Europe - Expros and Communism

Right now I am in Warsaw, Poland. Yep, last place I expected to be but here I am staying with a friend I met over the course of conference. The conference was spectacular in every way shape and form. It has been 18 months since I have been a delegate at a conference and this experience has surpassed the feeling of my first ever AIESEC conference way back in 2002.

I'm a bit at a loss as to how to explain the experience except that it was challenging global direction backed by personal mentoring/training on how to implement the information. It re-adjusted my perception of what AIESEC is and provided the next tools for taking AIESEC forward.

The greatest thing about the conversation was meeting a swag of new AIESEC people. Croatia, Serbia, UK, India, Spain, Poland, Canada, Romania, Austria, Denmark, Czech Republic and Netherlands all came out of the AIESEC woodwork with their best people on display. The conversations were great... and deep. It has been a while since I have stayed up discussing life till 6.30am. The faci's were on the ball and able to connect with the members quickly and easily. The entire experience was one of positive learning, cultural challenges and straight up good fun.

This conference has also made me pay greater attention to my own learning path and asked me to concentrate on all the peripherals of the AIESEC experience, that under developed 20% of AIESEC that is oft forgotten but makes the 80% difference.

The conference also bought with it the realisation that a current stage of AIESEC is coming to a close.

Now I am in Poland, exploring more of eastern europe and helping to correct my perception of 'cold, unhappy, concrete, grey' post communist cities. Tonight I had dinner with a Polish family, walked through what used to be the Jewish quarter of Warsaw and listened to first hand stories about Poland's move into the post communist world. Tomorrow I will travel to Krakow and visit Auschwitz...