THE BOY AND THE WITCH

by Ioseba Amatriain Losa

Once upon a time there was a boy who wanted to keeptraveling around the world, meeting new
people and experiencing new cultures. Lets call him “Soso”. He had been in his little town for
almost a year, and even though he was doing many things there and was comfortable surrounded by
his family and friends, he decided that it was not what he really wanted, and he decided to change.
He had been looking for a job for a long time, but a very bad witch in his country didn't allow
young people to get a job easily. He said to himself that this powerful witch was not going to decide
his future, so he looked for a voluntary job far away from his small town where he could get rid of
the witch. He tried to go to some different countries, but it was in Georgia that he found a lovely
organization to spend time working for young people.
When he arrived where he was going to live for a while, a very quiet and peaceful city, he felt
straight away that Georgian people are very warm and hospitable. He received a very nice welcome
and he met a lot of people who were going to be hisfriends and colleagues for the next months. He
felt very lucky to be surrounded by people from Georgia and other countries around the world. He
knew that it was going to be a very good experience. He learnt a lot from all of them.
He felt very confident in this new experience. He had traveled around the world and lived in many
places already. He thought it was going to be easy to fit in that new environment. It was not. The
first month was not easy for him. Everything was different than other experiences he had, and very
different from his own culture. The main issue was  the language. He had to start from scratch. It
was a very strange language for him. New alphabet, new logic, and above everything, new sounds
which he could not even make. At the beginning, he was afraid to go out to do anything. He could
not communicate which put him on edge. But he started to learn, and after a while he was quite
independent and was able to do anything he wanted.
He was happy around there. He enjoyed all the activities he was doing. Everything gets easier if you
are surrounded by nice people who support you. Of course, life there was not as easy as he thought
it would be, but time flies and now he only remembers the positive things he learnt and all the
anecdotes and funny situations he experienced. Everything became good memories.
One day, he received a good offer to move to another country. It was a very interesting job where
he could keep learning and improving himself, both personally and professionally. Before he knew
the position was for him, he did not want to make the decision to leave. It was better to be rejected
than to have to decide to leave Georgia. The good/bad news came, and he decided that it was an
opportunity he could not let go.
For the next few days, he had very weird feelings. Was he happy? Was he sad? He did not know.
The only thing he knew for sure was that he did notwant to leave anybody in the lurch. Finally,
everybody understood he had to leave. He thanked his friends, colleagues, and everybody he had
met. It had been a very good experience and he would remember it forever.
The little boy packed his stuff and he started his new adventure. He was glad the bad witch was not
standing in his way again...
The End