Feeling inspired!

I just thought that I would take a moment to share the emotions I am experiencing right now;

This past week has been filled with applications being sent out and people frantically trying to get them in before the due date, and although I am not filling out any myself, I have been pulled into the application process. I am not an applicant, but someone that people feel that they can confide in and I have been asked by people who inspire me and who I admire as my role models to help with their application. I just have to say that this is one of the best experiences in my life. I feel so honoured that they would actually ask me to help them in their applications when they are going on to things that I haven't been able to experience myself, yet. I really don't know how to explain how incredible and great it feels to be involved in this process.

I just want to say thank you to those people who asked me to help. You all have inspired me to be better and encouraged me to believe in my own abilities because being apart of this makes me believe that one day I'll be where you guys are filling out those same applicatons. I can't wait to be asking for your help next time. =)

I'M BACK!

FINALLY I was able to figure out how to retrieve my username and password. I will definately be working to get my posts back up and running since my last post was back when I was in India! I have one in mind that I have been meaning to write for a while and it'll be a look at what has happened this year from Janurary 1st 2006 until now!

See you soon. =)

Journal #4 - No Fancy Title

So unable to come up with a fancy title for this blog of multiple thoughts I have decided to just jump on into my writing and jot down the events of the week.

I guess it all began with the stock market crashing. Now one would think "Omg!" because people in North America would be jumping out of a window from the 21st story right now, but India? Nope. Life goes on as if nothing ever happened. Why this is so cool? Because I wasn't alive when our stock market crashed and it's so COOL to see it on television! Turning on the news and seeing EVERY SINGLE stock red and with a down arrow is something I've never seen before. Yes, I am a nerd but I'm in business, so what do you expect? Anyway! Llorene and I did not take advantage of this however =( so no lower exchange rate for us.

I think this happened the day after the stock market crash, but Llorene and I got to go to a fashion show! It was absolutely INCREDIBLE! Now it might be because I am in love with fashion but I was so blown away by everything that went into it. The clothing was incredible, the choreography was incredible, and they even hired famous top Indian models! This definately made my day!

Next is the heritage walk! We took a heritage walk for maybe 2 hours or so around the city and learned about who took over first, what they left behind, etc,; the entire history. It was interesting because a lot of the stuff I didn't know and that's probably because outside of Ghandi I never really studied India. We got a lot of good pictures and backgrounds of the buildings. A few of them really stood out in my mind such as the Taj Hotels which was started by a well-to-do Indian who was refused service at a hotel run by a British man and so he created his own hotel chain that would serve anyone.

Lastly, Llorene and I traveled by ourselves today. Now this might not sound like a huge deal, but keep in mind that crossing these roads is like playing Frogger and we don't exactly have the best concept of our location. Haha. Anyway, we made it safely to and from our destination. Yay us! Ceeders rule!

Journal #3 - The Landing And So On....

It has been terribly difficult to keep up with this journal and I'm beginning to wonder just how much of a great idea it really was. At this point, with my bad memory and already being more than a week here, I'm beginning to forget all the small details I wanted to write about, so I will do my best to recall them.

Random thought: *quick blog about the airport in point form: we were interrogated in Amsterdam, it was scary, they let us pass, two old people tried to dodge the line to get on the plane faster and got yelled at (it was funny), and KLM was way better than Northwest Airlines because it had television/movies (Friends!)*

The plane landed safely in Mumbai (obviously or I wouldn't be writing) and three people came to pick us up (2 boys, 1 girl). They were about 15 minutes late or so and we were about to call the parents of one of Llorene's friends from Canada when they came up to us and asked if we were from AIESEC. Yay! They remembered! =) So we took our first taxi to one of the guys' houses (after the taxi driver got a talk to and ticket from a police officer because the taxi was overcrowded with us 5). Driving, in short, is interesting here. It can be explained in two words: organized chaos. We arrived safely at the house and stayed there from May 10-Saturday night (whatever day that was).

