Testimonial by Husamettin Simsir

ASPIRANTUM summer school in Armenia was a great experience! We had many opportunities to improve our skills in the fields including but not limited to Persian language and cross-cultural relationships.

Friendly atmosphere and open-mindedness of participants, professors, organizers and the people of Yerevan made our Persian learning adventure fun and exciting. I participated in ASPIRANTUM summer school for Persian with quite limited knowledge, however, at the end of the program, thanks to the intensive teaching method which was adopted by Aspirantum, I managed to obtain a decent level of reading, speaking, writing and listening skills of Persian.

Besides Persian language training, the program organized many trips to several different places in the Republic of Armenia which enabled us to get more acquainted with the Armenian culture and traditions. Especially, as a historian, I liked the trips to the rural Armenia, which aimed to introduce the Armenian historical heritage in the region. The trip to the Hayravank monastery and Sevan Lake area was far and away best in my opinion because first of all, the region was an important place for understanding the interfaith and cross-cultural relationships of the Armenian people with the other people and secondly, the lake itself was a great place for touristic activities and I really enjoyed swimming and doing some sunbathe there. 

In the end, I was also amazed by the diversity of age of my classmates; this helped me enrich my knowledge from other people's experiences. Additionally, besides getting acquainted with Armenian and Persian culture, thanks to the international participant profile in the program, I was able to know more about different cultures and meet plenty of people from different ethnic backgrounds.

In brief, I can't say more about ASPIRANTUM Persian summer school because it is more than what words can describe: fun, love, study and happiness.