Health Condition and Outlook

So many people have been asking me, if the heat is bearable. Well here is the thing: the weather would be awesome. Nice and warm, no need for anything but shorts and a tank top, technically!
But thanks to modern technology, allowing us to simulate north pole temperatures in all closed rooms, I'm constantly freezing. But horribly! Some of you know how much I hate riding Swiss trains in summer because I find them cold. OK, now take 10 degrees off and you know how I suffer in these temperatures here.
The funny thing is, that the Thais are usually quite surprised that I'm so cold, giving me the reason that I as a Swiss should be used to cold, with our winters. mmmm... just that winter is such a thing: I don't walk around in shorts and flip flops!

So now it comes as no big surprise: I got sick. Starting on Monday with a sore throat, headache, dizziness. Tuesday I spent in bed without voice, horrible pain in my throat and also everything else horrible. Ever since I'm couching, my nose is running, I still have a sore throat...
Jap, one wouldn't believe it: Go to Thailand and in less than a week you have the same symptoms that you fight all winter in Switzerland.

But hey you know me: nothing can put me off from exploring this land! An exciting weekend is coming up:
P'Pui has invited me to join her and some friends to go on a day trip somewhere to the northeast of the country. I have no clue really what it is, but I'm excited and she said it's not a touristy place at all.
And on Sunday, thanks to P'Pui again (!), Rob and me got invited to a Thai wedding!
Hey thanks P'Pui! Also for the very nice and interesting evening tonight (and for the by far best dinner I had since I arrived in this country)!

Contact

I've got myself a Thai sim-card yesterday. So please if you want to contact me, use the Thai number, I will have my cell phone with me most of the time. Since I won't publish the number here in the Internet, feel free to write me an email to ask for it! :-)

Bangkokness

The Act of Creation

Yesterday was an intensive day of brainstorming, discussing and most of all a day of great output! We created the agenda for the first induction conference

SPARK - Get fired up!

(This is the team by the way. From left to right: Pui (Thai), Me (Swiss), Rob (British), Rina (Kenyan))

For the first time I have I can be part of the making of a conference from the first steps to closing plenary. This is awesome guys!

My Job

A lot of you have been wondering: "What is Laura actually doing in Thailand??"

Well, we worked on my definite Job Description and here it is:

CEEDer focuses mainly on ER.

- Setting, training and managing ER team after the conference in August
- Coach and train Promotion Teams (of PBoXes)
- Coach conference OCs on the ER side
- Responsible for developing ER products
- establish good relationships to university, government, international organizations, NGOs
- Establish conference partnerships
- Assisting in corporate fund raising
- Develop national learning partner (one for each issue)
- raising infrastructure for AIESEC in Thailand
- customize proposals PBoXes, Patrons, Supervisory Group, Sponsors (Conferences, Financial)
- helping to design/customise quarterly newsletter to partners (so it can be used also later
on)

Other responsibilities:

- cover up during IC, keep projects running
- facilitate sessions at august conference
- write report -> successes, failures, recommendations

housing

our street

Rina's and my room (the Kenyan empire)

Our bathroom is the coolest. It's out in the balcony! (shower and toilet are inside though :-) )

Right now we live in 2 rooms in Pui's Parent's Hotel. The rooms are quite comfortable but far outside the city, so it always takes very long to travel to the LCs and to attend meetings in the city. It'd be better for us to live closer to the city center. We are gonna look for apartments downtown Bangkok on Saturday. What we are looking for is a place to live in and use as an office at the same time. That'd be pretty cool.

PS from Rob: he says sorry he hasn't been posting for such a long time. He had some computer problems... and now he is sick in bed. :-(

Rora or Lola? Well...

2 Days ago I arrived in this unbelievably huge city, Bangkok.
Here some first impressions:

Bangkok is huge. And I mean huge. There are several different means of transportation: taxi, van and bus. van and buses work in the way, that they shout what destination they are going (or at least that's what I believe their are shouting) but they do that in Thai and I would be totally lost here if I didn't have Rob and Rina who somehow just seem to know how to communicate in Thai, or at least they manage to get us to the right places!

The weather is hot, but my problem is not so much that I'm too hot, rather too cold. All rooms are air conditioned like crazy (much worse than Swiss trains) and so I end up freezing all the time. Every once in a while I go outside for a minute to warm up again. Leaving a room feels like stepping into a 37 degrees hot swimming pool, only you can't see the water...
But I'm actually quite comfortable with the outside temperature. It's not as bad as I imagined. It's really nice.

