Back from Estonia - Laura

It’s been almost a week since we came back from Estonia but only now I could put my memories together to write about this wonderful experience.
I must confess that at the beginning I didn’t know much about this country. I only knew that it had been part of the Soviet Union and that they speak Estonian (of course, due to Maris, Paivi and Anar who visited Romania, I could imagine that people are very nice and kind… but I couldn’t imagine that almost all of them have blue eyes!J)

When we arrived there, at first I was impressed by the civilization and the modernity of the capital, Tallinn. A big city with a lot of beautiful parks, with a combination of extremely modern buildings and old, historical ones, with calm people and good traffic.

Than I had the opportunity to visit Kaiu and I was impressed again: a village with beautiful villas, built with a lot of good taste, neat gardens, a village surrounded by forest: an extremely beautiful scenery, like in fairy-tales!
The visit to school brought us other nice surprises: little children expecting us all happy, in traditional costumes, pupils who performed like real artists, dancing and singing, friendly teachers: it was such a warm welcome!
When time for work came, students and teachers from all three countries: Estonia, Romania and Turkey, showed implication, responsibility and a strong will to work together as a team.

And when the journalists from the local newspaper came, they were all able to speak about the aims of the project, about the solutions and strategies that they proposed as a result of their team-work, about their concerns and hopes, about what being involved in such project means.
The program that the Estonians prepared for this project reunion was great, full of activities, visits related to the project theme (like the one to the Village Museum where we could see how families lived in the past), with opportunities for the Romanian and Turkish students to live in Estonian families for a few days and to see the relationship between family members.

In just a few days teenagers for three different countries became good friends and proved that different cultures can communicate without borders.

Thank you for all, dear Estonian friends!

Laura Szebeni

Project coordinator