Romania 2015

Emily Hunt
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Girlguiding Anglia Region Trip to Romania 2015
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This trip has been an incredible, once in a lifetime experience. I am so thankful
to GirlGuiding for having incredible opportunities like this which, as I’ve seen first
hand, make a world of difference.
!
I feel so fortunate and lucky to have been selected for this adventure,
something I never thought I would be doing when I stepped through the doors of my
Suffolk Selection day. To hear that I would be going to Pax Lodge in London was
amazing. The selection weekend was so much fun, I completely forgot my chances of
going on an international trip were being
decided. I was ecstatic when I got the phone
call from the Anglia Office letting me know I had
filled a space on the Romania trip. I didn’t know
much about what the trip would be, but I knew
enough to be really excited!
!
The fundraising was relatively straight
forward and suddenly it was time to go to
Heathrow and fly to Romania. I had met the
girls at a meet up weekend in March so I wasn’t
too nervous about the company I would be
travelling with. When we got to the airport we
all changed into our trip kit. (A bright blue
hoodie and purple polo shirt with our international guiding neckers). The plane
journey was so much fun. I sat next to Charis and Katie and we played uno to pass
the time.
!
After a three and a half hour plane journey, we arrived in Romania’s capital city,
Bucharest. The heat suddenly hit us as we stepped out of the air-conditioned airport.
We had to order taxis to take us to the Ibis hotel we were staying in. Emily C, Charis
and I shared a taxi along with Ruedy (Anglia’s teddy bear mascot for GirlGuiding
adventures). The taxi ride was quite scary as there were no seat belts and the driver
happily took calls on his phone and drove on the opposite side of the road. When we
got to the hotel Charis and I went to our room and lay on our beds (we were tired
from a long day of travelling). We all met up in the lobby of the hotel and proceeded
to take a walk through Bucharest. To me, it looked like any other large city with bright
lights and tall buildings. During our walk we went though a train station and arrived at
a place called ‘Springtime’. We sat down and ate dinner at the fast food style
restaurant before heading back to the hotel rooms for some much needed sleep.
!
The next day we headed to Bacau. We travelled from Bucharest by train which
took around 5 hours. The train was busy and hot with no air-conditioning and minimal
space for our luggage. The journey was very long which made it difficult for us to
entertain ourselves for a large amount of time. We played card games and read my
book but the easiest way to let time pass was just to sleep.
After the train journey, we waited at Bacau train station for
Gabi to pick us up. Gabi runs the Summer School in Godinesti
and runs the charity from offices in Bacau. He met us at the
train station and drove us to the Volunteer Centre.
!
We set up air beds and sleeping bags in a spare room of the offices and got
ready to go out for a meal in the evening with 3 of the Romanian Volunteers, Monica,
Bianca and Alexia, who we would be working with for the 5 days of Summer School.
The restaurant was fabulous. We went right up to the top floor of a large building and
sat out on a balcony with hanging baskets of flowers and live musicians. I had a pizza
which was delicious. I discovered that the restaurant food in Romania is very Italianbased which was good for me, as I am a fussy eater (however, I was very happy to try
new things in a new environment).
!
The next day we met the 3 other Romanian
Volunteers, Dragos, Alina and Stefan. We played ice
breaker games and got to know them in the morning
which were really fun. We then got into the groups
we would be working in at the Summer School.
Myself, Ellie, Bethany, Monica and Bianca teamed up
to work on ‘Arts and Crafts’. The other 3 classes were
English, Dance and Music and Sport. We made a
planner for the week as to what activities we would do
with each age group. Once each group had organised their planner we ordered pizza
from what Gabi said was the best pizza place in town. After pizza Holly and Amy
suggested we should go to a swimming pool for the afternoon. I really enjoyed it
there and it was really lovely to spend some time with
the girls. (We hadn’t really ‘done’ anything and
everyone was a bit tired from travelling).
On the Sunday we packed up all of our stuff and
cleared the Volunteer Centre to make sure we hadn’t
left anything as that was the day we were leaving for
Godinesti. Everyone was so excited and the
atmosphere was so bubbly.
