it's the FINAL COUNTDOWN

RoKS is here.


Bring it on.

talk about a recognition structure.

I should start a love affair with AIESEC Madison. This is reason number 73. Talk about recognition structure and enjoying participation. Zaps to the badgers from the north.


PS. I have a test in less than three hours. Study? No. AIESEC work? yes. nomadlife-ing? abso-fucking-lutely.

to me You are perfect, and my wasted heart will love you, until you look like this

When it comes to relationships - I am a mess.

More than a mess - pathetic. I am indecisive, anxious, and far from confident. And it is not because I don't know who or what I want, just a debilitating fear of pursuing it. Why? For failure? Rejection? Perhaps. But also for the fear that I will, if successful in my pursuit, mess things up more than they already are. How fucked up is that? Fear of commitment, fear of failure, fear of success. In my own little screwed up world, I just can't win.

And that, by god, is a depressing statement. For fear of sounding like Carrie Bradshaw (I'll refrain from using the statement "I couldn't help but wonder")- why is it at this point in my life, when I have so many good things working for me - school, AIESEC, Egypt - that all I can focus on is the fact that I am missing out on this aspect of life. It is not for lack of wanting - just for lack of, I don't know, balls I guess. I know what I want, just not how to get it.

Just going to continue to get the shit kicked out of me by love, I guess.

I bet Carmen Sandiego never had to deal with this...

My heart goes out to my beloved Shanky. The boy challenged himself to travel halfway around the world, Live the Dream, and then experiences something monstrous - a brutal attack. I am simultaneously worried and proud of him - half of my heart wants him home, safe, but the other half wants him to continue living. And I know that these monstrosities are not limited to Kenya, they happen in Atlanta, too.
I experienced something similar (although much milder and less scary I'm sure), and more than anything I wanted to come home. I remember crying, in pain, in an Indian hospital torn between home and continuing the challenge. If I had gone home, I would have been a different person. I would be a different person. So much of that challenge shaped the direction of the rest of my experience (and little did I know, a great deal more of my life as I spent several weeks later in the year in the hospital) - if I had left early, there would have been so much that I would have not known. As terrible as it was, it shaped something spectacular for me.
Knowing the extent of the attack, I was also torn on another decision - whether or not to tell my parents. I crave comforting about the issue - god knows how worried I am about Sean. But on the other side of the coin - would my parents comfort be worth their ultimate worry about my safety in the year to come? Would continue to support my decision to spend the next chapter of my life in what they have labeled a "dangerous place"? Of course, comparing Cairo to Nairobi is a little like comparing tequila and rum - both are exciting, potentially risky, and delicious - just differently. But would they see that? I have the feeling that they would lump together all the places they didn't understand and categorize them under "Places we will not let our daughter go." Their understanding and support in my decision to face that challenge are nearly as important to me as the experience itself, and I know that without them this challenge would be about impossible. I guess it is hard for them to relate, my cravings for international experiences are a little, for lack of a better and less cheesy term, foreign to them. They still expect me to "wise up" one day and put on an engineer's hat, to chicken out, marry, and have those babies that my wide hips were made for, and are still wary of my passion and desire for all things Middle Eastern, challenging, and international. I think that they are proud in some ways, but find it difficult to explain why their daughter is on the other side of the world, why she spends so much time in a student organization they have never heard of, or what the hell her path through life spends so little time on native soil. My new friend faces the same issues convincing her parentals to experience the greatness of the traineeship rocketship. But again, it all comes back to the Dream. And if it comes down to living it or letting it pass by, you better be sure as hell that I am going to be living and breathing all I can of it.

Goodbye Poppa-Bear

Another one lives the Dream. Kazakhstan, you better love him as much as I do.
This incredible man has been the backbone of my AIESEC for the past year and a half - he has pushed and inspired and motivated me to want to be that for someone else.
Let's hope that I can live up to the challenge.

I want to love you madly...

Alone. Again. Happy Valentine's Day.

We suffer everyday, what is it for
These crimes of illusion, are fooling us all
And now I am weary and I feel like I do

Its only you, who can tell me apart
And its only you, who can turn my wooden heart

The size of our fight, its just a dream
Weve crushed everything I can see, in this morning selfishly
How weve failed and I feel like I do

Its only you, who can tell me apart
And its only you, who can turn my wooden heart

Now that weve chosen to take all we can
This shade of autumn, a stale bitter end
Years of frustration lay down side by side

And its only you, who can tell me apart
And its only you, who can turn my wooden heart

Its only you, who can tell me apart
And its only you, who can turn my wooden heart
- - - - - Only You, Portishead

