An Asia Girl Has Gone to Romania Alone, Li Shan.

Grow Summer 2012, Romania

25 June – 1 August 2012

AIESEC Suceava

Hi, everyone! I am Li Shan. During the last summer break, I had took up my courage and made a decision to go for exchange to Romania. It was used to be a dream to go for exchanged when I first heard of it from the other organization when I was still in secondary school. It was then a dream for me to keep pursuing with until in university, and thus, another reason for me to join AIESEC.

You might just be very curious why did I choose Romania. The reason was just simple enough, to explore a totally different culture and get some culture shock, to understand more about the different education system between Asia and Europe and doing whatever I can to contribute to this society. People around me were very surprised when they first knew me that I will be heading to Romania for my exchanged. However, I am really glad to tell you that I had made one of the best decisions in my life. And, this is how I started my adventures journey.

I had my internship in one of the city in North Romania, Suceava and the project that I participated with is “Grow” project. It is a national education project that is collaborated between NGO, named School of Value and AIESEC. Basically, School Of Value will provide a Train the Trainers conference and designed a manual for the trainers to deliver the session to the high school students. Meanwhile, AIESEC will conduct recruitment of the trainer.

This internship kicked start by a training conference which held in one of the city in Romania, Predel. The conference was a 5 days 4 nights conference sponsored by the BRD Hotel. The main objective of this conference is to prepare us to be a qualified trainer and integrate us into the Romania culture. All of the trainers and the Organizing Committee President from different LC are compulsory to participate in the conference. It was an awesome conference as it was my first ever international conference in my AIESEC life. There were around 55 delegates from all over the world such as Portuguese, Poland, Estonia, Korea, China, Singapore, Brazil, Pakistan, Mexico and Ukraine participated in this conference. It was cool as I got to expose how an international conference run and at the same time exposed to the diverse cultures from the other participants.

Generally, my project is about to conduct and deliver the  sessions to the high school students here. As we have only 4 EPs back in my LC, we paired up in order to conduct the sessions in a more effective way. I paired up with a Pakistan EP, Fahad to deliver the sessions to the group of Grade 11 students, which is from 16-17 years old. On the other hand, the Brazil EP, Nelly paired up with Hong Kong EP, Matthew to deliver the sessions to Grade 12 students which are between the ages of 18 to 19 years old. Each of the pair has 2 batches of students. We have a total of 10 sessions to deliver which include team management skill, leadership skill, career orientation, budget, time management and etc. However, we are required to complete 10 sessions to each batch of students within 2 weeks. During the session, we weren’t just lecturing about theory. We brought up the knowledge through all the interactive activities and tried to share our own experience as much as we can. In my opinion, it was a very effective way as you got to grab the student’s attention and assisting them to acquired the skills through these activities. At the same time, we are more bonded with each other.

Life in Romania was fun and full of activities almost every day. Every day, either the AIESECers or the students here invited us to visit around the historical places around the city or hanged out together for bowling or snooker. It was really great as although we guided the students during the formal session, but we actually learnt a lot of things from my students themself. They were always so excited to share with us their culture and history especially when we visited together to the museums or castles. I got to know a lot more about the Romania culture, history and language from them. Besides, they even taught me how to play snooker and bowling as these are the common sports in their country. Throughout these 7 weeks, I had a lot of my first and only experience here. I tried a lot of the things that I never expect myself will be doing before I came. Singing and playing guitar under an  apple trees, singing in a pub, teaching the secondary school students, trying various kind of traditional Romanian food, went to the countryside and saw such a big herd of sheep for the first time and meeting Dracula at the Bran’s castle are all the memorable experiences that still remained so fresh in my mind.

Words just couldn’t describe my 7 weeks internship in Romania. It was just way beyond my expectation. I explored myself and found my passion. I become a more confidence, mature and independent person. I had made a lot of friends from all over the world. Seeing the changes among my students and how they explored themselves for their future direction were my great satisfaction during this internship. I felt so grateful when my students gave me a group hug during the last session and told me how much they appreciated you for the impacts that they I had brought to them. They sent me off in tears during my last day in Suceava, telling me how much they wished me to come back struck me that how much I had influenced them. I am just never regret the decision that I had made to come for this internship.

In Sucaeva, Romania.