!
We packed all of our luggage onto a mini bus, filling
the whole aisle with food for the week. The road to
Godinesti was long and bumpy. The road was more of a dusty track, full of rocks and
stones. As we drove down the road the landscape gradually become more and more
remote and rural. We started to go up hill a little which is when Katie informed us that
we were nearly there - I was so excited! When we approached the Summer School
there were some children waiting for us who chased our mini bus and stood next to it
until we got out of it. We carried our bags and all the food items into the bright orange
building we were staying in before going to play with the children there. When we first
arrived there were only a few children about, but later on a lot more children joined.
This is because the children would have been working throughout the day, which is so
upsetting. The first evening in Godinesti we met some of the children and got to know
them (which proved difficult because of the language barrier). Before arriving at the
Summer School I had worried that talking to the children would be impossible, but it
was actually really fun to interact with them and communicate through simply smiling
at them. We quickly taught the children how to play ‘Down In The Jungle’ which is a
simple game where you stand in a circle, sing a song and clap each others hands. If
the song finishes and someone has just clapped your hand, you’re out. They picked it
up really quickly and even the older ones enjoyed it. It was a really fun game to be
able to spend time with the children, without having to converse with them.
!
Monday was the first full day of Summer School and I was a little nervous. We
soon discovered it was very difficult to ‘help’ properly in Arts and Crafts as the
Romanian Volunteers would explain to the children what they had to do, and then go
around the classroom making sure they
were alright. It was frustrating that there
wasn’t much for us to do as we couldn’t
respond to their requests or questions. This
slowly became easier every day as we
learnt Romanian words for ‘glue’, ’glitter’
and other craft items we’d been using. On
the first day the children made name
badges and decorated paper bags. The
bags would be given to them on the Friday,
filled with pens, games, a hat and all sorts
of fun and useful things. The children
making name badges was very useful for us
because we didn’t know them yet. The
youngest group were very proud of their
badges and wanted us to take a photo. As I
had my camera on me all the time they
quickly got the hang of what it was and
were miming taking a picture with their
hands as if to say ‘can you take a
photo?’.
Arts and Crafts quickly got messy
as the children discovered they could
stick the buttons, stickers and glitter on
their faces. This was very funny for us to
watch and they soon encouraged us to
join in. The classes were 40 minutes
long and we had breaks in between.
During the breaks Gabi played some
music and got the children to dance
along to it. It was very hot and there
was little shade so as the day went on,
classes got shorter and shorter to make
sure the children weren’t spending too long out in the sun for sports and dance.
!
The next day was really fun. We got up early as some of the children arrive at
the Summer School at 8am (the classes
don’t start until 9). We played the
‘Hokey Kokey’ with them and they
taught us some of their games. The first
class we had was the youngest group,
Group 1 who are aged around 4-6. This
group and Group 2 (who were aged
7-11) made collages out of tissue paper.
They were so proud of what they had
made and they were constantly smiling.
Group 3 (older girls aged 13-16) and
Group 4 (older boys of the same age)
decorated puppets, boxes and coasters
using paint and glitter. They really
enjoyed the glitter as we found them
scooping it up and throwing it over
themselves. We even had a ‘glitter fight’,
which just involved us grabbing handfuls of glitter and throwing it at each other.
Everyone found it so funny and entertaining.
!
The older boys group loved the paint and
Ady (left) asked Bianca to draw on his face. It
was really lovely to see the children having a
great time and to say that we had put a smile
on their face. After all the children had gone I
helped Ellie and Bethany have a ‘shower’
outside using bottles of water. In the evening it
was the English Volunteers turn to cook dinner.
(Each night we took it in turns so that the
Romanian Volunteers could try English food and
we could try Romanian food). We set out to
make traditional sausages with mashed
potatoes and gravy. But it wasn’t really
traditional with spicy frankfurter sausages and
vegetable stock as a gravy substitute! After
dinner we went outside as the children had
come back for a disco. I really enjoyed it,
especially as we got to know some Romanian
songs and dances. We learnt some traditional
Romanian dances which the older boys showed us how to do. Then, once the children
had all gone, we spent some time with the Romanian Volunteers. We then went to bed
as we were all exhausted from a long day.