Daily Paradigm Shift

I respect, more than anything, the willingness of others to change. I revere individuals that embrace this phenomenon, the people that leap into change head first, not solely accepting changes that happen upon them, but their entire ambition is to constantly change and grow while supporting, pushing, encourage others to experience the same impact.
From reading about a revolution in perspective, to discussions with my role models about their direction in life, from gentle pushes from across the ocean to examine how to improve myself to improve others, to a hero of mine sincerely forcing me to look into the direction of my own - it constantly pushes me to change myself, my perceptions, and to focus my direction. To discover my purpose.
I am consistently impressed that AIESEC has placed these incredible people in my life. That their experiences in this organization has shaped them in away that they have been able to shape me, that their changes in perception of individuals, of cultures, of growth and the globe have so significantly changed my own. That taking on these challenges, whether it is a traineeship, an international conference, or leading other such amazing individuals, do not accept that they have overcome these challenges, but are constantly looking for new ones.
It is amazing that the slightness of one action impacts so many others. That missing a bus my freshman year allowed me to read a flyer advertising AIESEC, that one night of hunger turned into a dinner that cemented my personal connection to some other AIESECers that have been some of my closest friends, that one delayed plane caused me to have some of the most constructive and inspiring conversations of my life. That allowing myself to be dragged to one information session a year and a half ago could give me so many of the opportunities that AIESEC has.
Preston told me this, in a dead-tired, half-aware state on the plane somewhere over the Appalachian Mountains - there is a reason that change is in the word exchange. Because exchange may be the medium of AIESEC, but change is what we do.

the Poetry of Physics

On this late afternoon, in these few moments while the sun is nestled in a snowy hollow of the Alps, a person could sit beside the lake and contemplate the texture of time. Hypothetically, time might be smooth or rough, prickly or silky, hard or soft. But in this world, the texture of time happens to be sticky. Portions of towns become stuck in some moment in history and do not get out. So, too, individual people become stuck in some point of their lives and do not get free.

Einstein's Dreams, Alan Lightman

Time, like so many other things, is difficult to describe. This book is an interpretation of that definition - thirty different accounts of the structure of time. It's beautiful, ephemeral, ethereal, and moving.

start spreading the news, I'm leaving today...

Leaving for New York this afternoon with my fearless leader to step into a whole new fray - Subgroup.

I am slightly mixed about this trip - I am excited to be more involved on a national level (which I have not been able to do between being abroad, being sick, and becoming an NFT) and be integral (or hopefully so) in the direction of this organization. On the other and less pretty hand, there are some aspects of Subgroup that I find less than tasty - a great deal of transparency issues, favoritism, and interaction/dependency on external consultants (also issues that I have raised with national staff) make me wary of not only the efficacy of this group, but also its objectives.
I plan on entering the meetings this weekend with an open mind to the work that Subgroup does and the people involved with it, but also to constantly remind myself (and hopefully those that I will be working with) that everything we do in this organization, all the time, effort, blood, sweat, tears, and other bodily fluids - it is always to make the mission more attainable, the experience of the general member more meaningful, and to create a bigger impact in our communities, in AIESEC, and around the world. So much of the loss of focus on that mission and goal, or what I perceive of it anyways, is the loss of the bigger picture. We are part of something greater, and I think AIESECers in the US, particularly ones that have dedicated a considerable amount of time to the organization (even more so the ones that dedicate that part of their lives without experiencing the glory of the traineeship rocketship), forget that. So much of this organization depends on the belief that life is more than the sum of its parts, kiddo. AIESEC is the same.

it's february...already.

1. so excited about RoKS. in a month. This genius (also available here) told me to host an LDS - this as close as I can get at the moment, being the Conference Coordinator (in charge of content development and the FACI-TEAM. yes, they do deserve all caps.) - Any suggestions are most welcome, by the way.

2. i just finished my application to American University in Cairo's Intensive Language Institute - a stint this summer that will hopefully be an introduction to the full year. More hopefully as a Boren Scholar/Fellow. Most hopefully living The Dream for a full calendar year.

3. I'm no lemming. I'll find my own cliffs to leap off of, thank you very much. Lemmings, however, somebody should bring back. Especially to my computer. (later searching has discovered it here...thanks Firdaus)

4. I'm getting my life together. finally. And it is about fucking time.

5. AIESEC in Madison is incredible. Read their conversations about growth, community, organizational culture, and AIESEC...seriously. I spent most of my past week trying to keep up - exactly the way I pictured nomadlife working when I signed on nearly a year ago.

6. I am least sure what I want in my life this minute. But the most sure of where I am going with it.

7. I am craving, more than anything right now, a Spotted Cow and an amazing conversation around my hookah. Any takers?