This October was full of wonderful discoveries for me because of my participation in Youth Exchange of Erasmus. First of all, I should write that it was my first visit to Spain and I am happy that my acquaintance began namely with Bask’s country. It is not possible to not fall in love with it’s peaceful landscapes, ocean and towns. After Exchange when I was reading book for univercity’s course of historical anthropology I run into description of Bask’s country. The whole book was devoted to people who lived on the contemporary borderland between France and Spain in XVI century (I highly recommend to read it: N. Z. Davis «The return of Martin Guerre», 1984). It was a big pleasure to read about familiar places and retrospectively enrich my own impressions by reading it’s history.
Secondly, I have never taken part in Erasmus’s actions before. I always thought that all of these exchanges are about travelling and having fun with strangers (of course, it is not bad, but I am introvert (+too serious?) and prefer other kind of relaxing). From the very beginning of our Exchange it was clear that I was wrong (maybe because our trainer was too good?) and, yes, I was glad to be wrong in my expectations. During these days we tried to look at actual problems of our society from different perspectives, to understand each other’s opinions – and all of this was about big questions: Why do we have these “problems”? Why do we think and act this way? And what we can do for resolving these problems, for fixing our own way of thinking and acting? It was great experience and I am sure that it must demand a hard work to involve young people to think about this questions. Thank you, Kirill!
Thirdly, it was good chance to meet active people from different parts of our Earth. I respect all of you for being ambitious, brave and enthusiastic! Only after Exchange I realized (through facebook’s news and your posts) that I am not enough familiar with social actions and projects which you provide in your countries.
Now I think maybe participants of Exchange should present themselves not only through their fatherland’s history, geography and culture (I mean “cultural nights”), but also through the introducing difficulties which your societies have met and through social actions and projects by which you try to make people’s life better.
Gulnaz Galeeva (Russia)