From culture to culture

Cultural travelling is always possible as it is obvious from Serkan´s story which he experienced in Spain. Serkan is a young economist from Turkey who decided to take his life into his own hands and get educated in the international environment.

1. Present yourself.

My name is Serkan Aba, I am from Turkey – Mardin, I am 25 years – old and I studied economy and administration at Mardin Artuklu University.

2.Where are you doing your internship (where are you from)?

From 5 October to 30 December I am currently doing the internship with an association called Mille Cunti which is working for young people and for their Erasmus opportunity in Ciudad Real which is located in Spain

3. Why did you decide to do an internship?

I live in the southeast of Turkey and in our local level it is always hard to have some international experiences; therefore, I was thinking to do Erasmus and have an international experience.

4-5. What did you study? What did you learn there?

My study was economy and administration and at Mille Cunti I got training about EVS projects how to write an accreditation for EVS program and how to write Youth Exchange project what are their procedures and also new information about non-formal education.

6. Did your expectations meet with the reality there?

Yes, I had the opportunity to work on EVS projects and I got a big help and support from Association for this and that was the main reason I was here about my study and they helped me a lot.

7. What about the culture of the country you stayed in?

Spanish culture was totally new culture for me, this was my first time in Spain and I really like their dance tradition and their songs and especially Ciudad Real is in a good position in Spain. The city itself is small but it is cheap to live and close to all important cities for touristic trips.

8. Was it hard to change your life from one day to another day?

For me, the first days were quite hard to adapt but then I got new friends especially from the association and by their help, everything became easier.

9. Can you tell us something very interesting about your experience?

Well, I was participating in the activity of association called ‘story telling’ and there I was communicating with kids with a few vocabularies that I knew in Spanish and my friends from association were always helping me for translation, it was nice teamwork and with a lot of interesting moments.

10. Do you have any funny story?

Most of the time in Spanish courses I was doing some grammar mistakes and the time friends were correcting me were funny.

11. What about the people you met there?

I have met many friendly and open-minded people, I am glad to meet them all. I hope they are also happy to meet me 😀

12. Do you think the internship has improved the skills you got at university?

This internship improved my office skills since I studied economy and administration I got useful points for my career.

13. Do you recommend Erasmus internship to other people?

Everybody should have that opportunity and improve their studies in an international area. ‘travel is education’.

Written by Radka Malinčáková from Slovaquia