Big speakers and awesome companies

The conference is going great. Our global sponsors have been giving us quick half-hour presentations about their companies and relationships with AIESEC. It's so interesting and it gives me a really good idea of the amazing job opportunities that await me. These sponsors are extremely interested in recruiting AIESECers. We're talking about partners like UBS, PwC, Alcatel, DHL, etc. Woo hoo!

You wouldn't believe that we had the former president of Poland give a speech this morning in to the all of the members. Anyway, the actual content of the conference is pretty good. Today we broke off into groups to talk about topics that are of major interest to us as AIESECers, topics like Energy, HIV/AIDS, Finance, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Education.

Anyway, parties await. Take care ya'll from Poland!

Making new international friends every hour

I woke up yesterday and found a group of AIESECers that I had partied with the night before at the bar that is just a short walk from the dorms. I walked to the tent on campus where they are serving us meals and it seemed really big for how few people there were. I came back a few hours later for lunch and my jaw dropped. Hundreds of people from all over the world had arrived and everywhere I turned I was overwhelmed with new faces and languages. It was a beautiful experience and slowly but surely I'm introducing myself to each one :-P

Tomorrow is the big day, the International Congress's opening ceremony. We've been in pre-meeting for 2 days with our regions (the Spanish-Speaking Growth Network for me). We're such a family :-) Anyway, time to go for a few beers with my delegation. Ciaaaaaao!

International Congres 2006 in Poland

I arrived this afternoon in Warsaw after a 14 hour flight and connection flight from Ciudad de Mexico. It's been a wonderful experience so far and I'm really excited to get the conference started. I met a whole bunch of new people and meet up with a ton of old friends from all over the world. We ate pizza, drank beer, and danced to our AIESEC music. It was really a great night and hopefully tomorrow we'll walk around the city. We wanted to go to Krakow tomorrow but the train ticket is really just too expensive for a one day visit (20 euros one way). But Chzech Repulic is still on the plans for after the conference :-) Maybe I'll be able to upload a picture or two soon. Toodles!

Imagine this...

Every day you live to the maximum, enjoying every joke, every meal, every smell. Time flies by if you’re enjoying yourself and hence my dilemma. I’m having the most amazing time and therefore I feel as though I’ve got none left. My life is swirling past me and I’m starting to feel the need to slow down. But how? Make myself bored? Hmm, interesting. At this rate I’ll be on my deathbed thinking “Where did all the time go?”

2 major events done, MANY more to come

We survived the Reunión Nacional de Directores and we just got done with the Stakeholders Gala 2006. In just a mere 2 weeks we will be in Warsaw, Poland for the International Congress of AIESEC. And the fun never ends. This week is just getting started and I feel as though I have way too much to do in such little time, but that's when the need to be efficient and effective is most dire. I need to keep the grand picture in mind all the time while making progress little by little in the day to day work.

It's a really wonderful learning experience really. For the past week we've had Araz here with us. She is the regional director of the Americas for AIESEC International and it's been great just talking with her. She's calm and fun. Buena onda, as the mexicans would say :-P

It's amazing how sometimes I feel absolutely inexperienced and helpless but happy to learn and just be led and then other times I am confident and I want to take on the world and I feel like I could be a big leader. Where do these too extremes come from and how can choose to be more of one than the other?

Somebody is Stealing All the Time!

I honestly believe that somebody is stealing time from me. I could have sworn that I was missing at least 4 hours today. My head is swirling with so many details and reminders and "to-do"s. Cindy and I have agreed to take a few hours off work tomorrow to find dresses for the Gala on Thursday. We're definitely waiting until the last minute, but our day-to-day work has kept us running around like crazy.

I swear we would do AIESEC 24 hours a day 7 days a week if it were humanly possible. But no, we have to wash our clothes, eat, sleep and that's all that is keeping us from working to death. We get to the office by 9:00ish every day and don't usually leave until 7 or 8pm. Especially this week because we've all been working over time to prepare for the Gala. I hope next week I can cut back a bit. Would you believe that we're actually starting little mini language classes within the team, too? We have German classes with Dani twice a week for an hour. "Woher kommen Sie?" Hahaha. That's about my limit so far, but it's actually coming quite naturally to me. I'm hoping that this is a good sign that I'm adept for learning languages :-D