Hello, I am Zeynep from Turkey. I am a second year sociology student. I would like to tell you about my Erasmus internship at the University of Opole and my experiences during this process.
I had never been to another country before I came to Poland as an Erasmus intern. This was going to be my first experience abroad and I was very excited. First I travelled from Istanbul to Warsaw. When I landed at Frederic Chopin airport, my luggage was lost. I thought that everything had started badly, I had to wait at the airport for about twelve hours to get my luggage. During these long hours at the airport, I made friends with other passengers who had lost their luggage like me, and we had long and pleasant conversations while waiting for our luggage to arrive. We even exchanged numbers to keep in touch.
When I landed in the city after a very nice three-hour journey, I knew that many beautiful memories awaited me in this place where I came for the first time. I took photos in the square in front of the train station to immortalise this moment. Afterwards, I went to Kmicic Dormitory and settled in my room. Since the first days of my arrival coincided with Poland’s three-day official holiday, I had the opportunity to visit the city before starting my internship. Opole is a calm and peaceful European city that is not too big, intertwined with nature. Only the weather is a bit unstable, you need to pay attention to this.
After the official holidays we met my mentor, Mr. Michal Wanke to start the internship. He is very helpful, understanding and kind. We talked about the tasks I had to do during my time in Poland. My tasks included transcribing the audio recordings of the interviews with the participants, translating these transcripts into English, coding the interviews through the system to make them easier to analyse, classifying the demographic information of the participants and translating some documents. Sometimes I worked online from my mentor’s office at school and sometimes from my own computer.
In the meantime, it was not difficult for me to find the opportunity to travel because I was free on weekends and Mr. Wanke made it easy for me if I wanted to take some time off during the week. I have been to Prague, Vienna, Berlin and Warsaw, all of them beautiful, but Prague is definitely my favourite. Travelling alone helped me a lot to increase my self-confidence. As a woman, I must say that travelling alone in Europe did not scare me. There were times when I waited for a bus alone at night or got lost in unfamiliar streets, but I didn’t feel unsafe. Making sandwiches, taking as few things as possible and timing my journeys to coincide with the night are things I have learnt from experience.
I also want to tell you about my dormitory life. I had to learn how to cook while staying in the dormitory 🙂 Actually, this was a very good opportunity for me. Using the common kitchens was something I had never experienced before. I also had a great roommate. She is Polish. Some evenings we had long chats and mostly laughed. We even gave each other gifts when we left. I gave her a necklace and she framed a photo of us and gave it to me. We said goodbye to see each other in Turkey.
Also during my last month and a half in Opole I started to give voluntary Turkish lessons. The language library is a very good place for this. I met many new people and I think we will continue our lessons online after I go back to my country. I also participated in Arabic lessons given by a friend who came to take Turkish lessons from me. Now I know how to meet an Arabic speaker and say numbers in Arabic 🙂
I also had Pierogi, the local dish of Poland and I liked it very much. It is very similar to Turkish mantı, but it is bigger and the fillings are more varied. There are also sweet ones.
Opole is a very suitable city for Erasmus mobility with its geographical location, economy and university. In addition, when you have any problems, the staff at the Office for Research and Project Management (International Mobility Team) of the university solve your problem in a very sincere and kind way. My Erasmus process was very good, I experienced a lot of things that I would not have experienced in any other way.
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