"Adventures beyond the Isle.
This is the story of the life of eight volunteers that, more or less, have never experienced life outside of the British isles. We have been sent out from our home country to experience the culture and become enriched by it as well at the same time helping out a local scout headquarters with their project.
Week one went the fastest In my personal opinion, there was a lot of anticipation to go everywhere and see everything at once, but we needed to balance our wanderlust with our responsibility of working at the project.
Our first day was spent with out mentor getting to know the city, traveling with us from our home to the project and Semper Avanti, our hosting organization for our stay in Poland. We then toured the main town, seeing the sights such as the town hall, the market square, the cathedrals, a big park and many more. It was at this point we thought we knew our way around, how wrong we’d turn out to be!
For the next few days we worked at the project, painting the first few rooms, two teams one painting a room yellow and one painting a room green. We resigned ourselves to the fact our painting clothes would see better days and had fun with it, myself having a rather large yellow smiley face on my pants to prove it.
It was at this point we thought It’d be a really good idea to see how we’d fair going out at night time and dared it all to see a late night screening in the main square. Getting the last bus from our home proved a bit wrong as we ended up in what we knew at the time was the middle of nowhere with only a glowing divine McDonalds sign in the sky for guidance.. Which in turn proved fruitful as praise be McRonald they gave us directions in English! We arrived at the square in time for the show, there was an airing of a silent movie with subtitles .. in Polish. Gah. There was still a vibrant night life however and we took the opportunity to check out places we could visit. We even made a friend who spoke in English and gave us a tour of the locales that we could visit.
It was at this point we thought It’d be a really good idea to see how we’d fair going out at night time and dared it all to see a late night screening in the main square. Getting the last bus from our home proved a bit wrong as we ended up in what we knew at the time was the middle of nowhere with only a glowing divine McDonalds sign in the sky for guidance.. Which in turn proved fruitful as praise be McRonald they gave us directions in English! We arrived at the square in time for the show, there was an airing of a silent movie with subtitles .. in Polish. Gah. There was still a vibrant night life however and we took the opportunity to check out places we could visit. We even made a friend who spoke in English and gave us a tour of the locales that we could visit.
Getting home turned out to be a whole different ball game however. Wrocław has transport at all hours of the night in every direction. We hopped on the right bus.. in the wrong direction and ended up by the airport. Helped by an English speaking passerby we were rescued by a pair of taxis, home at last!
These were the events of our first week more or less, getting to grips with living together, living in Poland and managing for ourselves. "
Liam Rooke
EVS Volunteer.
Project part of YOUth In Europe,
Supported by the British Council and the Youth in Action programme of the European Union.
