Teamdays in Harelbeke
I'm just back from team days and planning review, which was held at Elie's place in Harelbeke - a town in teh middle of nowhere in Belgium. However, Elie and Annelies have a wonderful cozy house! Nice an quiet area, inside is very bright and has lots of homy touches:) And teh Christmas tree was tha most beutiful I've ever seen. Unfortunately, we didn't take much pictures, so I cannot show you all this :)
Teamdays were nice. We reviewed our national plan, saw what's done what's not yet and all other things, and also got to chat a bit mor einformally in the team. I don't know what, maybe it's teh magic of the place, but the atmosphere was nice and in the evening we kept on talking until 3am in the morning. We remembered the time when we were elected last time in March, how we saw our teams if we are elected and things like that. Art the end we were sleepy but stil laughing out loud of all the funny stories that we had to share.
I also got to reflect a bit on my own achievemens and non-achievements, my own discoveries. What I found out in this half a year is amazing. Even those months had ups and downs, I don't regret any single momend I had, it is a great experience. And it's not over year. I think our team is on it's way to Performing stage. If somebody wants to hear more details from Meta-Cognition philosophical and highly sophisticated ideas, let's better meet up for a coffee ;)
What else was super cool, is coming back home in a car with good music, and also driving in the city at night. I have discovered that this is one of the things I've been missing. I love going by car or bus or train somewhere far. Sometimes it's amazing how such small things can make one happy :)
Hey, MC Christmas party is tomorrow :) I hope I will see some of you there;)
Just a perfect day
Sunday evening and I am looking back at my week... Fantastic feeling, I haven't felt better for a long time already. I am smiling and chilling and happy about everything. Why?
The week was great. It had some up's and down's, even some extreme ones, but if that didn't happen, I wouldn't have seen the balance. Work is good and improving, I am very happy to be productive during the days and have free time to meet closest people in the evenings.
I've discovered some nice new places to go in Brussels, like so called 'Art Cafe' /(c) Boris/ and
Cafe Central. LC meeting of VLEKHO was held in our place, was nice to see them all discussing important things, although not having time to discuss everything. I was late for Romanian dinner, but I think the ones who were on time enjoyed it :)
Intern drink in Mezzo was better than ever. Boris, an ABN-AMRO intern from Serbia&Montenegro, introduced the concept of drinking games to the public and this seemed to be appreciated:) What was also great - is to see some people that I haven't seen for ages. I could even call this week a get-back-together week :)
Friday was spent in Michal's and Eduardo's place in a small nice group with Polish and Brazilian snacks and drinks and very very good music :)
Saturday whole day was shopping for household stuff. All me and Lili bought is mirror, but a research for further development of out living area has been done decently ;) I also got inspired by bargain oil pastels and Acrylic paint, so now I have a full gear to restart my career of artist :D Evening was saying bye to Daniela, a girl from Venezuela, who became a good friend of the whole MC team and other AIESEC people in past two months. It was a good pub-hopping night. Daniela, we're gonna miss you, girl!
Sunday - chill out. Sleep in. Read in bed. No hurry. Laundry done. Lili got our bathroom upgraded :) Thanks to her friend Bjorn and Lili's initiative, of course. Listening to the best music in the world, it heals my soul. Having an overview of the coming week, which is going to be crazy: planning review, team day, Careers in Europe Forum, meeting UBS, calling companies, meeting BoA, preparing for MC Christmas party... and it's ot the end yet:) But I'll manage.
...Just a perfect day
drink sangria in the park
and then later
when it gets dark,
we go home...
Sinterklaas has come!
Today, 5th of December is the day in Belgium and the Netherlands (at least) when Sinterklaas comes to homes and brings sweet presents. This is the day when everyone puts Christmas socks out and leave a carrot and a piece of sugar for the helpers of Sinterklaas - a horse and Zwarte Piet - a little boy who is traveling along. He has lots of helpers :)
Today we had Sinterklaas visiting our office as well - we got tons of chocolate, cookies and other sweets :) Christmas spirit is all around :)
Just DID-IT !!
As you see the previous week w
as quite fun, and it even got an aspect of crazyness as after one day being back in Brussels I already was flying over to Switzerland, where I got a chance to facilitate the most incredible AIESEC Switzerland conference called DO-IT. What I can say - we did it!!! It was great, incredible, amazing, I knew it from the start and it was even better than I've expected:) The site was just great, in the mountains, which is amazing for me, a girl coming from a flat country.
A great summary of the conference has been done by
chitgo , what i have to add is that I got to meet the most incredible set of people, who inspired me and made me think - that is teh faci, MC and chairs, my home group, alumni and some other great people I got to know. It was also next step in discovery of my facilitation style, my goals and conference management. After this conference I declare a war to my randomness and step by step I'm gonna fight it :) And I am almost clear what I want to do after my term in Belgium ends.
Fun part - I had a great time, observing the most hilarious LC Lausanne closing roll call where guys have summed up the conference in one performance, having teh best fun
homegroup experience, the Indian 'Giovanni' song to honour one of the facis, the greatest reunion of The Strategic Golden Triange from IC in India (me, Carissa and Marcel, see right), the most amusing
Time Machine performances ('42...42... that's the size of my bra!') the discovery of native English speakers that English is the only language where word for
'pineapple' is
'pineapple' - in other languages it's
'ananas' (cheers for that!). If I remember something more, I will definitely add to this list.
I have brought back a lot of food for thought, which I am gonna share here in my next posts.
... Rotterdam
Random.
This is the first word that comes to my mind when I visit Rotterdam. In this city you can see everything mixed in the most unbelievable places..
... you see cubic houses, walls of those are not standing straight, so it gives a question 'who can live in a house like this?'.
... you see extremely wide streets with no traffic so cars pass by like they went on a highway
... you see skyscrapers and cars in them :)
... you go a bit out of town and you see a winmill cafe, which is like the one we h
ave in
Trakai, the old capital of Lithuania
... after all, you come to a restaurant where onion relates to 'spicy' :)
It's a funny feeling for me, Goda and Amach, when you have money, but you cannot use them, because the debit cards you have don't work. This is is what we call 'marginal' - we have co
llected all the metal cash, every single cent that we had in our pockets to buy the last cup of tea :) You can imagine our happy faces when we got back to brussels and got some money to withdraw :)
This could be Rotterdam, or anywhere, Liverpool or Rome, 'Coz Rotterdam is anywhere, anywhere alone, Anywhere alone...
