One months in paradise - only 11 to go...

Hello again...

I just came back from my MC weekend with my team and I must say: I loved it. I have a excellent team of three people. We had a lot of fun.

It’s been amazing to see my two girls plan, feedback each other and me, do Ice-breakers, all on their own. They might not have the deepest knowledge on AIESEC, but they cover for that with a relentless enthusiasm and a huge commitment. It has been truly inspiring to see them work.

I know that a team of three people is very small to run an MC for a whole country. That’s why we have an equally motivated NST that takes care of Talent Management and Finance.

My life in El Salvador is amazing. I still don’t own a bed, but I have two new families… It’s amazing how everybody here treats me like I have been living here all my life. There are huge differences in the way of thinking between Salvadorians and me, but in the end we all agree that we want to have fun. A guy actually asked me how long I was here, to which I answered one month. He answered me: “Oh, I thought you were here for longer, the way you interact with these people. So you came here before?” My answer was of course no. He said that he was amazed…

In the little free time that I have (which is virtually no free time at all) I’m reading this amazing book by Stephen King “On writing”… Whoever wants to bring something to paper, this book is worth gold for you… and it’s extremely amusing…

My other project, my bachelor thesis is not advancing at the speed I would like it to… so I’ll have to focus on that now for the next two weeks… It’s like writing a story and I should be able to write a good one…

Another thing is that I have a very interesting experience here in El Salvador. It involves driving… when I came here my friends were like: Do you think that you’ll be able to drive here in El Salvador, because it’s loco… and I was like: of course I can… So they started letting me drive with the result that I had to name a complaint department that ignores all the complaints dutifully… I dubbed myself the most reckless driver in El Salvador…

This is the first week of execution for AIESEC in El Salvador… let’s make it a good one…

Cheerio

Stefan

Being a nomad

Ok, I admit, it’s about time that I write something about my adventure in El Salvador. And I think that now right after a conference is the right moment to do so.

People

I’ve been living in El Salvador for the last 2.5 weeks without my own room, my own place to be and that was great. Yes, you heard right, I loved it… people here are so amazingly friendly and open. That starts with the parents of my host. I didn’t know anybody of that family and they took me in, making the most amazing breakfasts every morning (it’s a shame that I haven’t shown up there for a week now due to the prep for the conference). I learned that “mi casa e su casa” is not only a cool sentence I picked up watching Pulp Fiction but that it is a principle really lived by these people. It’s amazing… Everywhere I go I’m greeted friendly (I still have to determine whether that is because or even though I’m chelito)… All parents of my friends here are just simply adorable…

Country

The landscape is different from what I am used to. What they call mountains are what we Swiss refer to as hills… The conference was just next to a Volcano on one of the hills. It was really beautiful. Vegetation is different too, trees different, climate way too hot, it always rains… I’m rejoicing every time when it starts raining in the evening because that means that the temperature drops to a acceptable level. During the conference the temperature was actually dropping to the low twenties (you know, because we were in the “mountains”) and everybody was wearing two sweaters, three t-shirts and a hat while I enjoyed the agreeable temperatures in shorts and a T-Shirt (that’s another story, I’ll come to that).

Culture

I’ve made myself already a name of being “European”. People around me call me European every time when I’m my direct and honest self… I tried to explain to them that I’m special in that, that I practice a very high level of directness, but they seem to attribute that behaviour to all Europeans… I had already many, many discussions about me becoming nice… I tried to lower the expectations but the people around me seem to think that there is actually still hope. We’ll see about that… In the meantime I enjoy the really spontaneous and touchy culture here, which is very much the way I like it… Having seen that 4 of the 5 finalists of the Miss Universe event were Latinas, I’m kind of wondering where they are hiding in every day life… hahahaha… no for real, the amount of beautiful women here is absolutely satisfactory…

AIESEC

We started off without an office, without money (well, 68 cents on the account), no company database, no knowledge, no structure, no plan… But we started off… and the amazing things is that we moved in two and a half weeks already so far… we have people coming every morning exactly at 8 (well with exceptions, some ppl need more sleep, right?) with a smile and the question: What can I do today? It’s amazing to see their spirit. People tell me that the difference is huge, but I don’t know, because we only are doing this for 2.5 weeks now… But people are telling me that they haven’t learned in the whole year as much as in these two weeks. This feedback makes me extremely happy. The conference is the other example. We had some organisational issues and this made the conference more of an improvised gathering with an agenda that we sometimes kept and sometimes didn’t. But the delegates enjoyed themselves a lot. It was amazing to see that spirit…

A side note: This was the first conferences I did with two T-Shirts, one shorts, and one pair of underpants and socks… This happened because we had a logistical breakdown and I couldn’t get my stuff before the conference because the room I stayed in was locked and I didn't have any key, so I only had with me the things I had on the day before the conference plus a T-Shirt of one of the delegates who helped me out… This just added to the improvisational part of the conferences… But it was a interesting experience…

So all in all, I can say that it is definitely a wonderful year that I’m just starting to experience… It will bring me far, I’m sure of it… I’m looking forward to the planning of this year with my team and all the bonding and teambuilding we will have. We will continue building knowledge in Exchange to cover another part of our activities… but ppl, watch out for El Salvador this term…

Cheers
Ejtefano