Snapshots from the World

This is the first time away from home and the first time for me to spend it in warm weather. I have to admit, it has been quite different and strange. Christmas decorations, sunshine and brightness just somehow don’t match with Christmas. Nevertheless it feels fantastic. I love going outside and not having to spend 10 minutes to get dressed. I’m happy because I can finally enjoy summer after 1,5 years:)
-----
The year 2006 has been an interesting and a life changing year for me. It’s hard to describe the whole journey, it’s hard to find the right words...It’s been a year of success and failures, a year of progress and unfortunately also disappointments in myself. It’s been a year of travelling and exploring, growth and reflection, a year of answers but also a year of more questions about my life and where I am heading...
-----
Instead of Estonia, I ended up in New Zealand, instead of internship, I ended up dedicating yet another year to AIESEC. I sometimes wonder what my life would be like if things would have turned out differently. But there are no regrets, actually the opposite...
-----
Read more about Kristi's journey in New Zealand:
http://kristiausmees.nomadlife.org/

I actually have become more Nigerian every day. For example, I felt cold one morning (although it was probably around 25 degrees)… I also really like to go around here on my own as much as I can and try to speak yoruba as much as possible (although my vocabulary is still very limited). And my skin is not that white anymore – at least when I look into the mirror, but when I compare it with others skin in pictures then it still seams too white, but I’m working on improvements!
-----
On the first days I was really feeling some overheating moments, but now it’s already quite ok, as long as I have my sun-glasses with me. But it’s still funny that instead of heaters there are big air-conditioners in houses. And one thing that I never thought about is that what’s the sense of bringing some Estonian chocolate with me when during unpacking my things I discover that they are all melted… Hmm, well yes, at least the taste is the same…
-----
Read more about Helena journey to Nigeria:
http://helenarebane.blogspot.com/

It’s amazing how balconies are built. The ground is with a small angle so the water you poor on the ground for cleaning all eventually runs out from a small hardly noticeable pipe. Very high tech. I suspect cleaning ladies were the ones who told construction men to do it that way.
-----
I am not living under a palm tree in case you wonder. We found a really nice flat in a nice area with reasonable price. But of course you can’t have everything, otherwise you start getting suspicious. So I am proud to announce that we don’t have hot water. It wasn’t part of my New Years Resolution to have a refreshing cold shower every morning but I guess I need to include that to the list now.
-----
Liisi bringing updates from Egypt:
http://liisiots.blogspot.com/

These are just few snapshots from Estonians all around the world living their life and challenging their world every single day by being far away from home.

Have you ever thought to step out from your comfort zone?
Have you ever wanted to get professional experience in another side of the world?

If you want to know what you can do, ask for more information! It's the least you can do :)

E-mail: tallinn.ee (at) aiesec.net
Website: aiesec.net/snci (that's also where you can fill in the application to be part of this)

Pictures from EuroCo 2007

The official dinner was a success, wanna know why?

• Food was great - after whole week of eating Lithuanian traditional food, we got something really different
• People danced AIESEC dances wearing suits and nice dresses - how odd is that?!
• Really good cake!
• People were given time to talk with each other instead of having an evening full of speeches and performances
• The main sponsor was really youthful and his speech was something totally different from what I expected
• There was no "This is table nr 1..." and it's the first event when I've seen that happen :D
• Amazing people, lots of cool conversations, some good-bye's...

I really liked that evening, it took everything together so nicely :)

Practical Leadership - after EuroCo

I was thinking about the title of this post for bit longer than I usually do. One of the reasons being that I wanted to write about two things that seemed at one point totally different deserving different posts. No, it will be under one topic and that's it :)

Coming back from EuroCo

Imagine - it's 5 in the afternoon and the conference ends, people are leaving home (airports, bus/train stations, etc) and 2 Estonian girls know that they have at least 5 more hours to "kill" before they can start heading home. So, we made it to Vilnius, found a place to hang out, enjoyed good food and some tea. Everything is still quite fine. Then comes the decision to rest in the car while we wait for the others and almost the same time comes information that 2 Latvian girls are now ready to join us. Okey, so we meet them, they want to go to this party, I want to sleep in the car, so be it. (Just for your information, McDonalds parking lot near train station is not the quietest place to be at trying to sleep).

If you managed to think along, you'd know that there is one girl trying desperately to get some sleep, 3 girls at a party and 1 girl still not with us and the time just goes by. It's past midnight when we first hear from her, so we managed to get nearer to the place she's at. And that's when it really strikes me - all of us waiting in the car, we are absolutely widening our limits, our minds. There is high tension, because all of us are tired and can't wait to leave this city, but still - no one says a word.

Many times when we come across these situations, we find it hard to keep our mouth shut or just avoid certain topics in order to keep the thin line of balance. That to me is leadership in practise - always recognizing the situations around us and acting accordingly. Realising that we are not leaders only when we are with our own team but also in our everyday life.

The role of the leader should never be put 'on hold' - it should reflect to ourselves and to others in all of our actions!

Stay tuned for part 2 ...

LTS, Student Days opening Parade, Global village

Hey, I just wanted to share briefly what we've been up to lately.

Local Training seminar a.k.a Sügisseminar

So first is our favorite event which lasted almost two days and was even better than we expected. You may ask: "Why so?" But of course because our member-candidates are so cool and crazy, just like we planned and secretly wished. You can see how they look like by checking this link:
http://picasaweb.google.com/markosiller/LTS2007

Student Days (Tudengite Sügispäevad 2007) opening Parade

LC Tallinn's participation in Student Days opening parades (Spring & Autumn) is nice tradition and continues so long while we're having cool people in our LC = at least forever, riiight?!! :D
In this time there were just right amount of coolest people, about 15 - who can count them anyway :) They were the people who rocked everybody's socks of and that's only opening parade .. Here are some of the pictures to bring back the great night:

1. @mobile


2. Human chain

3. @ heroes
We have some more goodies, check out our video material:
http://ajaviide.delfi.ee/news/kuum/article.php?id=17004621
http://www.etv24.ee/index.php?0534940011
---> choose 24.09.2007 Aktuaalne kaamera 21:00 (minutes 20:30-21:37)

Global Village

You know what we're talking about, right? All our coolest interns were there to promote cultural understanding through visual presentations, food, dances and traditional garments. This time there were 10% of our network countries represented:

1. Czech Republic,
2. Armenia,
3. Germany,
4. Georgia,
5. Venezuela,
6. Russia,
7. Turkey,
8. Romania,
9. Estonia,
10. Ecuador

Here are also some pictures from this event:

P.S If you have some more pictures, videos etc you can hint us so we can upload those here as well !!

VPPRERLnC
Cristo