HOW THINGS HAPPEN...

I am in sunny Lisbon in the beginning of November and on my Fb wall I can see autumn pictures of my polish friends.. It doesn't seem real that the dream of living in a different place from cold Poland came true, but it didn't happen in one minute, it was a process of getting to know the opportunities for people like me and a process of growing up.

As far as I can remember I was feeling a big need to get to know different cultures and different societies, that´s why I chose to study sociology at university and as future researcher (I thought about myself like this then) I decided to travel.

:)

But the question all young people ask themself is how to travel when you study and you are busy, or when you don´t have money ? The best option here is the Erasmus Programme. At that time I thought Erasmus is only exchange between universities so I decided to do it.

StuDYING hard

I chose to study at Erasmus University in Rotterdam Netherlands and I think it was the best option for someone that wanted to combine all the Erasmus pleasures of crazy parting with real studying and improving English. I feel in love with dutch culture very quickly as I thought but after I realized it was something more. I feel in love with living in a different place, with different people, speaking in different language and feeling more comfortable than in my own country that I don´t understand but I still love.

Kingsday; going to Amsterdam

I know that now every pessimist that is reading this may say that moving is expensive and blablabla.. but Erasmus cover you in this field as well. I got scholarship that covered some of my expenses (of course I knew how expensive is in Netherlands but you can always choose different and cheaper destination).

The good things happens when you decide to be yourself. As I read lately doing something that doesn't scare you isn't´brave (Lena Dunham) moving out to different country was scary as shit but I did it, besides problems with my university that did not let me to graduate after, besides that my ´friends´ thought I am crazy..

Beautiful Den Haag

Once Erasmus - always Erasmus. That sentence is very true in my case. After moving back to Poland after my exchange I started to looking for more mobility options and thanks to my friend Mike I went to my first training course where I met many people that inspired me and I got informations about a lot of new opportunities. I met  Check-In Association there and learned what is Erasmus Plus.

After a while I decided I want to do EVS in Check-In Association. I found organisation from my city in database of european voluntary service accredited organisations and Jeden Swiat helped me and applied for the April deadline and in July we got results that the project got approved ! :)


And here I am, admiring the view, breathing slowly, writing a new story:

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