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Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs Katsiaryna I will start this essay by saying "Thank you" to all the people, who make the FLEX program, who work hard to create his special atmosphere for all the students. You all are really worth the world's gratitude for the work you do for us. I truly appreciate your efforts and ideas because it really comes from your souls and makes our hearts beat fester. It is a very strong feeling every exchange student possesses since being in this program. No, it is not a feeling of being the best man in the world, it is the feeling of being trusted, the feeling that someone hopes in you, and the feeling that you are a right mind that can change something and be proud of it. That is exactly how I feel. The FLEX program made me believe in myself (I was applying for it twice), that I am worth something in this huge odd, and the least thing I want to do is to crash this belief. I am sure that nobody will deny that an experience of being an exchange student will be the most unforgettable thing in the lives of everyone. All the rules we have to keep here are nothing in comparison to the opportunity, the chance we are given to reveal ourselves and our countries first, and not to make our motherlands to be ashamed of growing us. Personally I do not consider volunteer work to be a rule for staying here. As my Nacel OD paper says "It is FUN," and I totally agree with this statement. It brings into my life joy and new appreciation of people's relationships through getting acquainted with the large world of mutual help. To my mind volunteer work is very helpful for students. From one point it is important as it helps an exchange student to adjust to being in another country, far away from relatives and ads, away from the place where everything is so familiar and easy. Nobody, I think, will say that it was like "a piece of cake" to get used from the first days of staying here. Everybody starts building a new chain of communication with other pie. And I think one of the best links is certainly community work. It makes you contact with people, create, help and understand. It is just a marvelous opportunity to have new friends. The other point of view is that community work gives everyone a new experience of the country itself, of its people, their thoughts and customs. Help is essential to life, but sometimes people just forget about it, when the others, who need this help, can barely do it. If to think even of the FLEX program workers—a big part of them are volunteers, they just find it important and interesting to host students from other countries in the USA. They searched for these students, they made competitions, decided who they need to choose, and now the "products" of their great work are hosted on the territory of the second largest country in the world. Of course, there is nothing denying the feet that here we have a relationship in a kind of “symbiosis": we share our knowledge and experience. The FLEX program helped me to be here, to represent my country. Of course, without the help I would never be able to do this. I consider it to be strong and immortal. The volunteering I do in response to that help is a kind of different one, it is simpler. I spent almost 16 hours working as “helper" in BMCCP after school for children from ages 4 to 12. On one of my first visits there I made a presentation of my native country, telling the kids about the living differences, alphabet differences, showing pictures of my native town and a bunch of things that remind me of my country. They got acquainted with the national symbols, and one of the national dishes. Children seemed to enjoy the presentation very much, and during the next week I still had discussions with them on that theme. My role in this community work was to be a helping hand, because I was the person whom people trusted to get along with the kids. When I first heard about this work, I thought that the educators, who take care of BMCCP, have practically nothing to deal with. But I was mistaken. With all its demands of mental appreciation from the side of a grown-up, it cannot be an easy one at all. The fact is that it is a real place, where children's personalities are molded to build a primary foundation of the new healthy and strong generation gap of this country. So the responsibility bar for teaching the children is set really high, and I was really proud of myself for being provided with this challenge. The feeling of being needed is truly a sweet one, not only for me, but for the kids too. A great amount of them come from broken families, and the thing they need most of all in this life is to feel other's love, attention and soul warmth. And I tried to do my best to make their dreams come true. Though I am not their age at all, we have much in common, as I understand their school problems, friendships and child's world. I adored working on the program, communicating with the kids, learning the thoughts in their heads, their logics. It was a marvelous experience with the educators too, what led me to learn a lot of things you need to avoid in order to grow a healthy mind. When I see all the effort and imagination people bring into their work, it makes me really sad that children educators in my country do not pay any attention to their work and what they are doing with children. As well as in the USA, in Belarus kids after school stay with the "teachers," but they (kids) are left to create activities for themselves: you want to play—take a toy and play, and more than that, nobody watches if the toy is mentally good or not—different kinds of guns are always welcome. And in thinking about that, who can you raise with a toy gun? A criminal? Maybe. Nobody cares. But I strongly believe that after watching the tears of mothers in Beslan (Russia) after a terrorist act at school, people will start thinking of who they are raising and how. Here children mean to the society a lot. And that makes me adore this country. Watching my cousins going to kindergarten, I start thinking—what if they will not cry in the morning because of going there, what if they will be looking forward to new games, events, guests to see like the kids at BMCCP do. I think the presentation of the USA can be a marvelous start. In order to bring all ideas to life I will certainly need to work persistently, as well as I will need help, and this is the point where it starts to be tough. Not every person can understand the real importance of that kind of work. The question "Why?" will probably be the most often heard one. And I will not be surprised with it. On the pre-departure orientation, before going to the USA, we were asked the most common question: "Why do you think the American government chooses students to be hosted in America?" It was the hard one for me to understand. "Why does my family host me? Why do they give me this opportunity? Why do they share everything with me?" The answers were found just after doing a part of volunteer service. Everything became clear—they show the students the other way of living, other experience, which perhaps is a better one as it works. It is a side when you do not feel like a stranger to people around you—you are the part of real society, and you interact in it. I consider the Civic Education Workshop to be a part of this experience too. It can show the real difference between how my country is governed in comparison to America. I must admit that I was never interested in politics at all, though Civic Education Workshop seems to be the other concept. But the feeling of missing something in my life lives in my mind. I do not consider myself to be a stupid person, but when the question about the governmental system appears, I just feel very ashamed of knowing not too much. This opportunity gave me an idea that I cannot view this topic as a mountain so surmountable that I cannot reach the pinnacle. It is a chance to "open the cards". This Workshop deals with the conception of helpful experience for the students, as it reveals the thought of how the right government should be based in order to make its citizens happy. What many of the countries of the former USSR lack now and what the young generation as me needs to strive to. It is my aim to discover this notion, and I believe in myself.
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