Hope you are all having a great summer and enjoy your time whereever you are, whether you are travelling round the world, living a lifechanging experience on an internship, chillin at home or getting prepared for the next year to rock our lovely LC.
As you might know I'm right now thousands of miles away from home, spending my summer as a Congress Committee member of IC 2008 in Brazil. Since I'm already here for almost 6 weeks I thought it's about time to let you know how I'm doing and share my experiences.
Well, I started my journey at the beginning of July only days after partying with friends in Vienna and saying my farewells to so many people who are abroad this summer all around the globe. When I left Austria I was already caught by "Fernweh" (dont know if there is an english translation for this). However, I also left with mixed feelings as I didn't know what will really expect me in this country and as I also heard a lot of negative things beforehand. (Just to set your mind at ease right now: I'm still well, haven't gotten robbed or mugged)
I arrived at night in Sao Paulo and was fortunate to have a local Aiesecer host me for the first days. Which made me feel safe from the start and reduced my worries right from the start. After hanging out in SP for a couple of days I met up with two fellow CC members to travel around for a while. As I never met them before and only communicated via email with them I was also curious how our travel together would turn out. Well I can say now, it was awesome. We had a lot of fun and saw great places! Unfortunately we only had about 2 weeks for travelling, which is by far not enough to see even the best spots of this amazing country. So we only limited our trip to some spots that were more or less (16 hours by bus) close to SP. In enjoyed beautiful beaches and sunrises in Paraty, got overwhelmed by the waterfalls of Foc do Iguacu, jumped around in the sand dunes at the beach of Florianopolis, listened to Brazilian live music in Curitiba. Well to cut a long story short ... Brazil is awesome, make sure to get here if you can and calculate at least a month if you want to see the good stuff.
The end of our trip marked at the same time the start of the real CC experience. Our prestay takes place at a hotel 1 hour ot of Sao Paulo. It was pretty exciting to arrive here and meet in the following hours the rest of the CC, 55 people from 27 countries ... pretty amazing. I thought I already had an international experience in teams before but this is a completely new level. We spent the first days with G2K stuff, hanging out, partying and getting introduced to our work and the IC 2008. The team here is pretty diverse. Although quite some people are from Europe, we have alomost all continents represnted here. Alos the level of @Xps is mixed. Although there are some quite new (1-2 years) Aiesecers here, most have had EB or MC XPs and are amazing people.
Well my position here is being a conference manager ... no ... i'm not really managing the whole IC. It rather means that I'm part of the HR team and allocated where I'm need, so I'm quasi a wildcard. Right now I'm working .... suprise, in the Finance team ;)
Prestay is somehow like a conference which lasts 4 weeks. Therefore there are definetely times where you long for privacy and are tired of socializing. However, this gives you the amazing chance to get to know each single member of the team. Well of course, some more and some less. I must admit that when I came here I thought I know already a lot about other countries and cultures. But in numerous chats I was amazed how much I didnt know. People are eager to share stuff about their countries, good and bad things and once again I got my own assumptions challenged and was inspired to get to know much more about foreign countries.
Of course besides all the work, I definetely had my chance to party! On the first weekend we travelled to Rio, which was amazing. I got to sunbath at the Copa cabana, see the Christ statute, hang out at Ipanema and chear for a soccer team in Maracana stadium. Apart from that I went clubbin to SP, drank way to much booze from all around the world at the CC Global Village (where I represented Austria well and taught everyone how to do Burning Mozart) and had fun nights hanging out with the team members chatting and drinking caipirinhas.
Actually I'm writing this lines at 3 pm, still being a bit hungover from last nights party. This party was very special as it marked the end of the CC prestay. 4 weeks just rushed by so fast. 4 weeks of meeting amazing people, thinking a lot about what I'm doing next, 4 weeks of learning more about the world and about myself. So far it's been awesome and the biggest thing is yet to come, the IC. As this IC markst the 60th anniversary, it's very special and will be huge. We expect around 600 delegates, 200 alumni and many externals. Aiesecers from over 100 countries will gather together in the next days in Brazil to have a blast. Right from the start there was this common ambition of the team to make this IC very special. So everyone is working hard to achieving this goal. We have a lot of exciting things coming up and I'm really excited about the next weeks. And of course I'm looking so much forward to meeting the Austrian delegation and also many other Aiesecers from all over the world whom I met before.
Well, I don't know if what I wrote know actually can express everything I wanted to say. Partly this might be due to the alcohol still running in my blood :) or also to the fact that I still didnt fully realize this whole experience as there is still a lot to come. However, I'll keep you posted and in case you have any questions, just contact me. I can definetely tell you that this XP so far reconfirmed my assumption, that taking challenges is great and you can get a lot out of stepping out of your comfort zone. Actually meeting so many great people who have done amazing things like taking MC terms, internships in very different countries, starting new projects, leading expansions, running companies, taught me once again that it's definetley worth trying out new things and it made me rethink my planes about the future.
Cheers,
Soraya
International Congress 2008 Sao Paulo, Brazil. Responsible Youth, Sustainable Future.
current music: Gabe Dixon - All will be well
