Tadaaaa! 09.03

Okay, we´re officially the first group to post on this blog, and we must say it´s an honor to be the first to write about our experiences here.

After a yummy breakfast, all the participants found their way to the conference room, where fun was just waiting to explode! After the very entertaining opening ceremony, the prep team suggested that every participant should share their expectations of the seminar, other participants, and the prep team itself. And just seeing how many people want to cooperate and learn more about each other´s culture was an amazing feeling!

Other activities included more name-games (Bulldog!) and a roleplay regarding fake nationalities. Each participant had to pretend his nationality was different, and just by pretending to be someone else – everyone understood their own culture better!
My personal favorite was the “Secret Friend” activity, based on the popular “Secret Santa” game, where each participant had to draw a name from an envelope, and remember that person as their secret friend. They got the mission to make that person feel special, but they would have to be their SECRET friend, they cannot reveal their identity! I cannot wait to do something sweet for my secret friend, and I am also looking forward to seeing what my secret friend will do for me  (Alisa from Bosnia and Herzegovina)

Of all of the activities that we had today, I believe that my favourite one was the “Fake Nationalities” roleplay. My character was a rich Saudi-Arabian man. He did not communicate well with the other participants. This is due to the fact that he would hardly talk to women outside his family at all. As many of the participants are women, the character would not explain his views very well in the discussions.
Another interesting incident of the day was dinner. The reason for this was that there was not enough dinner. I could hardly notice that I had eaten any. Luckily for me, it turned out good in the end. Multiple kind people who were either not having dinner or were only eating parts of it supplied me with the food that I required.
Overall I would say that today has been a great day. (Sveinung from Norway)

First of all i am so pleased to be there. Because we are having good time, learning too much, having lots of friends...I think role play is the best part of the day. At first we learned about another culture then we role like them. It was really different experience for me. Because it was not like as me in my normal lifeWe learned about another culture and have guesses about life of them. (Pinar from Turkey)

I liked all the activities today. The activity I liked the most was “role play”. The only thing I didn`t like was that the “bulldog” was a little too long. Message to the prep team: keep it up (Edvina from Serbia)

It was a very nice day. There were too many new participants that I meet and I hope they will be my friends.Except the bulldog everything else was very good.It is the first day and we had a lot of fun,imagine the following days...(Bledi from Albania)