Me and the World Y. Y. Tamagawa University, Tokyo, Japan

I want to share my wonderful experience as an international volunteer in Bulgaria. When I became a university student, I always wanted to do something for somebody. What do I want to do? I looked for my answer and found it in myself. The answer must be something that I can do and something for people and the world. One day I found a poster of the CIEE (Council on International Educational Exchange) on the bulletin board of my university. It said that the CIEE was looking for some volunteers to work for environment in another country. The CIEE is a world wide nonprofit organization whose purpose is to increase mutual understanding for the human race. They have many interesting volunteer programs such as helping orphans, repairing world heritages, protecting forest, and so on. I chose a volunteer program for protecting forest in Bulgaria. I had not known much about Bulgaria, but I thought it would be a great opportunity and adventure for me. Bulgaria locates in East Europe, but next to Turkish, Rumania, Serbia-Montenegro, Macedonia and Greece. Therefore Bulgaria has a very interesting culture mixed up with European and Arabic culture. As you may know, Bulgaria had been a country of socialism until 1989. I felt the influence of socialism when I found many elder generations speaks Russian. On the other hand, young generation cannot speak Russian, but English. As volunteers, we went to a forest in Devin. And stayed at an old cabin for 5 days. We made some stockade around the trees in order to protect them from the damage by browsed animals. It is because this area has a serious forest fire caused by fewer trees. When we came back to a small village Devin, we stayed at a school but it looked like a hospital. We visited kindergarten and helped to paint old toys and some playground equipments such as swings, slider, and so on. I painted two hours in the morning and another one or two hours in the afternoon. "Oh, my arms got so tired!" I worked with about 14 volunteers. Of course, it was hard job for me but I could meet many wonderful team members, and nice Bulgarian people and children. Our team members came from 7 countries such as Japan, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and Bulgaria. Our languages differ from one another. So we used English as a communication tool. And I really felt that English can make such a great opportunity of encounter. I was impressed at my team member's awareness towards the world. They are in the same generation with me, and some are exactly same age with me. "What do you think?" "What do you think as Japanese?" I got so many questions from them, but I could not answer to their questions. I realized how I had not thought of my value, my country, and the world. I was ashamed of being so ignorant. And I really felt that I wanted to learn not only other countries, but also my country "Japan." Compare to young Japanese, they are always willing to learn new things and asked me various topics about Japan and international issues. They are concerned about international issues, their own countries, and the future of their country and the world. Now I read English newspapers to see how other countries look at the same issue treated in Japan. I also started to read some books especially Japanese literature, such as Mishima Yukio. Because my French friend read "Kinkakuji" and he wanted to share how he think about Misima literature, but I had not read it yet. Thought reading newspapers that explains what is going on in the world now and literature that tells me the value and different point of view, I think I am a little bit more attractive person than before. I think I was lucky to realize and found myself whom I want to be. I want to be a matured person who has her own thought and skills to communicate with various people in the world, I want to share my value and way of thinking with as many people as I can meet. In this way, I think we can find some ways to solve many international and domestic problems. I was able to expand my horizons of possibility through my foreign friends and experience of working as an international volunteer. I love my camp teammates and I am very proud of being a friend with such nice friends. I am studying very hard now to be able to have better communication with my teammates again. Lastly I would like to dedicate this paper to my wonderful teammates who opened my eyes and woke me up.

Child Research Net would like to thank the Tamagawa University and Yuko Yamada, student and author, for permitting reproduction of this article on the CRN web site.

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