My experiences during my voluntary service for FSL-India – Simon Braun. Only two days left. That is a strange feeling. It feels like yesterday when I arrived in Kundapur on 1^st of September 2014. The 5 month as a construction volunteer for FSL-India ran much faster than expected.

With the project “Construction” I have been part of the so called “Home-Based-Projects” (HBP) of FSL. So our work was very flexible, if there was no work for construction we could easily join the Sea-Turtle work camp or help in the Sustainable Agriculture Area which is part of our new office in Kundapur. Also there was time for small stage performances in two local events (see e.g. JCI event article on the blog). The whole time I had very nice co-workers, I worked together with other volunteers and also the Indian staff in the office. Of course especially in the beginning I had to deal with some intercultural problems or just the fact that there is a lot of pollution. I felt that I cannot change anything on my own and also FSL- India itself cannot solve all the problems. But one can help to raise awareness and to face these issues. That is what made me deal easier with it.

I stayed in a lovely host family in Kundapur center with another volunteer. They are hosting volunteers for FSL for 7 years now and therefore have much experience with volunteers. It has been a pleasure for Johannes and me to join our host family on cultural events if we wanted to. If there were small intercultural differences in the beginning it was easy to clarify them. We had a lot of nice talks and the food was very good!

It was also always nice to do trips on the weekends or on holidays and leave days. With sleeper buses you can be very effective! On a normal weekend you can for example take the sleeper bus on Friday night, get if you are lucky about 5- 7 hours’ sleep, stay two full days in Mysore or Hampi and come back by sleeper bus on Monday morning to go to work again. No problem! I enjoyed my trip to Hampi so much that I went there twice. It is such a beautiful place! When I was not on a trip I loved to spend time at Kodi beach or Maravante beach with other volunteers on the weekend or even during the week after work.

I think I could mention a lot of things more about my life here but first that would take days and second I am sure that a lot of impressions I got here I will only realize in the next months when I am back in Germany. It is nice to see that the work for the signboards for the office is progressing when I am leaving. Of course I am happy to come back to Germany and see my friends and family. But I will miss my time here and always look back on it in happiness.