Between the 10th and 12th of July 2023, volunteers from different regions of Romania, where we have started at the same time, attended this meeting. In total, 3 groups were formed. Two mentors were assigned to each group. The group I was in was called Group 2. There were 16 volunteers in total. Our group mentors were Elena (aka Tromppy) and Carmen Marcu. On the ground floor of the hotel Meteor where we stayed, a different area was set up for each group and for three days we trained from 09:00  morning until 18:00 evening.
In the morning of the first day, we focused on getting to know each other better. Our beloved mentors offered us an interesting game to remember each other’s names. After this interesting game, we moved on to a more formal issue, discussing such issues as: Why did we decide to volunteer? What difficulties did we face during this time? How has our life changed since volunteering? What was our cultural shock? Each of us shared with each other our accumulated experiences and difficult moments, we heard many funny and sad stories from each other, but in the end we all agreed that volunteering is something that everyone should try at least once, get out of your comfort zone and do what makes you happy.
On the second day, various games and activities took place in the morning.  we made a presentation about our organization and what activities we are doing? Who is our target group? What city do we live in? How long is our project? And how many months do we have left? After the presentations, the mentors gave us a new interesting task. We had to go to the beach and we had to complete several tasks. We were divided into groups and started working. The tasks looked quite interesting, for example, find three Romanians and ask them what they like and what they don’t like about their country. Create a song using special words and many interesting things. My team was the first to finish the competition, so we were allowed to relax and enjoy the sea and the great views.
On the third day, we mostly discussed what we did during the ESC process. We learned how to fill the  Youthpass. We talked about the future plans and opportunities given to us by the European Soldaritiy Corps, what are we going to do in the future? What are our plans? We wrote down all this information on sheets of paper and discussed it one by one. After that, the volunteers organized small workshops on different topics and we could choose which topic we were interested in and attend it. My first choice was Italian sign language and their meanings. My second choice was a workshop where we discussed the facts of bullying and discrimination and their causes. And the last and third workshop was about emotions and our attitude toward them.