For someone going on this program, I would say to learn the language as much as possible will be super helpful if your program involves interaction & communication with the local (Miercurea Ciuc (HU:Csikszereda) is a Hungarian-majority speaking region).

Hungarian is a little bit like Finnish and it’s unlike the other languages I’ve learnt before; still, it takes time to practice and isn’t an easy language to get hold of in a short period of time. But still, picking up a few words, I find it more convenient and advantageous during my stay in all sorts of ways.

I chose to work on Agriculture and the tasks could vary between seasons, including planting, harvesting, cultivating or other garden maintenance work. At the end of January, when I was volunteering, Csikszereda was covered with heavy snow, so we turned to indoor tasks instead.

An average day of volunteering begins at 10.00 am and it lasts approximately 3-4 hrs – we prepared and cut bottles to make small flower pots, filled with soil for the up-coming spring season, went to the local construction market to purchase material, made a little wooden shelf for the tools and much more.

The highlight of which, is a solar panel heating that encourages air-exchange when it dramatically heats up the room with the use of black-painted tin cans. It’s very green and useful on sunny days as the sun being the energy source, while at nights it has a little electrical generator to turn on the fans, thus also starting the process even without sunlight.

Well, I am not usually a very chatty and outgoing person and much prefer novels and music to pass time on my own, actually :) Things have turned much better when I started to travel and visit many places, but still I’ve had concerns over what to do or how to say things properly when spending time with people who I don’t know well or meet for the first time in a different culture or new environment.

However, the Care2travel staff are very supportive and helpful whenever I have questions, and the local people are very warm and easy-going to communicate with, so I just easily let go of my worries and get to hang out with the local volunteers for some really amazing activities and so on. It’s great to feel that connections and trust between people can be established very easily, even though you don’t know the person for a long time. This is very different and hard to find in many places that I’ve been to, but still, it’s more pleasant to keep an open mind and learn to enjoy everything with experience-something-new attitude.

Yes, I think so. Whether you are visiting for a short stay or prepare to work in a new country, learning a new language is always a bonus. Not only will you find it more convenient on a daily conversation basis or appear to be more open and acceptable when meeting new people, it changes the way you think about things or let you better understand the culture as you learn the language deeper. I learnt German as a second language in school and it occurs to me that the use of words, grammar and tenses more or less reflects a general impression of Germans’ personality as well – logical and practical :) (with respect)

Statistics have also proved that a multi-language speaker is more open and creative since they can take in and understand different cultures quickly. Therefore, learning a new language, regardless of how well you speak, is effectively helping to understand the culture and its people better. It’s a new experience and surely very rewarding & fulfilling.

Back-packing through Mexico and Costa Rica. Prior to this experience I had only traveled in Europe which didn’t take me too far out of my comfort zone and realm of knowledge. Mexico and Costa Rica however exposed me to so many new ideas things that I didn’t even know existed. For instance their somewhat interesting public transport system where buses actually have wing-men to shout when it’s appropriate to over-take. I think when you travel to countries that are completely different to your home country the experience is potentially much deeper and more rich but only if you are open and don’t stay hidden in your 5 star luxury hotel.

In general, better regulation & more support for both the volunteers and the host organizations. As the volunteer industry grows there is more and more demand for volunteer placements. However in some cases when there is pressure to meet demand, standards drop and nobody is held accountable. In the “West” the phenomenon of volunteering is quite developed. There are polices and processes that protect both the volunteers and host organizations. However in less developed countries the concept of volunteering is either unknown or only starting to develop. In my opinion, before host organizations decide to receive volunteers from different cultures they should undergo training and before volunteer agencies decide to send volunteers to host organizations they should undergo a thorough analysis to see whether said host organization is actually a legitimate organization. I believe that IVHQ is one of few sending organizations that is actually getting it right.