It felt like yesterday that I wrote my last Blogpost- the days and weeks are passing by so fast. The past weeks have been exciting and challenging at the same time. For the first time in my life, I had food poisoning which was an unpleasant surprise. Especially because it happened two times in the past weeks so from now on I will be a little bit more careful.
Every time I have the feeling that I’m not doing enough, because sometimes you just have these kinds of days, I look back at the time since September and start to remember what we already experienced. It really helps a lot and that’s incredible how much I got to experience and try. So the feeling in general is just, that I am really grateful and happy to be here in this city, in this flat with my flat mates.
In October we made our first big trip together as a group to Denizli and Pamukkale. This was such a nice experience because these are the things you usually just see in pictures, so it was great to see a UNESCO world heritage with my own eyes. The ruins of the “Hierapolis” city are in such great shape you can walk for hours and find different stones, graves, antic churches and temples and even a huge “Amphitheatrum”. These days were really precious to me also because of the company- we stayed four people each in an airbnb.
Shortly after this adventure we were invited by one community center in Buca on a camping trip. I had just very little information so I didn’t expect anything which turned out to be a great thing! I arrived at the center and was told it is a Yoga and Sumba camp and we were also going to do pottery class. So I jumped in the bus and we went to a small village approximately 20 minutes away from Izmir. In the end it turned out to be a great weekend with a big campfire and lots of Sucuk ekmek.
The time passed by and we did more workshops and learned new things. One short term volunteer left and another one arrived so it’s always something new and fresh energy in the group.
But at the same time I have to admit that it is sometimes not easy here. Of course sharing a flat is great and being without your parents is also nice most of the time. However, I get really easily influenced by others’ emotions, even if a workshop did not go as planned, which is not helpful if you don’t have your own room or this kind of private space. Luckily I can talk to my roommates about this and get the help or kind words you need in these situations.
Additionally there are the worldwide happenings which influence me and bring me
down. It makes me wonder very often how can we keep going and pretending that our situation is fair in any relation to all the suffering in this world. I want to make the best out of it and know that only by crying and complaining about how good and privileged our lives are the world is not going to turn into a better one.
That’s why I will use this year as an opportunity to actually do something by organizing workshops and activities for kids and young people and connecting many. Every week we get to know new people in the workshops so it is a lot to handle but at the same time so interesting to see what others do and which plans they have for the future.
But other than that we had our german cultural night in November and it was so great to eat some proper german bread marmelade again, we really missed this!
Just one week later we all went together to Diyarbakir for our midterm meeting organized by the Turkish National Agency. In this seminar we shared our situations in different cities all over Türkiye by creating mood boards or other things. We learned skills about crisis management and how to act in certain situations.
The next week was actually my holiday so I did not have any workshops and went to Istanbul which was so great! Nevertheless I am really happy about being in Izmir. It is such a great city to live in!Now I am refreshed and have new energy for upcoming workshops and we have a lot of activities planned!