It's really hard to keep these thoughts in order and make proper journal posts, so I'm just going to post some events that happened in point form:

- we met the MC, who are super cool, and did our expectation setting with them
- walking with them to a bar from the office Llorene got pooped on by a bird and when attempting to run to dodge further pooping it began, literally, to rain poop
- we had some food/drinks with the MC and then went home for the night
- we've been to a general meeting, exec meeting, and middle management meeting, all of which were good. The exec and middle management meetings go on for about 4 hours though (yuck)
- we had our expectation setting witht the LCP here in Mumbai; he's a really good and thorough LCP who really gets things done
- quality isn't a huge issue in Mumbai anymore because they have already recognized the problem and have begun to fix it before we got here so we're just giving our feedback and some suggestions. We might be going to NPM to pass the quality issue message onto the other LCPs.
- we're helping with some of the June National Conference (JNC) events, possibly facilitating the intern track
- we went to a pass out party (P.O.P) and met a bunch of interns from Japan, Europe, Australia, etc.

Those are all I can think of right now. Sorry.

Journal #2 - The Adventure Before The Adventure

I apologize for not keeping up to date with my blog, but for the past few weeks things have been so terribly hectic and my internet resources lately have been limited as well as my time. I will be trying my best to make weekly updates but no promises.

I have decided to start from my pre-India experience because this in itself has been one wild ride. I would like to start by thanking my wonderful boyfriend and LCP Mike, Rob, my local, and the CEEDers I talked to for helping me get through this rough and stressful time. As you probably remember my last post was about how i had just received my passport and had an appointment for my vaccines. Well....both of these and the VISA became an interesting disaster!

I moved out of my house around April 28th and the plan was to stay at my dad's for the weekend with my truck (love vehicle access! it's important in Leamington) and leave all my things there. Unfortunately all this did not go as planned! The official moving date was pushed back a day, which I wasn't going to complain about because those who know me best know that I don't pack/move until the day of, which wouldn't be a problem except that it took a day longer than I thought it would to be out of the house. Anyway, my mother decided that in order to move things along she would help me by cleaning and packing (those who know me know how much I hate getting help with cleaning/packing my things. I'm obsessive compulsive so I need to do it on my own lol) and what does she do? She throws out the medication that was in the fridge that I was going to take that night! Worst of all, ALL the receipts and instructions went with it and I needed the receipts for insurance reimbursements, the medication was $87.00 (she couldn't throw out the $30 that didn't need to be taken immediately?), and it HAD to be taken a week PRIOR to leaving which I was already late for. I went through a lot to get this sorted out and ended up taking the medication less than a week beforehand, but it was done. Anyway, goign back to the house issue - I went back to my house the next day to finish up what we hadn't done and the new tenants, who shouldn't even be moving in until May 1st, show up and decided that they are moving in early. One would think that considering they legally can't do this they'd be nice about the entire thing, right? Nope. I'm glad they enjoyed sitting on the front lawn on their stupid couches for 3 hours. =)

After this came my passport issue. I went to NLDC this year and my passport was scheduled to be at my mom's house, where I was staying, May 1st. May 1st came and went and there was no passport. After arriving at NLDC we finally were able to track it down and found out that it was in Windsor. Ugh! The only thing to do was make some phone calls to figure out which post office it was at, give my dad permission to pick it up, and then drive from Hamilton to Windsor. Thankfully my dad met us in London instead and so we only missed one or two sessions at NLDC that day. This was a stressful issue, but resolved nonetheless!

Finally came the issue of the VISA. To make it short I got it about 2 or 3 hours before my flight left. The guy who issued it yelled at me, kicked me out of the office, called me back in, gave it to me, and wished me good luck. I guess that good luck was an apology for being such a jerk! He didn't even care that it was my passport's fault and I didn't wait that long intentionally!

And all this happened before I got on the plane!

