Square but on our way we of course we met monument of Lenin, so we felt like in Donetsk. All day we were visiting Orthodox churches, the most beautiful for us was St. Vladimir’s. Because of these churches on every corner we love this city. It is almost impossible to visit all of them during a few days. Because Ola is a football fan we visited also Olympic Stadium and Dynamo Stadium. Firstly, we thought Olympic Stadium is really small but it was impression because of location between buildings.

Place, which impressed us was not Kiev Pechersk Lavra at all but caves, where is mystic atmosphere, smell of candles… . I felt like in other world. After this fantastic experience we met on our way Glory Square and then my favorite building in Kiev – house with chimaeras. I fell in love with this unique architectural style and I really regret it is impossible to get in.

One day we decided to leave Kiev and go to Chernihiv – my Russian teacher family home. We spent all they walking and visiting orthodox churches and of course taking photos of many monuments. Of course we have also photo on Red Square.

The last evening we were on Gogol Bordello concert. Show was fantastic, a lot of energy. I was really impressed. They prepared Vysotsky interpretations, which were original and special. Next day full of energy after the concert we met Piotrek and our Donetsk friend Kristina and together visited one more time Andriyivskyy Descent. Unfortunately, it is under construction but still I think it is the most beautiful descent in Kiev. And finally One Street Museum. I wish to spend more time in it and feel the atmosphere of this street, people who lived there. After that we took the train and come back home – DONETSK.