A message from ByeongSu!!

Hey guys ByeongSu couldn't blog in Ukraine, so he sent me an email and wanted me to pass it on!!!

I'm here in Southern Ukraine now, 5 hours away from the city, Dnipropetrovsk, where the LC in charge of me is located.

Last camp was one hour away from the city, but there weren't much work for me to be honest. There I met another EP from

Japan, Hiro, I think I told you about him earlier. What I did in that camp was just representing different cultures.. But had a

big language barrier because there was only one girl who spoke fluent English, and she was rarely at the camp.

Anyway, people were very nice there, not to mention I met a former Soviet Union police officer who was appreciated with an AK rifle (I don't know if it's AK-47 or not) 

for his 29 years of service and he handed me the full loaded gun to take a picture! How awesome is that?

And working with little children, although we couldn't communicate so well, was fun, they loved me as much as I loved them. And now I miss the group of children

I met at the first camp.. they were so naive and kind.

Anyway, after a few days at the city following the departure of the children at the first camp,  I came to another camp in Southern Ukraine, right along the Azolf sea 

(if you look at the Ukrainian map, it is located on the right side of the Crimea peninsula.) Before I mention about this camp, 3 days in the city was like a heaven

for me, because I had internet access, power sockets, and stores to buy things I need! And I went to a big electronics shop called City Com with a fellow @er and

Hiro, because Hiro had to buy a new camera. And there I found a new released game, The Sims 3, at $5. Which in the U.S., it'll be probably $40! So I bought it right away, but it doesn't work on my laptop..

Anyway, in this camp, my job is to teach children English. And although I am grateful that I actually have a lot of jobs to do here, because my director in the camp is so pushing and not so kind, I sometimes feel nostalgia.. It was hard for me to even find a time to write to you or to my parents because apparently, she is not willing to win any accommodation prize here.. But other than that problem, everything else is fine. Because of the remoteness and limited access to the internet, I'm experiencing so many things that I wouldn't have otherwise. I've been reading books, gaze at the stars in the night.. and I'm writing diaries to keep up with my everyday experiences. 

Not to mention that I actually learn English teaching the children, like until now, I didn't know how to say a wardrobe in English.. lol So armoire was what I called it because I learned that in my French class.. and before this camp, in the city I actually taught someone that wardrobe is called armoire in English.. This camp is full of amazements, everyday is special, yesterday was an opposite day, so people dressed clothes inside-out, and celebrated New Year and Christmas in the night. The other day I was a god of Indians of my group because I speak English.

People dance off every single night here, they have disco every night at the camp (as it was at the last camp), and during the day, because of its advantage of location, people go to the beach everyday. I got tanned a lot here!

Another thing that I have to mention is that I have to pretend I'm an American here. Because my director told the parents of the children that I am a US born American, because that's what they demand, and when children ask me many questions about America, or even ask some words in English, I have hard time to answer from time to time. I came up with names Lucy and David, for my parents name with one of the children asked me my parent's name, lol and I go by Todd here, because that was my English name back in High School. But it's fun to be an American, it has different feelings to be one.

Well other than the fact that I have a cold here, everything is going well.

I hope you to enjoy your summer, and have another day of great experience!

Oh, and I'm sorry I didn't post things on the blog, but it's difficult for me to actually blogging in this situation, so please post these emails if you can.

Thank you,

ByeongSu Jun

Greetings from China!!!

Hey everyone!

I hope everyone is having an awesome break!!!!  Sorry it has taken me so long to do this.  The Chinese government is awesome and likes to block all blogging sites.  Cool.  So Madam Grace Kenney gave me some website where I can hide my IP address, that worked really well!!! but my internet was slow.  But I was able to set up a way for me to email my blogs to the site!!!!  So now I am all set!!!

Alright so, I arrived in Hangzhou after about 3 days of hanging out in Shanghai.  I liked Shanghai and everything but I really wanted to get to Hangzhou.  I have heard its an amazing city, and I have not been disappointed yet.  Last Friday, we went out to eat with the LC ZJU here.  I had some duck.  Which was weird because the head and beak were still attached.  We (me and another guy from Miami of Ohio) started our job on Saturday.  We just had the opening ceremony for the camp, so we really didn't have to do anything.  I got up and introduced myself.  As soon as I said "Good Afternoon Everyone," about 200 kids all replied "Good afternoon Teacher Chris."  That was awesome!!!  I think we are the first Americans they have ever seen, so they were all staring at us and really shy around us at the beginning (now they are not shy at all and they love us!).  We started teaching then on Sunday.  It was halloween day at the camp, so we taught them all about Halloween in America.  They loved the ghosts and costumes.  Haha and I showed them all Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video.  The other guy actually taught his kids some of the dance.  I have 2 classes in the morning.  One is about 45 third graders, the other is about 50 fourth graders.  They are all extremely energetic.  They were calling me a monkey yesterday because of my hairy arms and legs :(.  Then as I was walking by, some of them would try to grab at the hair on my legs.  During the break, they would all crowd around me and start asking me questions.  Its really cool.  Now, they have started to ask for our autographs as well.  At first it was on pieces of paper, now we are signing shirts.  A little girl asked me today to sign her arm, which i figured i shouldn't do. 

