My Guidance Experience in International Children Festival 🇹🇷💙🇱🇹

I'd love to share my experience as a group leader/guide in a Children's festival. April 23rd is Children's holiday here. Every year there are a lot of events going on about it. My city's municipality has a special and a big project for it every year. Children from different countries come here and stay with Turkish families. There is a big entertainment fair for children and these foreign children perform their folk dance there. The day is April 23rd, but these events take more than one day. This year children from 47 countries have come here and stayed here from 18th April to 24th April.

I was the guide of the Lithuanian group. It was so precious yet really challenging experience. There are two guides normally, one is the school guide who is also a teacher in the school where children host foreign children and another is the municipality guide who is an agent between the coordinator and the group. The school guide has to take care of children, be in contact with families and let them know when they should bring children to the school, etc. So actually the school guides have more responsibilities than the municipality guides, but in my experience, it was quite different. The school guide and other teachers in the school didn't care so much. I had to deal with many things on my own and I had more responsibilities. Even that was me who let the families know about the schedule and everything. The school guide didn't even come to the events. It made the process harder for me. However, it taught me a lot.

I had incredible moments at this festival. After picking the group up from the hotel, we came to the school on the first day and I wish I remembered taking a video at that time. You should've seen that moment. As we came through the school's door, all Turkish children were looking out of the window shouting and waving their hands. They were so happy. I was almost moved to tears at that moment.

Another unforgettable moment was when I hugged one of the children and then other ones ran towards me to hug. I never thought they were so eager to hug me and it made my day.

I certainly believe this experience boosted my confidence more. As an introvert, accepting this challenge was significant for me. TLP and Emma taught me to accept the challenges. I really owe this one to TLP and Emma. If I hadn't had TLP, I would've been scared and wouldn't have even accepted this task. ❤️

One of my favorite moments from the festival is when we had a parade downtown. All children of the festival and their hosts marched through the city center and all people were waving their hands. One really precious moment from this event is the face of an old woman. I'd never forgotten the emotion on her face. She was thrilled and waving her hands to the children who were marching. While most of the people were just taking a video or photos, she was just watching them and living for the moment with a very happy face.

At the beginning of the festival, honestly, I had so mixed feelings. I even told myself what am I doing? Will I really be able to handle this? But it all ended up quite well. I never regret doing this. It was a huge opportunity. I even miss it so much. I wish it took place soon again.

Another fabulous thing about the festival was taking a lot of photos. It was genuinely fulfilling. I'd like to share some of them with you.

I also created this video. I had this idea on the last day, so I could only take 6 children's video, but it's become an incredible memory. 😊