I couldn’t be happier for the life that I chose
Sometimes I can’t realize that I’m here for 4 months. How to describe my short but intensive experience here until now? Sweden is.. magic! It is to walk in a big city and suddenly find a forest, it is to see hundreds of rainbows during the week because sun and rain are always together, it is to learn to appreciate sunny days and exploit them as much as possible, it is to learn to stay alone considering the nature as a refuge, it is to greet people that you don’t know and to thank who lets you across the street.
I can’t say that it is always easy, Italy and Sweden are completely different, and sometimes it is really difficult to overcome these differences. A lot of days the weather doesn’t permit to go out and you have to learn to spend your days in the house, often alone. It is not easy to learn to stay with yourself, if you used to spend time surrounded from people. But step by step, I’m starting to appreciate the silence and the company of myself, when it is raining outside and when you have a good book or a nice movie. It is interesting to see how many things you can get passionate about, when you live outside from chaotic and frenetic life, things that normally you don’t think you can like because you hadn’t have time to try them before.
The workplace is very positive and crowded with nice and genuine people and this makes me work in a really joyful ambience. Unlucky the possibilities to spend time outside the work with the other volunteers are not a lot, because we live in different places and we have different timetables in our job, but I’m happy because now I’m living with Laura, a volunteer like me in Globala, she comes from Germany and we are planning a lot of exciting adventures together like travels around Sweden and abroad. I really love to have the possibility to discover Sweden, not like a tourist but like an inhabitant, and knowing all the little aspects of the life in this country. This culture, these landscapes, these habits are really particular and amazing and it is an adventure to learn them totally.
The summer was very busy and the weather, sometimes, very nice, so the time flew very fast. In June we started with the first project, three weeks of “summer workers”, in which we worked with young people who has just arrived in Sweden, doing activities to helping them to follow their passions and find their vocation. In July we had an amazing international experience, GOBI (Go Out to Be In), with 25 participants from Hungary, Cyprus, Sweden, Spain and Armenia. We spent time in a typical red cottage in the middle of the forest, doing outdoors activities and sharing our culture with each other. We are never tired, and the next week we are going to start another international experience, AYOY (Are You Out Yet?), a training course concerning the informal education, for preparing to work with young people and to develop skills in leadership.
In September everything will be more silent and empty after these crazy and exciting months, and the summer weather will be only a nice memory, but I’m ready to face this new chapter of my experience here, that is the Swedish winter. Coming from Italy I am used to live with a Mediterranean weather, and in the winter we touch hardly temperatures under 0 degrees, so for me it will be a big challenge to survive here! But I won’t give up. If I want to know and appreciate Sweden, I also have to accept its crazy weather.
After 4 months I’m not at the beginning of the experience anymore, but I’m not at the end yet. This is the perfect moment, the perfect phase of the adventure to start to realize that not everything is perfect, but also with this negative aspects it can be amazing. After 4 months, and still 8 months in front of me but with a lot of adventures, faces, places, tears and laughs behind me, I can say: I couldn’t be happier for the life that I chose.
Giulia