Olá, I’m Mimi and I’m a new volunteer in Rato-ADCC.
I’m at the beginning of 8,5 months of journey! But let me introduce myself first. I’m a Turkish girl who was born in Russia and moved to Turkey when I was 7. It was challenging for me and my family to start a life in a new country, because my parents never lived in Turkey before, they lived in (post)-Soviet countries (Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Russia). With this background of different countries I had a chance to live in a multicultural environment.
I moved from Bursa to Istanbul to study at university. I studied City and Regional Planning which is related to my childhood dream; architecture. I had a chance to pursue this dream studying architecture in Riga with the Erasmus Exchange Programme. In February of 2020, I got back from Latvia and the Coronavirus has started.
In lockdown I continued to study my Bachelor’s and even started to study another degree; Geographic Informations Systems. Last month I graduated from my Bachelor’s and I want to do something different. So I searched for Erasmus opportunities and I found Rato-ADCC.
Erasmus has so many great opportunities and ESC is one of them. I wanted to be a volunteer and to help people. For me, volunteering is touching the lives of others and trying to make the world a better place. In our world where the importance of materiality is gradually increasing; I want to strengthen my social relationships, improve my spirituality, feel useful and see that I have good effects for the world and people. I realized that what makes me happy the most is making others happy, and that’s what I want to do. So I chose this project.
It’s my first time in Portugal. I expected to see sun and warm weather but, the dust from the sandstorm in the Sahara Desert makes the sky dusty and the weather is not warm like what I expected. The other 2 volunteers (Anna and Martyna) helped me with everything since they met me at the airport. All the office workers are so nice. As far as I have observed so far, Portuguese people are very friendly, kind and helpful. They like laughing a lot 🙂
I can’t wait to make memories that I’ll always remember with a smile on my face.
