« Meet your Zoom Pal », este un proiect pentru adolescenți al Asociației Iele-Sânziene desfășurat în colaborare cu asociația franceză Chemins d’avenirs ( https://www.cheminsdavenirs.fr).
În cadrul proiectului, 20 de tinere liceene, 10 din România și 10 din Franța s-au întâlnit timp de câteva luni, la distanță, pe Zoom, pentru a discuta despre importanța solidarității și a prieteniei între femei, dincolo de frontiere. La finalul întâlnirilor, tinerele participante au redactat un portret în limba engleză al noilor prietene, pentru a împărtăși experiențele adolescentine în diferite contexte culturale.
Vă invităm să citiți mai jos portretele scrise de Bianca Frîncu și Alexandra Thiesse.
The importance of female solidarity and friendship that goes beyond nationalities
Over the past month, I’ve been given the chance to communicate with Alexandra Thiesse, a French, young girl that describes herself as chaotic and friendly. She also considers herself a feminist. Since we first met on Zoom, we discussed different topics and we managed to get along, understand each other, and learn about one another in a fun and friendly way.
After we talked about small things such as school, we started to expand our conversation and got into longer and deeper subjects.
While we were discussing friends and family, I realized that we are both different and similar, at least when it comes to being afraid of losing our friends. And, since we are talking about fears, just know that, of course, we are both terrified by spiders.
Our family trees are quite similar, especially when it comes to our fathers, but not so similar if we’re talking about how our families influenced us. ‘My parents make me more of a good person. I love my family. At the same time, bad things happened to us, and this made me be more protective’, she stated.
Sometimes, intimidated by the way others perceive her, she gets anxious, and she needs to remind herself that ‘Everybody is beautiful. Perfect even. We just see it in different ways. You’re perfect for yourself, as I am perfect for myself’. This statement made me think about soulmates and about the fact that, maybe, we are our own soul mates.
Alexandra believes that it is extremely important that we stop being so hard on ourselves.
When asked to describe her life, she answered ‘It’s complicated, hard, but beautiful.’
Alexandra has such an amazing personality. She wants to become a surgeon, but she is afraid of blood. She likes being called ‘Xana’, mostly by her family. One memory that she’ll never forget is the moment when her brother was born. Small things, such as hugging her brother and receiving a text from her friends make her happy, and she gets incredibly angry when people are lying. She likes nature, and she cried a lot while watching Five Feet Apart. Alexandra is a strong, powerful, smart, beautiful young woman who proved to me, once again, that solidarity and friendship go, in fact, beyond nationalities.
Q: Where do you see yourself in ten years?
A: I really see myself traveling, learning new things, most probably in Portugal! Actually, a singer that I really appreciate is from Portugal!
Q: How about your friends? Do you think your friendships will last?
A: I hope so. I have only two close friends that really know me and I hope they’ll stay.
Q: Earlier you’ve mentioned some singer from Portugal, and I was wondering… do you have a favorite song?
A: Such a good question! I really love ‘Vou Ficar’ by Sara Carreira; it is so sad and powerful, but one of my favorite songs at the moment is definitely ‘Carne y Hueso’, by TINI. The lyrics are sad but somehow it makes me feel good in a way beyond words.’
Bianca’s Portrait
Bianca was born on the 5th of July, she has short brown hair, brown eyes and fair skin. She also has long eyelashes. She has three piercings in her left ear, and four in the right one. And she has an eyebrow slit.
But she’s more than her physical appearance. She has one brother and one sister. She likes gymnastics and
pottery. She loves reading: her favourite books are « The picture of Dorian Gray », « If we were villains » and « Heartstopper ».
She has three dogs, chickens, and bunnies. She loves to be outside, in nature. Her perfect place in the world would be a place with flowers, butterflies, silence, where she can relax.
She’s shy when she meets new people but sometimes she really gets along with them. She’s also a
very friendly and fun person, even though she sometimes has the feeling that she might be annoying.
Bianca always says that she still has a lot to learn. She loves the concept of learning, but she doesn’t really love to « stay and sit around all day » at school. For example, she started to learn French at school, but she continues to study on her own by reading French books like « Ernest et Célestine » .
She would like to learn/speak Spanish.
She’s scared of losing someone she loves, and of what people say about her. But every time she feels like she’s not welcome, she sees the positive and for her it’s a good opportunity to communicate with people, hear what they have to say and let them know how she feels.
Most of the time she’s just overthinking.But she also has a good sense of style.
Sometimes she gets emotional when she watches a movie, like « Paddington Bear » (that’s the last movie that made her cry).
She told me a story about her when she was younger. She was with her friends near a hole. There was no water in it, but, because it was fall, it was filled with leaves. So, they ran to that hole and they wanted to jump because that was fun, but she was scared her clothes would get dirty so she hesitated. Then, a boy in her grade pushed her in. At first that was fun, but like 20 seconds later, something fell on her! She couldn’t breathe or open her eyes. The boy who pushed her also pushed another guy who fell on her. She got out of the hole, and ran home to tell her mom what happened. But, in the end, she never told this story to her parents. When she remembers this story she still laughs, but her back really hurt that day. She needed to see a doctor, and now she has to live with back problems because of this story.
Another thing she will always remember is when her grandfather passed away, as that was very hard for her. She lived for a while with her grandparents because her parents worked hard on private property.
Bianca loves simple things like music. Some songs describe how she sees the world, love, and make her feel something, like « Cel mai frumos loc de pe pamant » which is a Romanian song that describes, according to her, pure love. « Rosu Aprins », another song, makes her feel like she’s floating every time she hears it. When she hears « Once more to see you » , she feels like she is in a dream. She couldn’t describe it to me, but she could listen to this song everyday for the rest of her life.
She also loves wearing nail polish and seeing that her nails are pretty (she has long nails).
She loves to see Spring coming, the flowers growing, the trees changing their colour.
When she sees old people being happy, she feels happy too. And when she sees her friends being happy, that makes her feel glad.
Bianca is a person who always sees the positives, or at least she tries to. She describes her life as being hard,
but also beautiful. So every time she’s feeling bad she tries to compliment herself.
She says « it is difficult to really understand that you are not annoying and you are not ugly. But your real friends are going to cheer you up, as they don’t pay attention to your imperfections because everybody has them. »
In June she went to a concert, but one guy in the band was homophobic so she put the LGBTQ+ flag on her phone and showed it to him the whole time.
She often posts on Instagram about LGBTQ+ topics, equality, and at the moment on abortion, in order to send a message.
Her thinking is incredible, and she is just sixteen but she wants to live her life. She tries to fall in love with life, to have a good time with her friends, to look around her, enjoy life and help people as much as she can.
Instead of a conclusion, I leave you with her favourite quote : « Be the change you want to see in the world».
