Whatcha doing in July? Traveling with me?!?!

Kenya->Turkey->Germany->India->China->??? Jordan!!

Come one, come all! This July I'm going to travel around Jordan and Israel and I'm looking for anyone else who wants to join. =)

The only catch is you have to go skydiving with me over Jerash on July 8th. (my birthday!)

See you there!


Tentative Schedule:

July 7th	Day 1	http://www.visitjordan.com/visitjordan_cms/ItineraryGenerator/tabid/77/Default.aspx
		Jerash
		Ajloun and Umm Qais
		Overnight in Jerash
July 8th	Day 2	http://www.7iber.com/blog/2007/06/01/discover-i-went-skydiving-in-jordan/
		Skydiving over Jerash
		My birthday!
July 9th	Day 3
		Amman City Tour and Desert Castles
		Overnight in Amman
July 10th	Day 4
		Madaba
		Mount Nebo
		Mukawir
		Overnight in Amman
July 11th	Day 5
		Mujib Nature Reserve
		Overnight in Amman
July 12th	Day 6
		Kerak
		Dana Nature Reserves
		Overnight at Petra
July 13th	Day 7
		Petra and Little Petra
		Overnight in Wadi Rum
July 14th	Day 8
		Wadi Rum and Aqaba City Tour
		Overnight in Aqaba
July 15th	Day 9
		Aqaba and Dead Sea
		Overnight at Dead Sea
July 16th	Day 10
		Dead Sea and Bethany
		Overnight in Amman
July 17th	Day 11
		Salt and Pella ( Tabaqet Fahl)
		Overnight in Amman
July 18th	Day 12
		Amman (Royal Automobile Museum and Turkish Bath)
		Next stop: Israel
July 19th	Day 13	http://www.goisrael.com/Tourism_Eng/Tourist+Information/Suggested+Itineraries/Itineraries/General+Interest+Itineraries+%287%29.htm
		Mount of Olives
		Tower of David Museum
		Old City Markets (Christiam/Jewish Quarters)
		Overnight is Jerusalem
July 20th	Day 14
		New City
		Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial
		Knesset - Israeli Parliament
		Israel Museum
		Downtown
		Overnight in Jerusalem
July 21st	Day 15
		Tel Aviv - Old Jaffa
		St. Peter's Church
		White City
		Tel Aviv Art Museum
		Overnight in Tel Aviv
July 22nd	Day 16
		Caesarea
		Haifa - Baha'I Shrine and Gardens
		Acre
		Overnight in Acre or Galilee Mountains
July 23rd	Day 17
		Nazareth
		Sea of Galilee and Mount of Beatitudes
		Hula Valley - Hula Nature Reserve
		Overnight in Tiberias
July 24th	Day 18
		Dead Sea - Qumran
		EinGedi Nature Reserve
		Massada
		New Museum
		Overnight in the Dead Sea area
July 25th	Day 19
		Negev
		Arad
		Be'er Sheba National Park
		Mini Israel Theme park

Quebec, nous t'aimons

These past couple of weeks, AIESEC Atlanta members were flung across the globe to attend the numerous international conferences that AIESEC International holds each year. Germany, Tunisia, Russia, and Japan each saw the smiling faces of eager, exuberant Americans from the Peach State.

However, a few of us thought, "Why should we need a conference to justify visiting another MC, LC, or interesting destination? Why can't we just go?"

And so we went.



Thomas, Ryan, Masato, and I met up with Shannon Guy (of former LCP fame) from AIESEC Yale and headed for an atypical Spring Break destination, Canada. Montreal, Quebec, to be specific.

What began as a simple trip into a city evolved and shifted into a week-long love affair with the local committees nestled in the heart of this francophone metropolis. We were welcomed with unparalleled enthusiasm and warmth by the LCs of the University of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM) and Hautes Etudes Commerciales Montreal (HEC). They accepted us into their offices, their events, and their social circles without hesitation and thoroughly immersed us in the Montreal experience. And even though we struggled with our French, it was easy to see that no language barriers could overpower the strength of the AIESEC network to create friendships. AIESEC Montreal is truly a force to be reckoned with.



We came, we saw, we conquered. An indelible mark was left on our hearts, even for those of us who are seasoned visitors of our neighbor to the north. I know I speak for all five of us when I say that we will remember this experience for years to come.

