YFU Estonia offers its participants a variety of special
programmes: music, theatre, film, art and nature programmes. Our exchange
student Jasmin from Germany who is currently enrolling in our nature program
agreed to share her motivation and experience with us.
Hello, my name is Jasmin. I’m a 16 year old girl from
Germany on her exchange in Estonia. In my free time I like to occupy myself
with everything that is about nature and environment. Also, I like to spend
time in the nature.
Before I came to know about the programme YFU is offering, I
felt that I wanted to take part in a youth group who tries to protect the
environment because to my mind everything you do in a group gets more attention
than doing something on your own. It’s also more fun.
When I applied for the exchange year I was really curious
about the nature programme. I had heard about the great nature of Estonia
before, so I decided to take part in the programme to get to know the country
from the environmental side as well because I think it is an important part of
the culture, just as language, food or music.
You may ask what we are doing in this nature programme. We
have a trip once in a month to really cool places all around in Estonia and we
also have the chance to take part in a youth group that take place in the our
hometowns.
On our first trip we planned to go to an island and spending
the night in a wooden house somewhere in a forest. Sadly, we had to change the
plan because of he windy weather but it wasn’t hard to find a new place where
we could stay and spend some time. As I said: Estonia is full of beautiful,
interesting places!
In the end we found a really cool spot at a lake near to the
moor, where we walked through and learned some helpful facts about it. On the
next day, we took out the boat and had a little tour around the lake and when
we got out of the boat and went to the forest,
the volunteers taught us Estonian by telling the terms of the things we
found.
The second trip was about birds and bird migration. We went
to a famous bird station in the south of Estonia and had to help them with
their work. It is the most impressive thing to have a little bird in your hand,
who’s moving all the time while you have to ring it. One time we also caught a
rare sort! But the real challenge was to get the birds out oft he huge nets or
to catch them. We made funny noises while running around trying to catch them.
I think it must have sounded and looked very strange to the tourists.
What I like about the trips is that everything seems to be
so familiar. We are just a little group this year but that is even better and I
enjoy the time with my friends and the volunteers.
I am also going to a youth group every week. It’s in the zoo
and we are mostly talking about animals but also about environment and we will
get to work with microscopes as well. I had to choose between quite a lot of
groups but I decided to take this one because I think learning something about
animals next to animals is so cool.
Jasmine from Germany (exchange year 2014-2015)