'You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.'

On 1st September last year I made my decision and accepted the challenge to live abroad for one year as a volunteer. All about new insights and learning experiences in Croatia can be seen in photos and read on blog although words and pictures are not enough to express how spending time here changed me and my life.

How this experience changed me?

Before coming here I was a bit confused. I finished project management studies and my dream was to practice more in my field so I could become an expert. For this is needed 10000 practice hours as one of my favorite authors Malcolm Gladwell said in „Outliers“ book.

I didn’t even thought that one of the options could be to go abroad. After discussing with my mentor from the university I found out about Synergy Romania and EVS opportunity. Later I applied for EVS in Syncro and being accepted I took my flight to Zagreb and started volunteer.

Working with best team ever in Synergy Croatia I became more responsible and organized, patient and proactive. I learned from every single person I met and this is how they changed me.


How this experience changed my life?

I am responsible for my own actions and life. I understood that I have to take an action beyond thought. For example, I wanted to be more organized and to develop time management skills and I achieve it by finding the person who is master in practicing it and learn from him. There are plenty of examples of what surprise me about Croatian people and in order to keep it short and simple I made top 3 things.

Top 3 most amazing things I found out and checked about Croatian people:

1.  There are „Huggy“ people ( when words are not enough or there is a situation without escape they just hug you... and that helps  )
2.  Masters in listening to you ( when you have a lot of feelings and ideas that you want to share they are those kind of people in whom you can truly trust and speak with )
3. Warm ( speaking with them you can actually feel the warmness of their soul, they don't fake it, they really care about you)

I could add more things on the list but I will keep this top 3 until my next blog post in which I will write more about my experiences in Croatia and what I got out of it. But I can say for sure that this quote applies to me a lot: 'You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.'