!
In the morning on the Wednesday we all did our
usual ‘breakfast routine’ of getting cereal from the
kitchen and sitting in the corridor and all eating it
together. The activities for Arts and Crafts were mainly
making paper chains and decorating them for the
performances on Friday. The youngest group made
masks in the shape of a bear to fit with the gummy bear
dance that they had been working on. This was the day
that we were covered in loads and loads of glitter than
was nearly impossible to wash off! In the lunch break
between activities we discussed the fact that we cannot give the children the same
thing for lunch everyday because we don’t want them to get used to being given their
lunch all the time as that is most likely not what they would get at home. After the
children had gone I was so exhausted that I fell asleep for the rest of the afternoon
and missed out on making cards for Gabi and the Romanian Volunteers to say thank
you for all their help. In the evening we had a meal prepared for us of vegetable soup,
followed by a traditional Romanian meal called sarmale. It was meat wrapped in
cabbage leaves, served with polenta. Personally, I didn’t like it however a lot of people
did!
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On Thursday, everyone was a little sad as it
was the last full day with the children before we
had to go. We made big posters with everyone’s
hand print on as a display for the final day. It was
really fun as
the children
really enjoyed
getting messy
with the paint
and we
showed them
how to ‘highfive’ each other
and we ended up getting covered in paint too.
Once we had finished the posters we had to say
goodbye to the children which was very
upsetting (even though we would be seeing them
in the evening for a bonfire/disco, and they’d be
there the next day). In the evening we all got
changed into our white shirts so that the children and other volunteers could sign
them so we would have memories of the trip. Then the older boys made a massive
bonfire out of pieces of wood they had found. It was quite amusing to see them
wander off and then come back again, dragging a great big wooden crate behind
them. The bonfire looked amazing and we all danced around it and had an incredible
time. Then it started to rain, along with some thunder and lightning, which meant that
the children had to go home as Gabi was worried
it was too dangerous. It was sad that the bonfire
party had to be cut short but it made the
experience all the more memorable.
!
On the last day of the Summer School it
was kind of cold and rainy from the storm the
previous night (a big contrast to the ridiculously
hot temperatures the rest of the week). The day
was filled with the children performing the
dances and songs that they had been practicing
all week. It was very emotional and upsetting
knowing that it was going to be a final ‘goodbye’.
After the morning of performances the children
got their party bags and they were so excited to see
what they had inside. They asked us to write our
names in the notebooks they had received in the bags
and hugged us. I was so upset because I didn’t realise
how much the children meant to me and how much I
genuinely love them until I realised I may never see
them again.
!
In the afternoon me, Emily, Katie, Saffy, Amy, Holly and Louise went to visit
some of the houses in the village to give them the left over food we had from the
Summer School. This was very culturally shocking as one house had 13 children living
in it, but was no bigger than an outside shed. These people are completely dependant
on their animals and farm to earn their money, but they don’t even have a kitchen.
We gave an 8 months pregnant woman a
pillow for her bed which she was incredibly
grateful for, which just shows that these
people are in need of so much. During our
visit to the houses we agreed that we would
fundraise money so that the families we met
could move into proper, substantial houses.
We would also send Christmas presents to the
children, based on the letters they sent to
‘Santa’. This just shows what an incredible
difference Gabi’s charity makes to people.
Then when we got back to the Summer
School we had to tidy up and load our bags
onto the minibus to travel back to Bacau. We
went out for dinner in the evening to the same
restaurant that we went to on the first night in Bacau. Bianca and Stefan came with us
which was lovely but then we had to say goodbye to them. When we got back to the
offices we bought some handmade jewellery, which was beautiful. The money raised
from the jewellery goes towards Gabi’s charity which made it even more special.
