Ok so here are some more legit updates.
After leaving Kusadasi, we hoped on a bus for 10 hours..or what we thought would be 10 hours. It ended up being 12 hours and we arrived in Istanbul and Yeditepe university at 230 in the morning. 8 hours of the bus ride, I was stuck beside grease monkey Turkish guy that didn’t understand the concept of personal space! He kept pushing my leg with his or elbowing me or whatever so that my right leg was in the aisle of the bus most of the time! Finally Danny switched with me and I could sleep for about 2 hours. One of the highlights was that we took the ferry! There is a ferry from Bursa to Istanbul that’s about half an hour. The water was beautiful in the night. You could only see lights from the cities and stars.
We got to the university, checked in and just slept. The next morning started off really early. After some more Turkish breakfasts (ps that’s ALLL we eat for breakfast…TURKISH BREAKFASTS!!!! But we finally had cereal on the 24th!)
Day 0: Opening plenary was absolutely amazing. There were 103 countries that did 2 minute role calls. The three and a half hours went by really quickly. The best were the expansion countries… you feel so proud to be in aiesec when you see countries like Afghanistan, Vietnam, Bahrain etc coming into the aiesec network. We did the molson “I am Canadian” schpeel for our opening plenary thingy but we did it live. People loved it!
The next thing was global village. We were stuck on buses in the 40 degree weather for about an hour on the way to our next venue. We got to know some crazy Tanzanians. Global village was very much like Edmonton’s Heritage days – with food to try, things to buy and people telling us about their culture. So it was like heritage days with aiesec dances. The thing about aiesec dances here is that everything is from the asia pacifc growth network which means that EVERY SONG every made in ANY language is an aiesec dance. Its kind of annoying. Also, Canadians do every dance differently. I think we know a total of 4? So the Canadian delegation isn’t known for their dancing….but we are known for being loud and that has for sure stayed with us!
The next item was opening ceremony. Unfortunately the venue was ready in time so we had a bit of a wait. Imagine 650 people on a bus for an hour that was effing HOT and then we were left in the sun without any water. Now imagine, 650 people walking to the grocery store a block over and cleaning out all water, pop and any other beverage from the fridge and off the shelves. Good thing water is only 75 lira cents. *another pet peeve….water isn’t free!* The opening ceremony was very cool. There was a speaker who was an alumnus of AIESEC Turkey from the 60s. There were also the Anatolia Fire Dancers and the Twirling Dervishes. Very cool and interesting stuff.
The party that night was supposed to be a masquerade theme. We knew that Canadians were the only ones the dressed up..or so we heard. But we still assumed there would be a few others that would be dressed up! So we wore beads, scarves and huge masks and strolled into the party thinking we were hot stuff. We looked around the saw no one with any sort of costume. So they cancelled the theme night without really telling us…. Ya we are cool in Canada.
Some things ive noticed so far. A lot of people say eh, but we have had to explain our wonderful word to every sort of nationality.
HP is sweet and set up a digital café for us to work in (where I am now)
The Indian people I’m meeting here are SO confused when they hear my name and then hear I am from Canada. Its weird…all the Canadian delegates with immigrant parents are having a bit of an identity crisis when it comes to talking about societal generations or heritage in general.
Unfortunately I don’t have time to finish this update! It is now the end of day 4 but I hope to update soon. If you are an aiesecer, check out http://live.myaiesec.net/ for videos, session outputs and pictures of the conference!
After leaving Kusadasi, we hoped on a bus for 10 hours..or what we thought would be 10 hours. It ended up being 12 hours and we arrived in Istanbul and Yeditepe university at 230 in the morning. 8 hours of the bus ride, I was stuck beside grease monkey Turkish guy that didn’t understand the concept of personal space! He kept pushing my leg with his or elbowing me or whatever so that my right leg was in the aisle of the bus most of the time! Finally Danny switched with me and I could sleep for about 2 hours. One of the highlights was that we took the ferry! There is a ferry from Bursa to Istanbul that’s about half an hour. The water was beautiful in the night. You could only see lights from the cities and stars.
We got to the university, checked in and just slept. The next morning started off really early. After some more Turkish breakfasts (ps that’s ALLL we eat for breakfast…TURKISH BREAKFASTS!!!! But we finally had cereal on the 24th!)
Day 0: Opening plenary was absolutely amazing. There were 103 countries that did 2 minute role calls. The three and a half hours went by really quickly. The best were the expansion countries… you feel so proud to be in aiesec when you see countries like Afghanistan, Vietnam, Bahrain etc coming into the aiesec network. We did the molson “I am Canadian” schpeel for our opening plenary thingy but we did it live. People loved it!
The next thing was global village. We were stuck on buses in the 40 degree weather for about an hour on the way to our next venue. We got to know some crazy Tanzanians. Global village was very much like Edmonton’s Heritage days – with food to try, things to buy and people telling us about their culture. So it was like heritage days with aiesec dances. The thing about aiesec dances here is that everything is from the asia pacifc growth network which means that EVERY SONG every made in ANY language is an aiesec dance. Its kind of annoying. Also, Canadians do every dance differently. I think we know a total of 4? So the Canadian delegation isn’t known for their dancing….but we are known for being loud and that has for sure stayed with us!
The next item was opening ceremony. Unfortunately the venue was ready in time so we had a bit of a wait. Imagine 650 people on a bus for an hour that was effing HOT and then we were left in the sun without any water. Now imagine, 650 people walking to the grocery store a block over and cleaning out all water, pop and any other beverage from the fridge and off the shelves. Good thing water is only 75 lira cents. *another pet peeve….water isn’t free!* The opening ceremony was very cool. There was a speaker who was an alumnus of AIESEC Turkey from the 60s. There were also the Anatolia Fire Dancers and the Twirling Dervishes. Very cool and interesting stuff.
The party that night was supposed to be a masquerade theme. We knew that Canadians were the only ones the dressed up..or so we heard. But we still assumed there would be a few others that would be dressed up! So we wore beads, scarves and huge masks and strolled into the party thinking we were hot stuff. We looked around the saw no one with any sort of costume. So they cancelled the theme night without really telling us…. Ya we are cool in Canada.
Some things ive noticed so far. A lot of people say eh, but we have had to explain our wonderful word to every sort of nationality.
HP is sweet and set up a digital café for us to work in (where I am now)
The Indian people I’m meeting here are SO confused when they hear my name and then hear I am from Canada. Its weird…all the Canadian delegates with immigrant parents are having a bit of an identity crisis when it comes to talking about societal generations or heritage in general.
Unfortunately I don’t have time to finish this update! It is now the end of day 4 but I hope to update soon. If you are an aiesecer, check out http://live.myaiesec.net/ for videos, session outputs and pictures of the conference!
2 comment(s) to... “Day 0”
2 opinions:
lol - identity crisis - ya - it's tough to explain - in china i just gave up and when people asked if i was from korea i said yes.
great updates! ... oh, i sooo get your personal space comment! .... sounds grreat ... i will ttyl soon !
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