titel's place

Macedonian eXPerience

Many people, both from home and from Macedonia keep on asking me how I like it here and why. Well my answer is most of the time very simple, that I like it, but I can just not put my finger on the things that make me feel like that. You may ask me why is that... well the answer is that there is no one thing that makes this happen, is not necessarily the country, the people, the food, the drinks, AIESEC here, the MC, the job, but rather the whole thing that all this combined provide, my complete Macedonian eXPerience.

In order to make you understand and believe this I will take each of this and explain you why is it so special for me. To start with the country, Macedonia, witch, even being petty about it now, I did not know much about it besides that it is in the Balkan peninsula, somewhere in the south of Romania and that they have a common border with Greece so it must be a hot weather there. Well the county's landscape is very various. I've been by the Ohrid Lake, with a little of its kind in the whole Europe, I've been in very beautiful mountains, the Matka canyon, which are as close as 20 min car drive from the city of Skopje itself. Next, the people I'm in contact with are not necessarily Macedonian but actually from a big variety of countries: Canada, India, Poland, Netherlands, Norway, Estonia, Russia, Switzerland, Czech Republic and because of this big variety it happened that I see more internationals than actually Macedonians.

The food, well the food is an interesting one, in the apartment, as you probably remember, I live with an Filipino origin Canadian girl and an Indian guy. The Indian guy is quite fond of cooking his Indian food so in this period I have literally had more Indian food than European. I've also become very good with the Indian spices Ravin has brought and now I can stand almost the same amount of red chili in the food as him, hell, that food is HOT. I could say the same about the drinks, besides the regular stuff as beer and wine witch is very good and cheap here I had both Macedonians liqueurs like rakija, ouzo, mastica, etc. I had the chance to drink all kind of drinks and mixtures of drinks: turkish peper, bamboos, vodka and a lot of other that's name I don't remember from objective reasons, but not lastly a lot of over 60% pure alcohol romanian brany (tuica) which some of the people around enjoy quite a lot.

AIESEC here, what can I say, it confirms the biggest AIESEC value all over the world, Living Diversity, it's different. It is really hard to compare it with what you have at home because the realities, the way it developed, the people are all different. The MC, both the old one but especially the new one with witch's members I've interacted more are a bunch of cool people, the kind of people that you think that you would really like to work with. And the job, one of the coolest part actually is amazing. Even though we were postponed with some things I'm very satisfied with what we realised so far and I must admit it, that I haven't had so big professional satisfactions in a while now.

As a conclusion I would only want to say that you, the person who is reading this, should think about what YOU want their own international experience too look like and to start making that possible because that is what AIESEC is about. You can not fully understand and live the AIESEC spirit if you don't interact with it internationally as well.

posted by titel @ 7:08 PM