The food here of course is amazing.  There is a little stir fry place around the corner from where we live that has the best stir fry i have ever had!!  I am slowly mastering the chopsticks but I am still pretty bad at them :(. 

I am going to some small town on July 11, and I will stay there until my TN ends in the end of January.  Its a town called Xiangshan.  It is in the Zhejiang province, so if anyone knows anything about it, please let me know!!!  I tried looking it up on Google maps, and it is barely on there.

That is all for now.

Talk to y'all soon!

Test

This is a test to see if it works

--
Chris Hornibrook
University of Illinois Urbana/Champaign
Political Science, East Asian Language and Culture
chornib2@illinois.edu

AIESEC Illinois
Vice President of Outgoing Exchange

Witam z Poznanu!

Greetings from Poznan!

My name is Paula, I have Polish roots and I'm in Poland doing my traineeship in Poznan for three months!!

Pictures will speak louder than words here so here we go. ;)

This is what the market square looks like.


It's such a beautiful city and I get to live RIGHT off of this very square. (My room and AIESECER roommate Doreen!!)


She is so sweet and got me a little cake for my birthday and makes me laugh all the time while she tries to learn Polish. (She asked for two frogs instead of apples at a store once.)

I am literally in the middle of the city. I have convenience stores, a pharmacy, dozens upon dozens of restaurants, cafes and street vendors within seconds. :D

More of the square.


I work at arvato services. It's a twenty minute walk or five minute tram ride from where I live. I am doing a Management/Educational traineeship there. They are an outsourcing services company and currently they have a few call center projects going on. They have a German speaking call center for Vodafone, an English one for United Airlines and an English one for easyJet (a low cost European airline).

I am working on the easyJet project. Within the last few weeks I've been conducting phone interviews to assess candidates' English level. I also facilitate the assessment center once a candidate has been recognized as having a sufficient English language level. My work is very Human Resources oriented because we have been recruiting a new batch of call center agents. These people will begin training on Monday!! (June 22nd) In this training they will be learning about how to use the system as well as working on voice and accent training with me and the language specialist here, Peter.

These are the people I work with!


Everyone is young and it's such a great environment to be in. We joke about Polish phrases or things our Grandma's would say and exaggerate anything and everything that's happening that day. :)

We decided to see an Opera (right down the street from where we work!)


We saw Madame Butterfly, which was sung in Italian, but had Polish subtitles appearing on a screen above the stage. I had to stretch my brain to read everything fast enough in Polish. These girls are incredibly smart! funny! and so nice and welcoming ever since I got here!


That's it for now. More to come... Polish slang, prices, and food!

Bringing back the old blog!!!

Hey friends.

I hope everyone is having a kick ass summer doing whatever!!! This may seem like a boring post because I am actually not in China yet, so I really don't have any interesting things to say. However, I did book my hostels for Shanghai for the first couple of days, and I am in contact with the 2 LCs there, so hopefully they can hang out with me!! That's about it right now, I leave on Sunday and I am super excited!!

Also, I got an email from ByeongSu. He is having an AMAZING time in Ukraine. He doesn't have a lot of internet access though. But he says the little kids love him and he is taking tons of pictures and videos of his experience!! So if you have the time, shoot him an email!

Much love.

One long thought bubble...

Kinda long, but just some thoughts I wanted to share from an application for my Alternative Spring Break trip to New Orleans (that I wrote and turned in 3 hours! Always start early on things guys...luckily I had my college entrance essay to draw off of for the first essay answer, as well as some inspiration left behind from one of our sorely missed rockstar @ers studying abroad in Quito, Ecuador :o)

1. What is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen?

While the thing I consider to be the most beautiful in this world is, not surprisingly, intangible, its essence can be captured in a snapshot. On a 6-month backpacking trip across South America, my friend Felipe took a picture of a rather large pile of animal waste. On top of the large brown pile that anyone would have initially turned away from, stood the most gorgeous blue and green butterfly imaginable. The theory/philosophy he extracted? Life can be shit sometimes, but there's always something beautiful on top of it.

More specifically, the butterfly has come to symbolize a perpetual hope I see in children and in life. An old belief of mine was that children living with certain limitations, whether it be financial, societal, physical or otherwise, must also have limited happiness. I challenged myself to see beyond the initial impressions to observe how the people lived, to seek the extraordinary in the ordinary, to discover the majestic in the prosaic.

