Hello Everyone! For those who don’t know me my name is Alex (Alexandhros) and i’m a volunteer from Greece. Specifically i’m volunterring in the Narva-Jõesuu, Sinimae and Olgina youth center as well as the Narva-Jõesuu School as a youth worker. I’ve been volunteering now for over 4 and a half months. During this period of living and being part of this country and it’s culture, i’ve created my own point of view and come up with my own conclusions and answers on how it is to live in Estonia and especially in Narva the city which i currently live in.
So in retrospect the purpose of this blog is to give you an insight on what my thoughts are regarding Estonia and my experience living in it as well as giving you an insight on my life as a volunteer and in general me as a person. This blog will be updated weekly so if you are interested make sure to stick out with us to get updated weekly!!
So i was thinking before writting this, what should i write in my first blog. What’s the first thing that i should start with. After giving it some thought i decide that “you know what, why don’t i start from the beggining...”. So in this blog i’m going to talk to you about why i decided to come and volunteer in Estonia and what was the process that it took for that to happen.
Before coming here i was living in Athens for 3 years, studying informatics as a universtity student. Let’s say that at that time i wasn’t in a very good state of mind...
I was feeling kind of lost and i wasn’t sure if what i was doing was the right thing for me. I wasn’t sure that what i was studying in university was what i wanted to pursue and continue doing as a job in the future. That in addition to other factors made me feel unfullfiled and insecure. I had the sense that i wasn’t really doing something productive and just letting days and time pass by. The date was October 2019. At that time decided that i should figure out what was going on and ask for help. So I started going to a psychologist. With his help i started to realize that what i was feeling previously was actually the case. So for the first time i started to think about something that i really like and want to experience in my life· and that thing turns out, that it was volunteering.
So after a lot of thought and support from my family and close friends i decided in December that i will pause my studies in order to do that. So i started to look for a job so i could start saving money about my trip (and also about my daily expenses and other stuff...). Unfortunately after 3 months of working the Corona virus situation started in Greece so i had to stop what i was doing and also say goodbye to other plans that i also had in mind. But that’s a story for another time...
Fortunately things went in my favor so i managed to save enough money! At the same time from the beggining of April i started to look about different volunteering projects in which i could apply for. My plan was to find projects that started maximum in October. I didn’t care so much about what coutry it would take place in. I was more interested about the volunteering experience in a whole. For 5 months i was applying to projects and having interviews with each organization that were in charge of each project. It was a tedious and time consuming process and as time passed by I was getting even more and more concerned about not finding a project in time. Around that time was that i came across a project that was taking place in Estonia. Before reading about this project, i didn’t even know where Estonia was located in the map, not considering traveling it. But after making my research and seeing what this country was actually about, i was surprised and intrigued about all the facts that I was learning about it...
That in addition with the fact that Estonia was one of the countries with the lowest covid cases (at the time...) made me even more want to apply to this project. After that i had an interview with my current hosting organization and the rest is history....
So that was it for today’s blog. I appreciate all of you who managed to stick in until the end and also taking time from your everyday life just to read about my shenanigans :P. If you have any questions, or you found something interesting in this blog that maybe you would like me to explain more in depth, or in general any suggestion for next weeks blog you can just leave a comment or just sent me a message so we can make that happen!!
See you on the next one!!!
Project number: 2020-2-EE01-ESC11-078077
Project title: „Solidarity for Sustainable Life“