Arts Lab 4.0: Month VI, Wasan Abusummaqah - Final report

It took me a while to write this final report since I came back home, but maybe because I needed some time to realize what has happened in the six months I’ve spent in Romania.

This experience was soul enriching, I’ve learned so much things about myself, I became aware of traits I gained over the years of my life but never acknowledged, going abroad can always be a fun adventure and a learning journey, but what you can never know is that you’ll come across things and people you never thought you’d meet one day, and this is what has happened to me.

During this period, I’m met over 100 people, a lot more than that actually, and you can’t imagine how overwhelming this can be, some of them were only a passerby in my life, but others were more than this, or shall I say they became someone I’d care to meet again later in life. I learned a lot from socializing and just talking to strangers day by day, I got the chance to share whatever I would like, to talk about my culture and heritage and see other people interacting and interested in what I say, you can’t predict what sources of information you can get from just talking to strangers, but what is more beautiful is that some of these strangers who are totally different from you became partners in the journey that is called life.

I got the chance to share a space with 7 other volunteers, who now I can call my friends. Living 6 months with completely strangers can be daunting, but the connection we had was something else. We shared special moments together that we consider memories now, we danced, cooked, cried, played, and shared our deepest thoughts together. I was super lucky with these 7 different individuals, to the level where the space we shared once we got to call it home.

Romania is such a beautiful country; it has many astonishing cities and towns that I got the chance to visit and explore. But what will always stay as a precious memory, when we decided to go to the sea side in the beginning of the colder days, it was so cold you couldn’t feel your face, but it was totally worth it to watch the sunset and the sunrise and just be in the moment. Furthermore, not to forget the crazy idea me and Ataota got to go to three cities in just two days, but it was such a great experience I’ll keep in my mind to tell. 

Professionally, I gained a lot of confidence in working and developing my own ideas, to work with a team and individually, to have tight periods to deliver work and to improvise and adapt to the environment.

Lastly, I would like to say that I’m really grateful to have been a part of this project, to have been able to meet all the beautiful people I met, to have been able to create and help, and to have been able to live yet another unexpected adventure, but what I can say that it won’t be the last and I’ll always carry bits of this experience in my heart and in the person that I’ve become.

Wasan Abusummaqah is from Jordan and she did a long-term volunteering project in our organisation, under Arts Lab 4.0, a project funded by European Solidarity Corps, a programme of the European Union.