Journal #1 - Prep. for India

May 10th will be the first time that I leave Canada (at an age that I can remember since my first time was when I was about 2 years of age and all I have for memory is one picture!) to travel to another country. I wanted to start posting journals on here to keep a record of experiences, thoughts, emotions, and read people's comments on them. The first post was supposed to be April 10th, one month from the day I leave, but I hadn't taken care of a lot of things that had to be done and I felt ashamed, lol. As it stands now I have my passport information in and they said I should have it by May 1st, I have an appointment (sort of) with a doctor to get my immunization, and my VISA is the next thing to worry about. Just getting an appointment for immunization has been a struggle because my family doctor was useless (just told me to go to the public heath unit without giving me any information or a phone number!) and when I got there, they said I needed one month before I got my shots and I don't have that much time. They gave me some numbers of other doctors who could help in Windsor, Chatam, and London and after calling 2 on that list I finally got someone who could help me. My next worry is the VISA though because that will probably be a tight squeeze in the time budget. Other than that everything has been super hectic here in AIESEC Windsor. I found out that the president of our chamber of commerce is currently working with the consul-general of India in Toronto to create a Windsor-India partnership which is something I was interested in forming myself when I went to India. So after e-mailing her about it, she gave me a bunch of contacts who I'm going to call tomorrow and see if there's some way that AIESEC can be apart of a Canada-India partnership. Aside from this my trip to India is going to be used to 'advertise' for AIESEC Windsor among students and also get students interested in some programs that the Odette School of Business runs (University of Windsor business department) such as working for Mercedes-Benz and Bosch. When I told the Dean, who we met with today, that I could personally help with things like video and pictures showing students that these dreams can be reality, he was literally jumping out of his chair in excitement! We also talked to him about taking interns and even though they hire from the co-op program his response was "I don't see why we can't create a couple positions." So from the university, city of Windsor, and chamber of commerce we are getting CRAZY support. If we're able to manage all these things then I definately don't see why Windsor would fail in the future. I know it's premature, but I think Windsor is going to be able to really pick-up and thrive in the years ahead!

Aside from all this that is going on my head and stomach are swimming with emotions and thoughts. I can barely think about being nervous about traveling to India itself because I'm worried about money, things not being done on time, moving all my things, leaving my kittens for 2 months (they need mommy!), packing, forgetting things, and not being able to manage everything that I need to do for CEED, the city, the school, AIESEC Windsor. Ugh! Aside from the stress, though, things are going amazing!

Mike's birthday celebration! Happy 23rd, baby. <3

AIESEC Windsor Updates

When I first came to AIESEC Windsor, I learned that it did not exist. This was quite a surprise considering I had come from AIESEC Ottawa and quickly realized just how much work Windsor would require. After deciding that it was worth the challenge, I applied and achieved a position on the executive board which I kept for a second term. As a member of the exec I have been here through everything Windsor has done and I can proudly say that Windsor has accomplished quite a bit in the past few months. We have established a Board of Advisors composed of the biggest names in Windsor! These members were MORE than eager to help AIESEC Windsor and I can definately say that we love our BoA. <3 Aside from this we are currently working on a partnership with our city council. What could this mean? It could mean 6 TNs/year! This is still a theory, though, and we are quickly working to put that all together and make it a reality. We have a full exec team of 7 members who are ALL dedicated to AIESEC (which is nice to see considering how things fell apart last term). We are also sending away one member on a CEED; ME! I am going to India on May 10th (right after NLDC) and I can't wait to really go through the AIESEC experience! To top that off, I am going with Llorene and she is definately someone who has inspired me in AIESEC. Thus far things are going terrific and Windsor still has a lot of work to do to make those minimum standards. Aside from ourselves, we've had a surprise birthday party for our LCP Mike and Windsor went to Guelph to help with their local committee. Both events went GREAT! and really inspired our members. I know this is a lot of info in one small post, but that's more or less the big events that have happened thus far in Windsor. I'll be starting a CEED journal on April 10th, exactly one month from when I leave, so that I can keep track of my feelings, thoughts, and the events that occur before, during, and after!