“Excuse me, is this Craiova?”

I asked after 17 hours of travelling. One hour later I was in my bed, having troubles falling asleep because of being afraid of everything that next days, weeks and months would bring.

As I am writing this article I am enjoying my 10th day living in Craiova, Romania. I slept well today. I’m sitting in my comfy bed, trying to catch some wind through the open window and listening our neighbor sawing something in his garden. We have a garden too because we were lucky to get a house where all the volunteers from my project can live together. House is pleasantly big and not too far from the city center. Our office is 25 minutes from home, funny thing is that in this city it doesn’t matter if you’re walking or taking the bus - it’s still going to take the same time. The city isn’t too big but has still a lot of places to go - parks, restaurants, shopping malls, pools, bars etc. My favourite place so far is the Nicolae Romanescu Park. It is the largest natural park in eastern Europe and the third biggest park in Europe. From there you can find The Suspended Bridge, The Charmed Castle, The Hippodrome of Craiova, the lake, Glorieta (the belvedere dome) and even the zoo.

I work and live with 6 other volunteers - Sara and Catarina from Portugal, Mariela, who’s born in Chile but now lives in Spain, Aleksandra and Danny from Macedonia and Çağdaş from Turkey. As an introvert it’s definitely a challenge for me to live with so many people, share my room and spend almost all the time with others but so far I haven’t had any problems with that. There are also a lot of volunteers from other projects in this city. I met some of them at a party that was happening literally in the forest. We share a Facebook chat where we often invite each other to enjoy the day at the pool or the night at the Beer Garden. We also attend the events that other volunteers are organizing and help them out if it’s needed. Tomorrow is our first English Book Reading Club event and I’m so excited to see how our super cool team will manage it. I’m ready for tomorrow and I am more than ready for all the wonderful things that are going to happen during my EVS experience.