WENA LDS -- Bamberg, Germany

One cool and wet German morning, I arrived to a hillside hostel overlooking a village of fewer than a thousand residents where I would spend the next 4 days completely isolated from every vestige of my charted territory in the company of people with whom I shared little more than distant ancestry... and AIESEC.

This was only the second time I'd traveled outside the United States, my first time to Europe, and the very first time I'd traveled alone without anything familiar at the other end. I'd always traveled to meet a friend or family, but this time I was heading into a black hole, from which no communication could escape. No working cell phone, no Internet, well out of smoke signal range. Amazingly, perhaps mostly to myself, I didn't feel on the surface that I was that far out of my element. The food was great, almost everyone fell in the range of understandable-to-perfect English, and the conference was well organized. Most of all, everyone was very nice and hospitable. I was a little apprehensive about how Europeans would receive an American, given the mutual disdain popularized by the news media, but it wasn't an issue. I know how I treat people from other countries in the U.S., so in retrospect there's no reason I should have expected any less when I became the foreigner.

I spent a lot of time before and since I joined AIESEC studying leadership, so there wasn't a lot in the home group sessions I hadn't heard before. However, the curriculum was delivered in a different context and completely new environment, so it had a different impact on my thinking. Studying at home, I might read a passage that would ask me to define my values in a certain area of life, and I would think "terrific idea" before getting back to responsibilities for which I soon had to show results. In the countryside of Germany 4000 miles (8000km) from home, defining my values was itself the responsibility for which I had to show results. Furthermore, we did some of what I thought were very childish activities, like drawing pictures to represent our values or goals with abstractions rather than words, but only a few hours after scoffing at such an activity, I was asked by someone from another home group, "what top five values did you choose [from a lengthy list from which we chose]?" The only reason I was able to say without thinking, then and now, "Independence, freedom, personal development, trust, and wisdom," was that I had drawn pictures to represent them. Immediately thereafter I recalled from an accelerated learning technique seminar that, even as an adult, we tend to think in pictures, and one of the best ways to visualize and remember important information is to draw a picture to represent it. So as you can see, I made some important connections from an activity that I initially thought was a waste of time.

I planned to blog while in Germany, but for lack of Internet access and no computer I could not. I may get around to adding my experiences to my own blog over time, which is linked to the right. In the mean time, I strongly recommend to anyone considering an international conference to do it. The WENA Leadership Development Seminar will help catapult you to success in any AIESEC leadership position.