Children create joy out of what we may see as nothing, and I felt compelled to take something out of my humbling experiences with them. The commonality among kids is visible in their eyes. Visualizations emerge of children running around and chickens to fly bright orange kites in the slums of Morocco, of dozens of children playing soccer with a flat empty water bottle in the favela slums of Brazil, of children washing clothes and bathing in the Nile, of children making games of rope and cardboard as they run around our legs at night in India. Indeed, the pure, innocent nature of these children is not one of defeat nor frustration. The spirit of these kids and their fortitude often falls shadow to the limitations we assign them. The true miracle lies beyond their confines, that they still find opportunities to laugh and play as children despite the extent of their circumstance.

What they understand about life many of us might never, as they seem to focus on things many of us have forgotten. With limited privileges, some children must look to something else, something they already have to be grateful for. Everything is precious, and it is indeed the small things that keep them going. Limitations are not perceived by those living with them, but rather by the onlooker. Where one might see mud villages, a world built of dust, or a lifetime confined to a wheelchair, the kids see just another opportunity to seek laughter or get to know the person helping them.

After witnessing gut-wrenching poverty, stepping onto planes within the days after both successful and unsuccessful acts of terrorism and sometimes heading to those exact places, hearing from many friends from places I just traveled to or almost went to that were bombed, visiting the ground zero of 9/11, Hiroshima, and SARS in Hong Kong, it's easy to lose yourself in the emotions of fear and confusion. Yet I can now say that no matter what the conditions are, no how much life may to be shit, rest assured, there is a butterfly. There is always something beautiful to hope and strive for. It is this conviction in the eyes and laughter of the children that inspires me, a concept I continue to perceive as the most beautiful thing I will always see.

The legendary Mt. Everest provided a fitting backdrop for the day I saw beyond the mountainous wonder to observe how the people lived...and found such inspiration in one adorable Tibetan girl. (Me, my aunt, the local girl who lives nearby, my mom, and my sister....our stop at Mt. Everest Base Camp on our Tibet trip, summer 2004).

2. Which book or song do you most wish you'd written?

I can still recall the lazy Sunday morning during my freshman spring break when I awoke to my dad's stereo across the hall peacefully blasting, I Hope You Dance, by Lee Ann Womack. As I listened to the song I recalled from years past, I did something I hadn't done in a long time I listened to each word. And when you get the chance to sit it out or dance...I hope you daaance. The song speaks of opportunities, of taking risks and making mistakes, never taking anything for granted, of holding onto your sense of wonder, of feeling small next to the ocean, of faith and loving, of never looking back on your years and wondering what happened...of dancing.

That particular morning had proceeded the hardest 24 hours of my life. Having just experienced two wakes, two funerals, and two burials of my high school friends who had not yet turned 20, that Sunday morning was the first I awoke no longer resisting the painful reality. What happened in the car accident many days prior was something none of us could reverse. It jolts you to your core when you realize that something so abrupt could happen without any warning. I seek comfort in the fact that two girls I knew for so many years fully lived out their lives, that they would always be a testament of how to dance through life. Their crazy laughs and beaming smiles will always remain in the forefront of my memory of them, and provided an opportunity from which to extract some valuable life lessons and reflect.

Many of my major decisions I make by asking myself if I would honestly regret not following a certain path. In retrospect, there are not many decisions I can say I regret making. My life has not in the least been perfect, but I am confident that whatever I did or will do, I have or will put my full self into it. As my college adviser told me a few days ago while I wrestled with a decision, that you can never go wrong if you follow your passion. Another counselor told me that no matter what path I decide for myself, that I should make it the same way I do with everything. Both saw after years of advising that if I am not impassioned about what I am doing or am void of the opportunity to build genuine, compassionate relationships, it's not something I am going to enjoy. I would like to perceive that as part of me who dances at each opportunity I seek.

Hope has always been my favorite word, as has faith. When I get the chance to sit it out or dance, I always dance. I take risks. I am constantly amazed in awe. I continue to feel small in the presence of so many things, like something as great and as vast as the ocean. I get my fill to eat, but always keep a hunger. There is always another door (not just a window) when one door closes. I don't think there is anything that can leave me bitter. I don't wait through my life, I live it. Every single word Lee Ann Womack sings rings true for how I want to live my life and how I think life should be. This is the reason why I can relate so much to this song, as my dad reintroduced it at a time I greatly needed it. It's is the reason I wish I wrote it, to be able to provide that inspiration and self reflection on life for someone else.


...more of a reflection on this and its connection to AIESEC very, very soon next chance I get to sit down and write it out....

hey guys!

i'm uganda..and it's pretty hot.

My Canadian friend is waiting outside so we can go to this restaurant and pay the bill from when we ate there two days ago..

-nisha