After the article from the newspaper, today I present you the blog post made about us by an Estonian man very active with his blog. The orginal article is
here (in estonian language). The guy made a very good research work about the places we studied at, our hometown. I was very surprised about it.
Katerina Petreska and Pierre-Marie Brianceau are european volunteers who
arrived at the beginning of Feb in Parnu to work on projects which are for
Nooruse Maja. Thanks to the managar of Nooruse Maja, Uudo Laane, enthiastic and
ambitious in writting projects, the french volunteers already enriched the culture
of Parnu in the last two years. Last year in january arrived Gaetan Homerin from
Albertville thanks to an EVS, and in march 2010 arrived Florianne Rigaud from
Clermont Ferrand, in the centre of France.
This time, the freezing weather which was -10°c welcome the two wolunteers
in Parnu., one from France and one From Macedonia.
Katerina, 24, from Prilep, Macedonia, slighty bigger than Parnu with a population
of 66 000 inhabitants. The similarities between both cities are that they
are the 4th biggest populated cities in their country. She studied at Saint
Kiril and Methodus Skopje University philology and macedonian language. Aside
form her monther tongue, Katerina has studied bulgarian, serbian, russian,
german and english. Katerina told she could decide for her EVS between Greece,
Romania and Estonia. She choose the latter because it was unknown and it seemed
interesting and may be a little bit exotic. During her stay in estonia she would
like to learn Estonian and possibly work as an official in Embassies. She has
worked as volunteer with all ages. Her hometown Prilep gave her the chance to
work as mentor in ecological activities. Katerina knows very well latin
american dances and she is very keen on teaching them. She has worked in two
private companies, where she worked with cosmetics. She thinks it’s possible
she manage this kind of companies.
Pierre-Marie Brianceau, 29, says his full name is much longer than the name
Estonians used when they call him. His home town is close to the atlantic coast
and his hometown consists of 4 different words. On the west coast of France, in
the area of Vendée, La Roche Sur Yon is a post-napoleon city with 55 000
inhabitants. Pierre-Marie has studied economy and languages at the University
of Nantes. This well known french university was created less than half a
century ago during the college reform. There are about 34000 students from
which about 10% are foreign students from 110 countries. Besides his mother
tongue, he also speaks English, Spanish and Chinese. He also worked 2 years in
Spain and studied and worked 3 years in China. There, he worked for a
outsoucing company where he helped companies find information and suppliers in
the chinese market.
Pierre-Marie has not yet decided what kind fo work he will do but he thinks
he could work in embassies or leading offices of the EU. In the first month he
also learned a little bit of estonian. Unlike Katerina, he didn’t search for
the country but look for the projects. Uudo Laane had to choose from dozens of candidates
and both men found each other and signed a cooperation between both sides. Nooruse
Maja manager observed mainly the motivation in the application in which Pierre-Marie
wished to come as volunteer in Pärnu.
Within a month they get to know local life and some places outsides of Pärnu.
For example they participated in a training in Viljandi. Althought, the ability
to cope with the snow and cold is different for them. In Macedonia, you can see
this kind of snow and cold quite often so that’s the reason this is not unusual
for Katerina. At the same time, the french guy who is living next to the
Atlantic coast doesn’t see snow or minus degrees as often. So first, he needed
to change his sneakers for winter shoes. After having to suffer such
temperature, when the weather drop to -1°, he felt he was having summer in the
city. With the help of Pierre-Marie, there were an opening conference for a new
project which consist of six countries and which prupose is to introduce the
concept of sisters cities/twinning. The communication in the project is in
English but the project itself presented to the EU was in French and needed
Pierre’s help.
On March 24th, there will be another French Cultural Day which will be lead
by Pierre-Marie and on April 24th, Katerina will manage a similar day for
Macedonia to introduce the culture. Upcoming we might expect Pierre-Marie’s presentation
about chinese culture and language. At the same time Katerina will work on a
mind map about solidarity.
