Hello,
Dear reader of my wilderness diary
In the middle of October I attended the arrival training in Vienna. I have already spent more than a half of my project, but according to the dates that was the first available slot, so I decided it would anyway nice to share my tips and tricks with newly arrived volunteers and meet some friends all over the Austria.
The training started from arrival to the hotel and small talks with cup of coffee. I was a bit in a rush after my trip from Tamsweg, because I had only 20 minutes to take a shower and get ready for the first session. Near the door of the hotel room I bumped into my roommate. She was from Turkey and we spent a lot of nice time chatting about our projects later.
The training lasted for three pretty intensive days. A lot of sessions were oriented on team building and general bounding between volunteers. The greatest part was cooking and then fashionable dinner outside. All 25 participants were divided into 3 teams, which was responsible for three courses: appetizer, main course and desert. The cooking process started with buying the needed products with the limited budget and time. I was in the main course team and we were pretty fast because 80% of list was vegetables. It was funny to watch “the desert team” running around in search for vanilla and canned strawberries. After cooking and eating, we had the cleaning part together as well. It was fun experience, because officially coordinators didn’t say that we had to compete. Anyway, everyone tried to make everything faster, impress with serving of food and make as delicious as possible.
The other sessions were pretty interesting as well. Everyone had a chance to share their story of arrival, the first impression of the project duties or place to stay. After few dialogues I got the impression that a lot of problem and challenges are common and the fact that all of us has pretty different backgrounds and goals doesn’t really matter. The coordinators pushed as to develop the solutions for existing problems and create the accountability system between each other that we will on achieving of self-development goals.
I left the Vienna with the feeling of empowerment and high hopes for future. Those three days helped me to look at my experience from different corner and evaluated how much I changed during those six month. Now, I have plans to visit my new volunteer plans in different parts of Austria. Actually, I realized that my project is the only one in the field of wilderness, ecology and biodiversity.
I want to end this post with my promise to write soon about my experience of visiting other volunteers in Austria and how their projects are going.
Wild hugs,
Karolina
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