Agata KwiatkowskaPoland

I close my eyes. I imagine myself almost 6 weeks ago. I was standing in the middle of Arad train station looking for someone to pick me up with hope in eyes and the heaviest bag that my mind can create in my hand. I was full of fear of the unknown and curious as hell for the same reason. Stranger in a Strange Land although still in European Union.

I am deeply convinced that everything depends on the people we meet. I had this unbeliev-able luck to meet students who made me feel needful and important. I will not even men-tion priceless public speaking, improving english, experience as a trainer or known roma-nian culture – it’s hihgly important but obvoius.

If I should describe me after Grow in an one sentecnce I would say: After „Grow” I feel like the sunnyflower from my favourite energiz-er: and it grew and grew and grew... and still growing!!!

So, let’s just do it!!

JekaLithuania

I already miss the enthusiasm of our partici-pants and their sincere look of surprise when they learn something new. I am taking a big bunch of wonderful memories back home. Seeing the participants overcoming their shyness and becoming a lot more self confi-dent and believing in themselves, gives a feeling that someone made something right at some point of the project.

Romanian heat, beautiful singing foun-tains of Arad, hot Langosh in Santana and TRULY EXCEPTIONAL people I met here and there will stay forever in my heart. We really had a lot of fun in the “mansion”! I will for sure miss everyone from the OC, and AIESECers who spend so much time to make our stay the best so much time to make our stay the best possible.

Marta ZaporaPoland

Since I can remember I wanted to go volunteering abroad and finally succeeded, Fortu-nately, I am not disappointed. I came to Arad 1 month ago but I feel that it was yesterday. In my opinion Open-ed project is a great idea. I am very happy that I could work with stu-dents for 2 weeks, during which we all learned a lot from each other and had fun.

I am incredibly happy that I could live in a big and cosy mansion with 4 Internationals. We are all totally different so it is even better because we can learn from each other a lot. I love to spend time with them and I can’t imagine my return to Poland without Jekatarina’s piano sound, Sasha’s advices, Alvin’s singing and Stefan’s jokes. I already miss

In our spare time we mostly go to the Joy’s or KF cafe and I like the fact that everybody knows each other there. My favourite place in Arad is the swimming pool, actually there are 5 swimming pools :)

50 Hours for the Greatest Summer

Oleksandr GorkunUkraine

First of all I was very impressed with the beauty of Arad. I was also happy because I could have some peace and quiet after living in huge urbanized city like Kyiv. From the first sight of Arad I understood that it was the city I dreamed about living in. There are no skyscrapers and tall build-ings in Arad, but each of these old and comparatively small buildings would gather a lot of tour-ists if pleople would know about them.

I’m not sure if there’s any other place where you can find such great people like I’ve met here in Arad. They all are fantastic and that’s why my internship was so wonderful. If it was possible I would continue living like this forever.

We were energetic and ready to work also because of the perfect accommodation and food. We lived in a big mansion provided by a sponsor of our project. We were also pro-vided with two very delicious meals per day from the canteen and food for our breakfast.

I’m really glad that I participated in such great project like OpenEd. We had great participants and I tried to do my best to make sessions most useful and interesting for them. I’ve got great experi-ence of project management, team work, public speaking.

A successful story!

Stephan SpieringGermany

Maybe it was because of the long train ride from my home country Germany to Arad that I forgot to adjust my watch to the time difference and passed Arad without noticing it. All I knew about the town was out of the PDF booklet that the AIESEC members in Arad had sent me via mail. Yes, it is a small town but it has the KF, my favorite bar and place in the city! Other features are the very beautiful city hall and old theatre, the artificial lake with its lightshow in the evenings, the riverbank along the Mures, the open door pool Strand Neptun and the old German trams that were being used decades ago in my home country.

However, what really set Arad apart from other cities was the lovely people that I met here. Al-though most Romanians I met were friendly despite their curious looks they gave us, my buddy Oana, my Organizing Committee President Paula and my dear friend Razvan have to be men-tioned here especially. Like the rest of the AIESEC crew in Arad, they took care of us very well and even went with us to the barber shop in order to translate how we wanted our hair to be cut.

Living in a nice city in such a nice house with such wonderful people makes a huge difference. As if this was not enough, there is a more im-portant reason for my great time here, my wonderful girlfriend Tyna who I met in the GROW project.

The one week long GROW conference that we had in Predeal was the right start in what would turn out to be a wonderful time in Romania, a country that I had never visited before. The five days in this mountainous village brought together young people from all over the world with different

backgrounds.

I still believe that GROW is one of the best programs you’ll find when browsing through the AIESEC database.