Das Leben ist kein Ponyhof

Sometimes I wake up anxious that I wasted my professional life and I will never get the opportunity like the one I gave up to do the voluntary service but then I realise I met someone I want to spend the rest of my life with and somehow everything is bearable again.
Four years of studying, thousands of Pounds to pay back and I ended up in Germany. One of those really random choices I made, which- as some might say- blew up in my face because it had in 95% nothing to do with proceeding with my professional career whatsoever. Still - I stayed. But let’s start from the beginning: it was August 2010; I just graduated from a Media Production degree at a University in England and - as a force of habit - went to take part in a theatre workshop in Germany. I’ve been doing it since I was 16 and then someone told me “Hey they are looking for a volunteer, you could do that” and, although I might have said something different to justify it at the time, it was like my teenage dream come true. I remember when I was a teenage girl it was all I could think about: I wanted to come here I wanted to live here and somehow it was all supposed to be just perfect because Germany was so different to where I was from. All these dreams, they all had the taste and smell of Ihr Platz’s vanilla lip balm and that feeling of freedom I can still find in my memories. This is why I decided to take part in “Youth in Action” project. The project, which I think exists also to help people to make their dreams come true. So I did it not because I wanted to save the world as a drama teacher and help children to overcome whatever monsters they had under their beds. I did it to fulfill my teenage dreams. I did it for myself, to bring back something, which ended a long time ago. And who wouldn’t want that? Recreate the best memories you ever had and not only re-live them but most important: live them every day? It took me months to realise it wasn’t even the matter of what I was doing here, that Ihr Platz’s lip balm’s times were gone. They were gone long before I came here to do my voluntary service and it just took time to understand I was in denial. I think some of those people I have worked with they still don’t know that everything has already changed. But it doesn’t matter as long as they are not hurting anyone.
Volunteer work is an adventure. It’s a place where you can discover things about yourself you would never learn if it wasn’t for these particular circumstances. It is indeed one of a kind experience and in my opinion you can never know what the outcome of the adventure might be; different species are being discovered everyday although media tell us we know and control everything. Of course you can expect something but working with people gives you that factor of not being able to predict everything because everyone is different. Come to think of it, apart from my teenage dream I mentioned before, I didn’t have any particular expectations when I started my EVS. Being thrown into a situation completely different to the pattern you know is hard. I knew that but it seemed kind of exciting at the time. During a voluntary service you can learn something new, not only in general sense but also about yourself. It’s like a candy shop, you just have to pick and mix useful things by yourself which means not every one of them tastes as good as it looks. So what I learnt and what I needed to learn were two different things. For example I didn’t need to know that spaghetti and pizza are the most popular meals in Germany (one of the things I’ve been told during my seminar). What I needed to know was how to manage a group of twelve children without any previous teaching experience (not to mention the language barrier). And although in the beginning everything what was happening was so surreal that I didn’t even get a clear picture of it, in time I would get frustrated. I lived where I worked most of the time and after some time I really missed that “ritual” of going-home and going-to-work. As days went by I realised there was no line between me as a person and me the volunteer. I had a feeling I had my private life was only when I was away. To make me feel better I never wanted to see what I was doing as a voluntary service; it was a low-paid creative job. It seemed exciting, and just being here in the teenage dream was enough. I value experience and knowledge and EVS gave me an opportunity to learn one more language. An adventure presents also an opportunity to discover something about the new place, to see the difference, sometimes to surprise yourself. Unfortunately I can’t say much about the intercultural interactions I discovered upon entering the service program because I moved abroad when I was 19 (I was born in Poland and moved to England after finishing high school), which means that although I know it is something what others would like me to say, I can’t say that EVS changed my perception on another countries, people and culture. I couldn’t relate on that level to most of the other volunteers I met. People I met upon entering the project were my friends and my Facebook profile lacked an album called “my EVS”. Everyone is different and I just didn’t need it because I didn’t want to see it just as an extract from my life: it was my life. It wasn’t just going abroad for a year.
What is more, in spite of the frustration, which would strike back every few days, there were some things, which turned my voluntary service into a funky experience. For example I lived on a bomb-proof shelter. How many people can say they lived on a bomb-proof shelter? Or had one at home? If it wasn’t for the fact I had a boyfriend and wasn’t in college anymore it would do as a perfect chat up line. Just imagine meeting someone at the bar and saying, “Hey, wanna see my shelter? It’s in the basement, NATO build it.” If they didn’t run away screaming in the first place they would certainly want to know more about it. I also built a forest there and decorated it with few “crime scene” props (“that” drawing on a floor, evidence numbers and a big black stuffed bird) which, surprisingly, is still there although over a year has passed and it doesn’t seem like it is going anywhere and somehow it makes me happy.
When I felt that my professional life fell into pieces my personal life suddenly fell into place and (because we are now talking about love and when you talk about love you are allowed to use big words which describe something) hit me in a head like a brick. There he was, right in front of me, where I would never expect him to be: the best and the most handsome man I have ever known. So if we already are on a Britney S.’s lyrics level (or should I say Justin B. as he is more up to date nowadays) I’m allowed to say that because I came here I met the love of my life. My friend who – under some sad circumstances - suddenly got back in touch recently, said that only a woman could use a phrase “love of my life”. I assume he just meant that it was cheesy but I must admit I got angry as I read it. I mean I can’t help that the subject of love is being exploited since the beginning of time and in the past two centuries it got so commercialised that you can’t open your fridge and not find something which would be more or less love related. But I chose to believe it is true therefore I am not ashamed to call it what I think it is. So what if my voluntary service was a lot of things, it certainly wasn’t a mistake. Like one of the coaches in a popular German TV show said: “Das Leben ist kein Ponyhof” (Life is no pony farm). Apart from feeling like a teenager with butterflies in my stomach, I am happy I made new friends, that I lived with the best baby boy the world have ever seen and that I build a forest in my bomb-proof shelter. Seven months after finishing my service and it doesn’t bother me anymore that hot water and heating didn’t get on well together in winter. If someone asked me, I think EVS would certainly change your life in one way or another, so why not do it, especially if you have nothing to lose. You might even discover you thinking that you have nothing to lose wasn’t right in the first place. They say you have to go far, far away to find that maybe you never wanted to leave. In any other case it’s an adventure and without adventures the world wouldn’t be the same. Imagine your life without fire? Someone’s discovery was an adventure that changed the world and maybe he didn’t even know it.