The Language of Compassion

Hello! I’m Saadet from Turkey and I’m 23 years old. I graduated from molecular biology and genetics last year in Bursa, Turkey.

I wanted to go abroad after graduation through ESC and do something else besides my major. I wanted to apply my hobbies, skills and increase my creativity in a project.  In addition, I wanted to discover the culture and go out of my comfort zone. I especially chose a project related to children. I always dreamed of working with children to understand their idea of the world and be useful for the human future by contributing to their education.

During my service, I was teaching playing guitar to the children. Also I was playing games, dancing with them, helping with their English homework. My best moment was when we were dancing in the dance room and suddenly a few children started to hug me and invited me to dance. Then we made a circle and danced crazily with the children. Also I was a child at that moment. I felt their compassion for me. Even though I couldn’t speak Italian and we couldn't understand each other, while dancing, smiling and hugging we could get it easily that we liked each other with children. Thus I understood that love or happiness has no language, you can just feel it anyway, anywhere…

My difficulty was language, sometimes hard to integrate some activities about discussion, etc. I was more of a listener and observer during those times but I took advantage of that and while listening people, try to learn and take some notes on common expressions in Italian. Then I started to use those basic things in Italian while teaching playing guitar to children. That was the funniest part, to be honest. Sometimes children were correcting my Italian and sometimes I was correcting their English. We were having fun during these conversations.

I strongly recommend ESC to young people. This is the best thing you can do in your twenties. If you want to discover people, countries, and yourself and make new friends from all around the world. Furthermore, if you want to belong to society and get to know your limits just apply to projects that you are interested in and do your best and be part of that great experience.

Saadet, Turkey