My Stay in Germany

My name is Smiljana Legradic and I am from Slovenia. I am a teacher and translator for German, English and Swedish. I came to Berlin through an Exchange Program between the Association ZNI in Slovenia and the GEB (Association for European Training) in Germany. I am a participant of the so called GRUNDTVIG-Program. Here in Berlin I work as a Volunteer in the neighborhood-house of the district of Neukölln.

I work every day from noon till 6 p.m. I work with children and their parents living in Germany as immigrants. They come from many different countries, e.g. from Ghana, Turkey, Vietnam, Iran and Arab speaking countries.

After lunch I help the children with their homework. Sometimes I also talk to the parents when their children have problems in certain subjects at school. I have already met a lot of new people with different cultures and habits. The mothers of the children usually wear headscarfs or burkas. In September we celebrated the end of Ramadan. The women prepared Turkish and Arabic food, everything was very tasty! I noticed that some children are very aggressive. Especially the boys behave like kings due to their education. Every child has its own individual character, which is interesting to observe. Sometimes I also help in the office with administrative work and I pin up posters in schools.

I find the life in Berlin very interesting, the city is full of culture and very dynamic, there is always something going on. GEB organized a culture week so I was able to see many famous sights, museums and the city of Potsdam. Everything was new for me and therefore it will be unforgettable. I admire Berlin and its good transport connections which allow you to get around easily. Furthermore GEB organized German conversation lessons for me with an excellent and nice teacher who is an expert of the German language. I admire his knowledge and I enjoy going to see him and his charming wife who always offers us coffee so we can work even faster. I will really miss these lessons.
I feel like being at home in Berlin and I am not homesick at all. In Slovenia I also work with people of all ages. I enjoy that kind of work so that’s why I don’t have any problems to get in touch with them.
I will take home only positive impressions of this wonderful city and I will always enjoy coming back here.

I want to say thank you to the nice people working at GEB. They were always there for me when I needed help.