On the Saturday we travelled from Bacau to Brasov.
The journey was quite long and got most of us feeling
travel sick. The hotel we arrived at was stunning. It
was almost unnecessarily posh, which made everyone
feel guilty because of what we had left behind in
Godinesti. Brasov was beautiful, from the tall
industrial buildings to the small, quaint streets. The
tour guide we had spoke incredible English and told us
all about the legend of Dracula and all about the town
of Brasov. The first
day in the town we
took a cable car up to
the ‘Brasov sign’ in
the mountains. It was
extremely high up yet breathtaking. We took a walk
through the mountains and sat down at a cafe to eat
ice cream. In the evening we went to a Romanian
restaurant which served traditional food. I had a
Moldavian layer pie with bacon and potato which was
really nice.
!
The next day we went to a swimming pool
which was ridiculously busy however a lot of fun. We also visited Dracula’s castle
which was stunning. It looked like a castle from a fairy tale. Learning about Dracula
and his castle was extremely interesting and afterwards we walked through a farmers’
market which meant we got to look at a lot of the Romanian culture as well.
!
Looking around Brasov was really fun and interesting, a highlight of my time in
this town was going to see bears in the nature reserve. We were taken through a
forest on a walk and told to be really quiet. After a while we got to a bear hide which
we all sat down in. When we arrived there was already a bear eating the food that the
man had left for them. We stayed in the hide for
around 2 hours and watched the bears come and
go to collect their food. It was quite late when we
got back from bear spotting as the best time to see
bears is in the evening. We went straight to our
rooms and went to bed as we were all very tired!
!
On the Tuesday we had another long day of
travelling, as we were going back to Bucharest so
that we could go home. The last couple of days of
the trip were spent sight seeing in Bucharest. We
took a tour bus around the city and saw some
incredible buildings, as well as sculptures in the
town centre and a beautiful park. We had to take separate taxis to all get from the
hotel to the city centre. The taxi rides are a little unnerving and we all got dropped off
at different places. Our only instruction to the taxi driver was ‘The Old Town’ - to
which mine, Amy, Louise and Charis’ taxi driver knew where to go, however the other
two got completely lost. It was very entertaining
as Holly’s taxi drove past us at quite a speed and
Amy ran down the road, shouting after them. We
took some ‘lost photos’ to capture the moment.
Although it was quite worrying to have lost a taxi
full of GirlGuides in Romania, we tried to make
fun of it - especially after we knew everyone was
all xright and on their way to meet us. We looked
around Souvenir shops and I bought a traditional
Romanian shirt. In the evening Holly and Amy
took us to a fancy restaurant which was very
exciting. The menus were printed to look like
newspapers
and the
whole restaurant looked amazing. We gave Holly
and Amy their thank you cards and presents and
they were very grateful. It was lovely to spend
the last evening all together having lots of fun,
with delicious food.
!
On the last day we went for a walk in the
park and sat down to sing songs and chat. There
was a play park with swings and roundabouts
which we all found very amusing. We tried to
have as much fun as possible, because we didn’t
want to
spend our last day in Romania being sad about
having to leave. When we got to the airport we
had lunch in a restaurant before going through
security and being able to look at the shops on
the other side. At security my bag had to be
searched as I had forgotten to take my water
bottle, suncream and insect repellent out of my
day sack. We all managed to get through okay
and got to our gate in plenty of time. During the
plane journey I sat next to Charis and Louise
which was really fun. We were all sad we had to
leave but I feel like the proper ‘goodbye’ was
spent at the Summer School in Godinesti. When
we got to ‘arrivals’ and saw our parents, we all performed a dance routine we had
learnt to ‘Shake It Off’. It was a lot of fun and was a lovely way to finish our trip.
Saying goodbye to everyone at the airport was quite upsetting however I think we
were all very tired and ready to go home!
!
This trip has been incredible and I feel so fortunate to be able to have seen
what I have and experience it all. I’m so thankful to GirlGuiding Anglia for giving us
these life changing opportunities; for us, and the people of Godinesti.