First experience with Brazil

Hi all,

Though it is already our 5th day at IC and 14th in IC, we manage right now to do a posting about study tour now, as it is extremely hard to get into internet here.

Just wanted to share a bit about our study tour which we decided to spend in Goyas instead of Rio De Janiro. It seems that people in MC are more into nature than sightseeing in famous places.

Goyas is a state in Brazil, which is situated in the middle of the country, more north from Sao Paolo state.

Which we learnt about Brazilians?
They are extremely friendly and smiling even if things are going wrong

When they say it is close, it is actually really far

When they say it takes one hour to get to some place, then double this time. Trip from Sao Paulo to Goyania should have taken 12 hours, but it took 16.

As we didn't have a change to wash, we used other means for that

What we experienced?
That Brazilia is extremely big and getting from one place to another needs patience and plenty of time. We travelled 16 hours to get from one city to another which is comparable with driving to Poland, but at the mean time you have seen already 4 countries.

That’s why the weather is completely different. It was cold and raining in Sao Paulo, but it was 30 degrees and very dry in Goyania. It was even so dry that we saw many field and forest fires, but as it turned out later the locals are setting the fires themselves to prevent the huge fires.

There is a weird system in the gas stations and every bar as well. When u enter the gas station you will get a sheet of paper and all the things you wanna buy will be labeled by the shop assistant and then written on the paper. So in the end you will pay by the sheet of paper. We figured it out that maybe people who are serving the food are not allowed to touch the money. Even in the hotel we get the coupons to buy something.

In gasstations it was good to strech ourselves

Extremely beautiful waterfall, with extemely gold but refreshing water

Culture experience by rehershing capoeira. Aika as Estonian master on that:)

The one and only ecofarm where everything is handmade and grown on spot which makes it sustainable and good

The famous coconut drink

In the capital Brazilia. The house of the parliament. An interesting thing about Brazilia is that the city has a shape of an aeroplane. The main body belonges to all administrative institutions and people are living in the "wings" part.

Stay tune for more updates as it seams that there will be more internet from now on.

Boa noite,

Maarja

Cool-based AIESEC XP

You are having a COOL eXPerience if…
...what you do is fun
...you feel that your contribution is recognized
...people around you make you happy

Way to cool experiences: make people around you important!

All about money - This Thursday in MC Office Reakoja square 16

Ahoi ja tere everybody!

As 4/6 of MC is far-far away in Brazil it`s time for a nice gathering in MC office ("kassid läinud, hiirtel pidu" as they say in Estonia...)

This Thursday (28th of August) at 1900 You are all welcomed to MC office for
"All About Money" learning circle/office chill

Let`s talk about money, being/becoming rich (or not), play some Monopoly (or not) and other self-created-money-related-

games. At the same time we can enjoy just nice company of each other and snack+drinks (bring your own).

NB! No MC money is distributed during the evening!

Marian and Marko are waiting for you.

See you soon!

IC experience for MCPs

I have to admit that my predecessors were al right when they said that IC for MCPs is totally different xp than for MC members. Lot of my time I have spent on strategic discussions about the future of the organization management issues. And the good thing with MCPs network is that it is not only a discussion, but we have the power to change things. During the IC we have a lot of legislation fairs were different proposals for changes in the way we do things (according to international compendium) are proposed and argued. So far we have gone through with all the MCPs 2 important topics:

AI Internal Auditors report with recommendations for MCPs what to raise in the legislation.

AIESEC US case, with presentation from the research team that was composed to solve the issue reported to global network in July. This topic will continue also next day. It is a delegate topic with lot of emotions, but the most important thing is to understand the core of the issue and take it as a new experience the organization is going through. And it is great to be part of this decision making time.

I have also been selected as part of the Finance subcommittee and Steering team, which means extra work and fun during IC. Finance subcommittee is group of MCPs representing each GN to review AI finances and management, including country fees calculation models, AI annual reports and budgets etc. This team will also put togheter recommendations for Global Plenary for Legislation.

The Steering team has 3 topics to be discussed during IC:

How to measure quality and what should be the measures?

Aligning structures internationally – defining the GN boards role, MC role and other bodies roles in different countries and coming up with an answer shouldn’t or should they be aligned internationally and how?

Creating a planning model that could be used by all the countries and that takes into consideration the external environment.

But apart from work there is also fun – and I am off to the Africa party to meat with cool alumnae from all over the world who arrived at IC today.

Estonian delegation is doing well and we are recognized and famous with our flag-shirt ;).

Estonian delegation at IC arrived to Brazil

Hey!

As much as the time and internet connection here allows, your MC will start posting here news about what is going on in the biggest event of AIESEC this year, the International Congress 2008 in Brazil.

Here are some photos that characterize this long travelling day which started 5:45 in Tallinn's airport, had about 14 flight hours, and ends now with getting used to the time difference.

By the way it's cold here, 17 degrees.

In the airplane we all became excited as little children about the possibility to play video games and watch movies from our seat.

Just arrived to Brazil. We have Marian and Marko with us as kind of voodoo dolls.

View from Triinu Gröön's apartment in Sao Paulo. Tomorrow we will go from here to study tour.

