November & December in review

Did you ever run a Marathon? From now on I can say: Yes, I did in the end of November… but a drinking Marathon :)

I didn’t start from beginning but still, me and Nastya started on the 5th stop at 11am near the dorm which means that we had 13 stops and maybe some more heheh.

The concept is very simple: there are 18 stops and in each stop it’s mandatory to drink, and there is only one stop for food. I can say that in the end I was proud of myself, I can remember everything, I didn’t make a fool of myself and I still went to the party afterwards.

It was pure fun and now I’m waiting for the Summer Edition Marathon in which I intend to go from the beginning heheh. Yeah, living Croatian spirit ;)

Then in the beginning of December there was the biggest National Conference of AIESEC in Croatia, the Winter Leadership Development Congress which was held in Split.

This was a special and very important conference for several reasons: we had an amazing number of 150 delegates, we had finally companies participating in the conference, we had 16 facilitators, my successor would be elected in this conference so my expectations were very high!

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Was it as amazing as I wanted it to be? Yes and no. I felt good as MCP, I felt that generally people were satisfied, I felt an amazing atmosphere from the delegates and I truly believe that AIESEC in Croatia is different. But (and there is always a but) I felt frustrated, there we had all leaders of our organization and I didn’t know what to tell them, what to say that would make a difference. I have tried different approaches, strategies, I have talked with people and still, things happen so slowly, people seem not to change and I couldn’t find something that would make the difference…

I guess that also means that I’m not satisfied, it means I’m not going to quit or stop, that means I’m gonna do something and continue challenging my perception of things.

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Anyway, here are some snapshots of the conference:

Opening Ceremony The facilitators' team Party The National Team 0809

The Hotel View :)

Then after the conference I had opportunity to chill a bit in Zagreb and feel Christmas when I went to the city center, drink hot wine (in Croatia and other Eastern Europe countries to warm up wine with herbs during winter is traditional and is really good!) and feel the freezing weather.

And still, before going to Portugal I had a crazy adventure to go to Istanbul for 4 days for a CEE Presidents Meeting.

I only managed my flight 2 days before the conference so I was already in the airport entering the airplane when I realized that I haven’t told my Mom I was going to Turkey… I called her and I tried to explain her very fast, then during the beautiful sunset over the clouds I realize how AIESEC made travelling or being with foreign people such a normal thing.

While I was flying I realized how lucky I was to have such possibilities and to have met so many amazing people during the last 5 years of my life…

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Then I have to say that I enjoyed Istanbul much more this time than one year and half ago because the weather was nice (not horrible hot), majority of people were locals in the streets (not tourists) and I had the opportunity to walk around without rush (while in the first time I was going around with the study tour people).

Another funny thing which amazed me was that I meet randomly this guy from Egypt who was going to facilitate an AIESEC Turkey National Conference that would start immediately after our conference. The interesting about him is that he had a keychain that one and half year ago a CEEDers in Croatia originally from USA got from this MC member for an experiment. The experiment was to see how long it would take using AIESEC network to get back to Croatia. When he told me this I was shocked because I was the owner of that keychain which I completely forgot that I had gave to Drew. So, after one year and half it got back to me in Istanbul given by an Egyptian guy which I had never met before. Crazy right?