The long term EVS projects include an on arrival and a midterm training. Since we're already here for roughly six months, we were invited for our midterms. On the on arrivals all five of us went together, that's why our organization decided to send us on the midterms individually. I was the last one to go. The midterm training is placed in the beautiful city Torun. The Monday session was mainly used for some ice breakers and getting to know each other. Afterwards we had a delicious meal, which got even better through the week. Then we went to a pub to let the evening end in a nice and informal way.
On Tuesday we made a small city tour through Torun. We were given postcards that showed different symbols of Torun and our task was to find them and learn about the legend behind them - only by asking people. In the afternoon we were collecting our expectations for the training and started talking about problems, we were opposed to in our EVS project so far. The next day we continued with evaluating the past in form of an open work time, where we were presented with different ways of doing so. Later we shared our results and got a new task. Presenting how our future looks like, either through a photo or drawing. Thursday started with a walk, ending at a Cafe.
We should choose a person, we don't really know and talk to them about the assigned topics during the walk. When we arrived at the Cafe, we ordered and prepared for a simulation, that consisted of us talking about our EVS experience to different people. For example, our parents, a personal manager or a professor. Once we got back to the hostel, we could choose a topic, about which we wanted to make a workshop. After creating the workshops, we presented them and also participated in the ones the others prepared. On the last day of the training we did a city rally, visiting quite interesting places of Torun. In the afternoon we talked about the Youth Pass and our trainers presented us a lot of useful sides and programs for our future. Those were for example but not only about how to stay in Poland, learn Polish or what kind of volunteering projects we could join in the future.
The time went by way to fast. Suddenly it was Saturday and I was on my way back to Poznan. To conclude, I can only say that I enjoyed the training a lot and could take a lot of useful information from it. I learned a lot about myself as well. Fortunately, I was blessed with lovely trainers and participants.