time is flying...toooo fast!

May is as good as over. Not even one month left until I'll leave for Egypt. Thinking about it makes my pulse race. I'm looking forward, generally, but more concretely - at the moment - it rather makes me feel uneasy. Because: I have (not even) 4 more weeks left. In that time i need to
- prepare for 3 exams (one of them double size, so 4 actually)
- write 2 papers
- give 1 presentations
- make all the preparations to leave

I'm starting to have nightmares. It's so much to do. I don't know how to cope.

In love with the mountains

This is what I did the past few days. No need to describe. Let the pictures speak.

Kick Off differently

For the 4th time, I attended our Swiss national conference in Fiesch. It was different this time. Good in it's own way. But strange in another way that what I expected was not to be that way at all, on the other hand, new aspects came up that made it a special conference for me after all.

One element that I was very much missing in this conference was the emotional - motivational part. Usually in the end of conferences I feel so deeply touched, I feel motivated and I can see myself and my goals in a much clearer way. Kick Off one year ago was one of these conferences, that gave me the biggest motivation boost to pursue my goals in live (in and outside of AIESEC) ever. Markus Olowsky's speech was one of the most inspiring things I've heard in my live. This Kick Off was somewhat... sterile. That is really the word that describes it best in my point of view.

But, as mentioned above, the conference also turned out to bring out elements that I did not expect like this.
I barely got to know anyone new. Sad - if looked at just like that, very cool - when I think of how much I connected with people I already know on a whole different level. I can really say that I spend most of the conference talking to my friends. But doing just exactly that was so good and I needed it so much. I suddenly started seeing some of them from a whole new perspective and some that were "colleagues" to me before, are friends to me know, I'm sure. One of the most powerful moments in this conference was reading my sugar cubes at home. (sugar cubes are little notes that you write to someone during the conference and you put them in the envelope of the person. You read them once you're back home). I then suddenly realised what cool people I have around me and how much I'm going to miss them next year.

And then, of course, my personal highlight of the conference was Awards Night. The local committee of Bern won the development award. Going on stage in that moment, and giving the speech was a simply overwhelming moment. After this one year of putting in so many hours and hours of hard work, of struggling, of giving so much energy in making this LC work, it was finally recognised and rewarded. Not only by this award, but already by being the biggest delegation and by having the coolest successors on earth. :))) It feels so good. Really. So good.


2 generations of leaders of LC Bern, right after we received the award. Simon, Yavor, Francois, Me, Kathrin, Oli and Paul.

one year of blogging

On Sunday was my blogs birthday :) So I thought, why not do one of these nice procrastination activities and create some sort of "blog-statistics"? So for all of you interested, here come some hard facts:

In this one year of blogging, I had 7450 visitors, which makes an average of 20.4 hits a day and 620 per month.
I wrote 92 posts, therefore an average of 7.7 post per month and 1.8 per week.
I received 217 comments, making an average of 2.4 comments per post.

It was funny seeing that the highest number of comments I received on the most random and unimportant posts :D

(considering the randomness of this post, I should get at least 20 comments here... :-P )

Introducing The Team

This is the team I will be working with from July 1st on. I had the cool opportunity to meet all of them last week at MIS (Misr Intellectual Seminar) in Egypt and I can really only say, that I'm so much looking forward to work together with them.

From left to right:

Hossam - Vice President for Projects
Bahaa - Vice President for Exchange
Annika - President
Me - Vice President for Talent Management
Abdo - Vice President for External Relations
Ash - Vice President for Information Systems

I booked my flight yesterday, for the 28th of June in the morning with Swiss (first time in my live flying Swiss!). 48 days left here in Switzerland. How strange.

Back from Egypt

It's Saturday night, 11:36 pm. At this exact time, one week back, I was standing around in some random village near Cairo, with people that I met in that week and who made it a very special week to me, waiting next to a bus, standing around, dancing around, taking a million pictures, wondering somehow if I will still be able to catch that flight back, eating fuol ua ta'myya and mainly waiting for the motor of the bus to start working again.

Strange thinking of it now. It's only one week back. It feels as if it would be much longer.

I've never experienced true reverse culture shock before. I have now visited about 2o countries, and I have never had it. I did, now. My stay in Egypt was only one week, not even that, more like 6 days. But they have been good 6 days. I couldn't say that the conference was the most impactful conference I have ever attended - though it was good and I enjoyed it a lot, nor have I seen the most impressive sights or anything that is measurable in this way. But these 6 days make it to one of my coolest experiences! 6 days of intensive stereotype breaking, 6 days of diving into a whole new world, 6 days of turning myself into a sponge, trying to absorb as much as possible, 6 days of learning many useful Arabic words and forgetting them within 30 seconds, 6 days of sheesha.
Egypt has a good mood. That is what caught me most, I guess. The natural and very kind way of treating each other. I came back to Switzerland and instantly missed Egypt, or what I have so far experienced of it.

Should I go on about describing how Egypt is? Hmmm... I don't think it would quite come across in words. Here is a better plan: take out your agenda and start thinking when you will come down to see it, too!! :-)

What a random post. I hope I will manage to make another more structured one, soon. sorry.