Treasure Hunt in Bărbătești

The day 26 of november, we take the bus to Bărbătești.

Bărbătești is a commune located in Vâlcea County, Romania. It is composed of four villages: Bodeşti, Bărbăteşti, Bârzeşti and Negruleşti.

The population of this commune is 3.861 residents.

In the bus, we met a girl that help us, she responded our questions and called the council to inform about our arrival.

When the bus stopped in front of the council, the bus driver accompanied us to enter in the building.

After they talked with us about:

- The origin of Bărbătești name: According to the legend, three brothers, Barbat, Costea and Dobrea had a big argument, so they decided to split and create their own community, respectively Bărbătești, Costesti and Dobriceni

- Another legend is about the monastery Mănăstirea Pătrunsa: The legend says that the inhabitants of Bărbătești were fighting against the Ottomans and a lady of that village was pregnant and to save herself and her baby who carried in her womb, fled the village and hid in the mountains, there gave birth to a child who later decided to build the monastery as a symbol of such a miracle to which it gave its name.

-The  story is about an important celebrity whose name were Ticarel, Ticarel is known in the community as the Romanian Robin Hood. He was a rebel who lived in the mountains and as Robin Hood also Ticarel robbed the rich to give to the poor.

Also they talked with us about the local problems and for the community the biggest problem is that young people leave the village to go to work for other countries and the village without young people is an aging village.

When we asked about the traditions, they showed us traditionals clothes, dances and songs and they gave us some presents. A belt, gold belt, whom won in a dance competition and a book about Bărbăteşti.

Also they gave us a two traditionals recipes: Sarmale and Cozonac

And one of the best part of the day were when they invited us to have lunch with them and try the tradional food: Mămăliga with cheese, meat pork and of course Țuică!

When the lunch finished we went out to visit diferent places where they made by traditional methods Țuica and Palinca.

 

So they took us to visit diferent natural places and after Dumitru Tîrcală invited us to drink a coffee and met him family, because we only had met one of his daugther, Denisa. In his house we met the other daugther Ariana and his wife Alina. And we felt truly like at home. They not only invited us to their house, also gave us jams, syrups, natural juices and a nice conversation.    

To finish the day in the town, Alina went to the bus stop with us... 

Bărbătești is not a big commune but their residents made us feel at home.

Welcome Party to New Volunteers

While we were starting the new activities time, when volunteers who have been travelling returned, another unforgettable activity happened was the “welcome party” that older volunteers prepared for us and for other new volunteers.

The party took place at the office. It started in the evening and lasted all night long. Not only volunteers from our organisation and others from different cities but also local people joined this party and shared a lot of nice moments all together. We brought food and drinks prepared by ourselves including traditional ones.

During the night people enjoyed food and drinks as well as dances and music of many different kinds. We had a good chance also to have guests from different cities, meet them and share moments together while meeting new people and making new friends. At the end of the night it was one of the most significant memories for us which gave us the chance to have a day with many nice moments and social experiences.

An overview of this month

Also October was a fantastic month. The volunteers of the Go for green project arrived and also a girl from China called Fang-Fang, who stayed here for a few days in an interchange program.

We spent a lot of time with each other. We remain committed to learn Romanian and we made some trips. I had my on arrival in Busteni, that was great!

Here the description of some activities that made this month:

-We went with volunteers from another project to the kindergarten doing activities with the children.

-We did interactive activities among us, in the office, coordinated by Sergiu and Georgeta in order to know the new volunteers and develop other skills related with the team work.

-We participate in an activity to clean the “Centrul de agrement Cozia” in Călimăneşti”. It was an amazing day. Many young people in this city also volunteered for this activity and so it was a good opportunity to meet the locals.

-We addressed some of the bureaucratic issues such as opening bank accounts and settle our stay in Romania in the Immigration office.

-We continue with the Romanian classes.

-We continue to work on our Facebook page and we started working on our blog.

-We went regularly to the museum to know it deeply. We start by cleaning up the houses (which was very interesting due to the fact that we spent a long time in every home forced us to pay more attention to each object that was there).

-And of couse we made a lot of parties and dinners together.

September: discovering our new world

It´s now when the story starts!

A new life was beginning in Romania, full of new feelings, new people, new cultures, new food…It's like getting to discover another part of the world, different from the usual life.
An unbelievable dream that was about to begin was waiting for us.

The people from the organisation welcomed us very well, introduced us to the whole team and provided us the information and support we needed to get adapted to this new life.

We met each other (me, Ari, Nieves and Fatih) in the 1st of September in a lunch provided by the Organisation.This was our first meeting as a group and for Ari and Nieves the first contact with Romanian food, and beer!

The coordinator of our project was not there because she was out of the country in a training, but we already had the opportunity to meet her in August and she seemed very friendly, helpful and funny to us.

On the next day - 2nd September - in the evening, we had the first birthday party; the 26th birthday of Ariadna!

We visited for the first time Muzeul Satului Vâlcean (in which we will develop much of the activities of our project)
We were dazzled! So beautiful!

In the same day we also met our mentor, Traian, that works at the museum since 2008.

I already had the opportunity to visit the city before, but my colleagues used the free days to explore the natural beauties of it.

What they discovered? Well...here we go:



-The city´s rivers (Olt river)

-A beautiful park (Parcul Mircea cel Bătrân)
-A little forest with fantastic views of the city (Capela Hill)

-A big monastery (Arhiepiscopia Râmnicului)

-A little lake with relaxed fishers.

-A big park (Parcul Zăvoi, unfortunately close)
-The city´s cemetery (Cimitir)

I also travelled around, went to Sibiu, Cluj Napoca, Budapest, Belgrade and Timisoara. And you guys??

Here follows a summary of activities developed during this month.

-We started the Romanian lessons;

What do you think we learn first? Of course we started with introducing ourselves!

Bunã ziua!, Mă numesc Andrea am douăzeci și opt de ani și sunt din Romania. ( Hello, my name is Andrea, I'm twenty-eight years old and I'm from Romania.

-We played breaking ice and getting to know each other games with the other volunteers and spoke about the role of the perfect mentor and the perfect volunteer. We got to know each other better.

-We organised the intercultural evening.

Created an event and flyers. 

-Prepared a little presentation about our countries and made some tipical food from our regions.

All the people enjoyed our fantastic meals and there were a great atmosphere and conversations.


Also we made the logo of the project and its facebook page.

www.facebook.com/evsstorytelling

                 

We organised the project´s launching conference and it was a successful presentation where we had the chance to introduce ourselves, our project and what we are doing here as volunteers; after all the feeling was only one…satisfaction.

This month was really exciting: new country, new culture, new life and above all, motivation for our new project.

On arrival training

In the morning of 20th September three of us (Ariadna, Nieves and Fatih) started our journey to Predeal for one week for our on-arrival training. It was a bit long but a nice journey then we arrived. That followed first having a beer and rest in a nice place and then going to the hotel where we stayed.

In the evening we started to connect and get to know other people who are volunteers in other cities of Romania.In the following days it continued with a lot of useful activities regarding to introduction of different cultures of each other and Romania,the country where we started to live now.



We believe that this week was a great memory for us because we had the chance to spend a week with full of usefull and fun moments with almost 60 volunteers from different countries and in different cities of Romania and by this,we had very good friendships.

It's impossible to explain all the things and all the experiences which happened, so the best way it's this amaizing video that I made for our On Arrival. Let's see!