Summer University Think different: Get out of your comfort zone!

Everyone returned home, feeling eventually relaxed after two crazy-rushy-hasty-HAPPY weeks, but at the same time, reluctant even to upload photos, not talking about writing stories of the week. But how different it was just a week ago!

Each morning started with some person (sometimes you did not even know who he or she was) bursting into your room saying some random sentences about “having breakfast right now” and “leaving in half an hour“. Well, ok, I’m getting up, really. We carried on sleeping. After half an hour, another cry: “Guuuuuys! We’re leaving in five minutes!”  Sometimes without shouting – just the magic whistle was enough. And all of us – sleepy, sometimes thirsty (because of the night before), with wet hair – went out into the daylight.

Then they said – dance Zumba! Climb walls! Sing Ukranian songs! Go hitch-hiking! Walk in the street with your eyes closed and touch everything you are made to by your fellow-participants! (The list goes on like this: people’s shoulders, people’s faces, people’s beards, pavements, horses, trash bins). But that’s not the end – Drink vodka! Walk for several kilometers up the hill! Photobomb! Pronounce Polish tongue-twisters like W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie i Szczebrzeszyn z tego słynie, że chrząszcz właśnie brzęczał w trzcinie which means “In the town of Szczebrzeszyn a beetle buzzes in the reeds.  And Szczebrzeszyn is famous for it” and does not make much sense, but it is funny because it is difficult to pronounce. Walk in toilet paper! Undress! Run in the forest in complete darkness! Eat DISGUSTING mushroom soup (“Believe me, it’s delicious!”).

In other words (just six of them but so full of sense and craziness) – GET OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE!

That was the kind of holiday that is not just entertaining, but so much developing as well. Glancing back, I realized that everything I hated doing is now good memories and amazing experiences, and they will be remembered as a real adventure! They made the most normal of us to do incredible things, the most scared face their phobias, the shiest throw away confusion and fear, the most sleepy go on and party! The result was us getting closer to each other with every day, eventually coming to miss each other enormously now. I hope all of us changed at least a little bit (well, I did), meeting the aim of being full of AEGEE spirit!

I wonder how many times you guys (the organizers, I’m talking to you) were laughing, while watching us do all the crazy stuff you had invented to challenge us with? I suppose you were getting sheer delight out of that. But, anyway, that is the thing I am most grateful for – you made me do something I would never have done alone.

Written by Inna Mezentseva, AEGEE-Minsk