I am Cinzia, I come from Italy, I live in Telfs and I am a volunteer in a Montessori school.
This is my first experience in a school like this. The children in the school not only learn different school subjects and play sports, but one day a week they spend the day doing lessons in nature. At school they are also taught to cook, clean and take care of their own space. They are educated from an early age to ask themselves what they need, express what they think and confront each other with respect and assertiveness. I would have liked to attend a school like this when I was a child.
When I arrived here, I was 29 years old and it was the first time I had left my country. I had always wanted to gain experience abroad but I had always thought I was 'not ready yet'. I arrived here not even knowing English.
It is really difficult for me to describe my experience. I felt lost so many times, and at times I was afraid that I had stepped too far out of my comfort zone.
I can definitely say that this was the most difficult experience of my life, but also the most beautiful. I had a hard time interacting with people, I had a hard time understanding myself, I had experiences that I didn't think could happen to me. It was an experience that began to break my patterns and open my horizons. There are things that I no longer see in the same way as before I left.
I left with the desire to get to know myself, and I realised that the most difficult situations are also those that allow you to find a strength within yourself that you didn't know you had, to look inside yourself more deeply.
I don't believe in coincidences, I believe that Life takes us exactly where there are fundamental lessons for us, where there are things we have to learn. And the most difficult moments have helped me to understand how lucky I was to be here, and to recognise how important and wonderful many of the people I was lucky to meet were. Nothing should ever be taken for granted, especially feeling understood by someone.
There are roads that you don't know where they take you and that lead you exactly where you need to be.
I learnt how similar people can be and how different they can be, even if they come from the same or very distant countries. I learnt how much the same experience can be lived, seen and interpreted differently by all the people involved.
Everything happens at the right time and each person arrives at the right time. I trust this. Everything is a gift and everything can be a source of growth. Everything can act as a mirror for you to get to know yourself better and to see parts of yourself that you might not otherwise see.
All the problems we encounter come to teach us something.
In the difficulties with language I have learnt to look more at how people can communicate in so many different ways beyond words.
I met people from all over the world, saw beautiful places, fell in love with villages, cities, mountains. I realised that despite the difficulties I was going through, I would love to stay in Austria after the project is over.
I don't know exactly where I am in my life and I don't know where I will end up after this experience.
I discovered that I really like teaching my language. It was something I had never done and had never thought of doing before coming here. And it is an idea for my personal project that was born here.
Sometimes you just need time and patience... things come and go to the right place.
I have always felt behind the times that society imposes on us, and also in this experience where I met volunteers who were even 10 years younger than me. I learnt to be kinder to myself. Every person is on his or her own journey and every journey is unique. We never really know the difficulties a person carries inside. Sometimes things are revealed to us by time.
I still don't know where I am going but I know where I want to be. And I am very grateful to Life for bringing me here.
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Mehr Beispielprojekte der ESK-Aufnahmeorganisation InfoEck findet ihr hier.
