Recently, Roisin Traynor arrived at the International Secretariat in Antwerp. She will replace Lidija Jularic who has been with us at the IS for one year. We will miss Lidija and thank her for all her hard work and great ideas! And of course we welcome Roisin as the new Projects LTV. She will work on international projects, such as the North South Platform Meeting and communication/ PR related activities. You will read all about her experiences and adventures on this section of the website. Maybe after reading her stories you want to become an LTV yourself?
Greetings! I would just like to say a big hello to everyone and a big thank you to those in SCI who have given me such a warm welcome already. I am the new LTV at the International Secretariat of SCI. I will be taking over from the wonderful Lidija who you have all come to know over the past year. At the moment I am being trained in by my fabulous teachers, the staff here at SCI. Just briefly a few words about me…
I am from Dublin, Ireland. I finished my studies last year and have been filling my time since then with internships and of course volunteering. I heard about SCI in 2008 when I went to volunteer with the Irish branch called Voluntary Service International (VSI). Since taking part in my first work camp in Kenya I was hooked.
I have only been here a week but I am already starting to settle into normal life in Antwerp. At the moment I am living in the suburbs with a Dutch family who have kindly opened up their home to me. Soon I will move into an apartment in the city centre which I am already getting excited about.
The first thing you notice when you arrive here are all the cyclists. Pedestrians and even motorists beware because the cyclists are everywhere. So when it came to picking my form of transport I didn’t give it a second thought but hopped right on my “fiets”. So far so good, although I nearly ran over a pigeon and a poor girl nearly lost her toes, but I’m getting better.
The next thing you notice is of course that everyone is speaking Dutch. Here in the office everyone is from everywhere so the working language is English but step outside the office and it all changes. So far I have just been staring at people blankly when they talk to me until I finally realise and say ‘oh sorry I don’t speak Dutch’. Following this the conversation quickly switches to English, a language everyone here seems to speak. I am going to take language lessons but as I have arrived in the middle of the summer I have to wait until the next course to start in September. Until then well it’s all “double dutch” to me!
I have already been thrown in fully to the work taking place in the IS. The most important at the moment is the preparations for the next North South Platform Meeting which this year is being hosted by KVT Finland. I will be a part of the preparation team for this meeting which takes place later this year. So there is a lot of work to keep me busy.
I am really looking forward to this year, to contributing to SCI and to improving my own experience in work and in life in general. So here’s to a great year full of new experiences, people, and places. I can’t wait to see what it holds in store!
Cheers,
Roisin
