By Nikol Parvanova
My name is Nikol, I am a senior in university and had never gone on an Erasmus+ program before. This article is not only my way to disseminate the practices and takeaways from the first one I went on, but also a raw self-reflection of how the experience changed my perspective on sooo many levels. (Also my first time writing such an article.)
There are two types of people when it comes to what their email inbox looks like: one keeps it clean and tidy, with all the important emails read and replied to, while the second has subscribed to a dozen newsletters that they never open. Well, if you are reading this, you have probably gathered which type of person I am. So, you must believe me when I say that it was meant to be when I opened and actually READ an email from the Zarika newsletter. An Erasmus+ opportunity in Croatia involving acro yoga and theatre improv – I had to go. I had never been to Croatia, I had taken acting classes for five years, and I was currently doing aerial arts, which should be close enough. After spending 20 minutes writing a motivational letter – which may not sound like much, but for a university student during exam week, it is – one thing led to another, and the next day I was buying my plane tickets to Croatia.
Two months later, I boarded that plane alone, with no clue what the next 10 days would look like.
Veliki Zitnic is a two hours bus ride from Zagreb and another 6 km by bus from the closest city. You are surrounded by nature and the 20 people from the group and A LOT of ticks and mosquitos for the next 7 days.
When I thought of Erasmus, I assumed that the participants would be around my age, but as it turned out, this was not the case. Our group included people aged 16 all the way to 50. This led to the biggest takeaway for me from the Erasmus+ programme. I had assumed that people older than me would not want to participate in such activities. In reality, enthusiasm had very little to do with age, and I quickly learned that willingness to participate was far more important.
Мy university had provided me with all the practical experience I would need after graduation – or so I thought. We work in groups all the time and organise events bigger than some adults ever will, but we only work with people from our own generation, which will not be the case once we enter the workforce. Having the opportunity to work with these people, even for only a few days, broadened my perspective and made me realise that my teamwork skills were not as universal as I had thought, which was a bit humbling.
I had never tried acro yoga, but how hard could it be when you are used to hanging six metres above the ground? Well, it was hard. To understand what I am talking about, you need to know that there are three positions in acro yoga. The base is the person lying on the ground, the flyer is the person in the air, and the spotter is the person making sure the flyer does not end up on the ground next to the base. Simple, right? The key to everything was not strength or weight; it was trust. I know it sounds like a cliché, but if you are the flyer and you do not trust your base and spotter, you start doing a ton of different things to prevent yourself from falling, which actually makes that outcome more likely. And trust is not easy to build when you have known these people for a whole of 24 hours. When you are driven by a common goal – in our case, to complete the pose and maybe get a photo – you let your guard down just enough for the sake of that common goal. Or sometimes, as in the photo, you won’t be able to strike the pose but that is also ok, since we had a great laugh about it.
Improv was the bigger challenge for me, and yes, I started this article by saying that I had taken acting classes for five years. Bistra started us off with basic exercises, some of which I had done years ago. They brought back so many different feelings, but one thing was the same as when I had first started theatre classes: I was worried about how I looked in the eyes of the others while making these silly faces. What shocked me was that nobody else seemed worried. And why would they be? We were all being silly, and we were all outside our comfort zones. This is what acting classes were for me: letting go of who I am, exploring what other versions of myself I can be, and growing with every minute of the experience. The improv sessions not only gave me great ideas for icebreakers to use when I go back to university, but also reminded me that stepping outside my comfort zone is often where the most growth happens.
Of course, the experience did not end when the sessions ended. At night, I learned dances from all around the world, ate candy brought all the way from Latvia, learned that Swedish people do not eat Swedish Fish candy, played a lot of “Black magic”, and spent time around a bonfire, making traditional Swedish bread on sticks.
The best way I can describe my Erasmus experience is as one of those week-long excursions you used to go on with your class in high school. We had our trainers, but the cool kind who let you cycle to the nearest city to watch the World Cup; the annoying kids who complained about everything; and the one who went back home and told their parents how bad everything was, even though they had acted as if they were enjoying the whole trip. That was also the best part of the experience, I felt free, felt fulfilled but I also discovered a new country that I fell in love with.
Overall, if you had asked me on the day I came back whether I had enjoyed the Erasmus experience, I probably would have said no. But one month later, while writing all of this, I have come to the conclusion that all the annoyance was actually part of the fun. Most of all, I learned a great deal and will continue to use the practices I took away from our amazing trainers. I have already taken amazing photos with my friend doing acro on the beach on our most recent vacation.