And to you Canadians: may we meet again at NLDC in May at Toronto!

Take it to the next level

This week quite a few members are off on fantastic adventures at various AIESEC conferences -- in Tokyo, in Tunis, in St. Petersburg. It brings me back to a year ago when I was in the midst of my own adventure at WENA LDS in beautiful Port Talbot, Wales. And it makes me think of the thoughts I came back from that conference with: I wasn't sure how, but I knew that I wanted to make an active contribution to the LC.

I'd like to see this happen; I'd like to come back from my traineeship (which is, by the way, going fantastically well) to see the LC having reached a much higher level than I remembered leaving. So, here's some inspiration, courtesy of AIESEC Almaty.

• Once my match finally goes through (thanks, MyAIESEC.net!) I will be incoming trainee no. 15 this year. And I am already aware of at least two more who are coming by this summer.
• AIESEC Almaty is, as far as I know, the only LC in the world to offer traineeships directly with the United Nations.
• At the moment, I'm participating in an AIESEC-organized project called CaseIT, which involves five companies working with groups of local college students over the course of a month to complete a detailed case study. (I'll write more about this elsewhere, as I am enjoying the unusual-for-me perspective of working on this as a representative of an AIESEC partner company.) There are roughly 40 students involved in total.
• In addition to that project, they are in the development stages of a Global Village (to take place in May), are working on their annual report, finishing off planning for a new member conference, and participating in a major national project.

The key factor here is that every team in the LC is firing on all cylinders, running its own projects and making things happen. This is a dramatic contrast to the situation that has tended to occur in Atlanta, where everyone on the leadership team works on everything constantly, and where we cannot seem to manage to work on or run two events in parallel. And while I value our culture of openness and "everyone helps out" attitude, as an LC we have to be able to multitask in order to reach the success we want and desire.

When I decided to go to Kazakhstan I knew that AIESEC Almaty was a reasonably strong LC. But I didn't realize just how strong: I don't think that by most well-rounded measures there is an LC in the U.S. that I would consider stronger (though Madison, Yale or Illinois might come close in some senses).

Like all things, AIESEC Almaty is not without its problems, and this post is not meant to be an ode to the EB here. Rather, it is a call to action and a request for each team to set a goal for themselves: to go all-out, be creative and do something to make AIESEC at Georgia Tech as successful in the rest of 2008 as AIESEC Almaty has been over the past year. You, the current and future leaders, are coming back from conferences that should have motivated you and made you re-evaluate your leadership potential. Keep the spirit alive and take the LC to the next level.

P.S. Registration for ITC 2008 in Kiev ends March 26. Get thyself over to MyAIESEC.net and apply!

Go big or go abroad.

Traineeship Rocketship: (n) [trey-nee-ship rok-it-ship]
Origin: AIESEC, Madisonian

(1) The act of taking that immense step off the AIESEC platform and into another country, experiencing life in another culture, meeting incredible life-changing people, and discovering and developing yourself to become a change-agent with a positive impact on society.
(2) The act of going big and going abroad.
(3) How to become an AIESEC Rockstar.

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.

The Great Flying-Out

WENALDS.
MENAXLDS.
APXLDS.
EUROXPRO.

All will be rocked like the Perfect Hurricane by the LC come the end of March.

Our own Seancy has returned from a great time at WENALDS in Bamberg, Germany, after carrying his luggage over hill and dale and braving unexpectedly cold water.

I sit with Ben James, Esq. who will take that trip with Firdaus, Denise, and Carleigh in less than three hours to jump on a White Horse to Londontown first, followed by their destination of Tunis, once Carthage, for MENAXLDS. The network has been massaged to produce anticipated good times.

Laleh, Stewardess of the Traineeship Rocketship, will slingshot to Tokyo with the beloved King Himself from up North to make them connections and facilitate more than a little exchange at APXLDS.

My visa for Russia just came in this morning. Naoufel and I will take it to St. Petersburg and EUROXPRO like no other.

I am proud of my LC for keeping strong connections to the global network, exemplifying what AIESEC is really all about. We continue to build a ladder and invite others to climb with us. Where is the top?

So what is SoCo without a little GT?

We came, we saw, we conquered.
Way to build and maintain, ladies and gentlemen - let's take it to the next level.