Work seems to be different than in Switzerland. We don't have an office. So far we were working in Pui's (MCP) living room. Up to know we've been busy planning and allocation responsibilities. There will be a loooot to do as AIESEC in Thailand appears to be in a pretty bad situation...

The beds are about as soft as a piece of wood. (But you know, I like hard beds)

Yesterday was Rob's birthday, so some people took us out for a karaoke night. That was interesting, I tell you!! First of all, you're not in a open bar but in some sort of box, with a big sofa, television and karaoke computer. You rent that box per hour and you can order drinks and food that is brought to you by servants that look more like butlers. And this is the really interesting thing: to lots of the songs that they don't have the official video of, they actually show pictures of Switzerland on the screen. There was one whole song with pictures form the Stockalper Schloss in Brig, and one only Lucerne!

Rob and me singing Santana's "Smooth"

More about living in Bangkok is gonna follow soon!

Looking back and saying goodbye

About a year ago, I set foot into that beautiful apartment in Bern, known as Lagerweg (or AIESECweg or Leadership Pipeline or whatever) for the fist time. It looked a bit different than now...

A bit later I moved in and have now been living there together with Chregu for something less than a year.
Today, we had to say goodbye, as he will be leaving to go on an exchange semester soon.

I can joyfully look back on a fantastic year we spent together! A year of Turkish music, hours and hours of gossip (discussed and produced (not together)), Kebabs, singing "I would do everything for Love" in the kitchen, Spaghetti, running out of ice, crazy parties, lazy parties, Martini, learning a new language (Fricht, Strimpf, ebri, Kircha, grüüsig, Poorta), calling each other in the middle of the night even though living in the room next door, and many many more good memories!

Chregu, thank you for making my year! Not only looking back, but forward! See you again in winter.
Never forget: Lagerweg sticks together!

Flight booked

This is my flight information:
Air France AF 5105
Leaving on July 16th (Sunday) from Zurich at 16:35
(Stop in Paris)
Arrival in Bangkok on the 17th (Monday) at 15:40

I'll return on the 24th of September (and actually arrive in Switzerland on the 25th).

This is what the next days will look like (approximately :-) ):

Tuesday morning: get my visa
Tuesday afternoon: head to Wallis
Tuesday until Friday: Stay at my home canton and see family
Saturday: Welcome the girl who will rent my flat, and have a last drink with friends

About that last point: If you're here in Bern Saturday night and would like to come for a beer to say goodbye: Get in touch with me!

Selected!!!!!!!!!!

I'm going to Thailand!!!!!!!I'm going to Thailand!!!!!!!

I just received the email saying "congratulations, you have been selected for the MC CEED in Thailand. Please sent us....."

I will start on the 17th of July, (yes, that is in 10 days) and I will stay there until about mid - end of September.
There will be a lot to organise in the upcoming days...

More information will follow.

IIIIhhhh.... I'm looking forward to the MC party tonight! One more reason to celebrate!!

First night in Liberty!

Exams are over!! I'm officially on summer holidays for the next 3 months to come! Awesome!
My mind is freed from the feelings of guilt whenever not studying!!

So what is gonna happen in those months?
Well, unfortunately I can't tell you, since I don't have a clue myself either. I will see what comes my way.

This is what came my way so far:
Yesterday it was my first night with no studying. Unfortunately it is not for most of my friends, because they still have one more exam to do (which I will do in October). Sabina happened to be in the same situation and so we decided to meet in the evening. We were both exhausted from the past weeks and therefor we wanted to have a peaceful night and see a movie.
So we went to see Moolaadé, a very good piece on the cutting of women in Africa. It gives a shattering insight in all those different aspects of being a cut or uncut woman in such an African village.

"To skip Ousmane Sembene's Moolaade would be to miss an opportunity to experience the embracing, affirming, world-changing potential of humanist cinema at its finest."

- Los Angeles Times -

Even though right after the movie, we could not imagine we could possibly celebrate our end of the semester, we did! We went to have a few nice cocktails and after having some Chinese sweet and sour went to the Cuba Bar and did some crazy shaking! Whoho... it was cool! All in all, a perfect night after final exams!

The End of the Beginning

Soon, the "Einführungsstudium" will be over! Finally I can start studying what I actually want: Political Science.

Soon, but not yet... the next 4 days will be spend writing exams and studying.
Monday: Statistics
Tuesday: Economics and Economics (Yes)
Wednesday: Law
Thursday: Math

And then..... SUMMER I COME!

But for now: wish me luck! I need it. :-S