Marko? Want to know more...?

Aehh...

It took some time but here I am. Introducing myself to anyone who have taken some time to read MC and NST of AIESEC Estonia blog.

I`m Marko, a 23years old simple boy from Õismäe - brother, son, boyfriend, AIESEC members, Pärnu college alumni, former Estonian youth track-and-field 300m race Championship silver medalist, beach-volley fan.

I`m the one who likes to
...watch a lot of sports,
...still do some sport myself,
...bake,
...drink cold beer,
...travel,
...spend quality time with my friends,
...watch "Life Is Beautiful" and "Pulp Fiction" and "4 Rooms" movies,
...listen to Metallica, U2, Dagö, The Beatles, Genialistid, The Rolling Stones, Queen and Freddie Mercury, Jääboiler, Mr.Lawrence, Tõnis Mägi, Mild and others,
...walk in Kadrioru park or in the beach and
...to do some more things which I cannot remember at the moment...

One day I also though about my dream exchange destination. If I want to have quality professional experience which would benefit to my businessman career in Estonia - then Europe it is. Don`t ask me why but I feel that I like Iceland and The Netherlands. If I want to have more cultural experience then it should be somewhere to Asia direction. Somehow I feel that South-America and Australia are just for traveling, Northern-America is not for me and in (black) Africa I have already been for some weeks which was enough.

To talk about AIESEC then I`m one of those who joined AIESEC quite randomly. There was info-evening in Pärnu college in September 2004 and our CEEDer, Ana from Romania, from this time just took my hand and took me there. And that is how it all started - without any long-term perspective in the beginning I started to participate different AIESEC events and that seemed fun. As AIESEC Pärnu had very few members during that time I had always enough challenging things to do during my first months in the organization - seems that I liked it. One thing led to another and now I`m sitting in the cool MC office in the middle point of Tallinn and writing the posting as an MC VP ER. I`m happy about it!

To describe a bit my first year in AIESEC you can see the photos from that time below:

Small AIESEC Pärnu family in Annual Conference 2005 Official Dinner. From the left me, Helena (current MCP of AIESEC Findland), Priit and Liisa. I had just got my first award in AIESEC - "The New Member Excellence Award".


Photo from the same Annual Conference. Why I uploaded this one - I am not 100% sure but it might be that you can recognize 2 of my current team mates from the photo.

I just arrived back to Estonia from my first international AIESEC conference - EuroLDS 2005 in Turkey. Together with me there were Martin, Juhan, Margit and Antti.

They had just elected me (on the left) first time as the LCP of AIESEC Pärnu. It was April 2005. After me and Herdis it was Viljo`s turn to get elected and wet. I remember this night as the longest and one of the wildest party in AIESEC for some of those who got elected/confidence...

For a conclusion: What I like in AIESEC is that it connects ambitious people with whom I have a lot interesting to talk about. I like that all of its members want to give at least a bit to the well-being of the society. AIESEC = probably the best student organization in the world!

Until next postings.

Don`t overwork and do sports.

Enjoy and behave.

Marko

Do you Squidoo?

Do you know what Squidoo is? Maybe you have already made a couple of lenses and are already into it, but for those who doesn't have a clue - here it comes.

Squidoo is the world's most popular site for building free, single pages about your passions. Highlight books, blogs, vids, online shops, or just spread the word about stuff you love. Bonus: you raise money (for you or charity) at the same time. It's fast, free, and supereasy. Watch out, it's addicting. :)

Wait, so what's a lens? A lens is...

• An insanely easy-to-build, single page online.
• Your signpost about something that matters to you.
• A place to recommend your favorite stuff.
• A popular way to get found more on the web.
• A free (yes, free) way to earn a royalty. For you or for charity.
• Word of mouth at your fingertips.
• Squiddylicious.
• Something you should have if you care about getting the word out,
  about selling something, about changing minds, about sharing info,
  or if you just love to create, express yourself, and play.

I say that Squidoo is like a blog, but cooler. With free blogging hosting providers you can't do all the things Squidoo modules allow you to do - you can't constantly interact with your readers on blog (besides guestbook).

At least you can create lenses about AIESEC and all the @ars who use Squidoo can be informed about all the cool events taking place. Using cool modules of Squidoo you can also gather constructive feedback and suggestions for the next time. Sure, there are so many other topics to write about.

Here I gathered some tutorials for beginners:
An introduction to Squidoo - Name says it all
How to make your first (or second) lens - Basic how-to tutorial
Common newbie Squidoo mistakes - This is the lens I based when creating my first lens

In addition:
Commonly misused words in the English language - May be useful

You can search Squidoo for deeper topics if you like. Like what-what did you say about earning money? Here is the lens which can give you brief overview.

As I like my stuff organized correctly, here is how I do it. Create separate folder for Squidoo and in there main file for your ideas - just so you can easily have an overview of what you would like to write. Easiest way is .txt file, not to mess with .doc types. In Squidoo folder you can create folders for topics you are handling and in there also a file for your ideas on this topic and a folder for images as you will probably need lots of images to create a good lens. And that's it. Everything is organized and well-structured :)

Well, see you there :)