eXchange… what is that?

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Few days ago I was asked to write few words about my experience, about what a traineeship is about.

The presentation was for AIESEC Belo Horizonte, so I got a free moment and I started thinking about this, out loud.
“Few words”… how can you use few words to describe what this traineeship was, actually still is for me.  It means changing all of your life at once, leaving everything you know behind and starting over. It’s taking a journey of self discovery that will open your mind and develop your personal and professional abilities in a truly unique way. It’s having to put up with yourself 24 hours a day… And if you know me, you already know that’s not an easy task.

It was an amazing experience for me, nothing I could have imagined.

Even though I have been here for more than 5 months sometimes it feels like I only arrived here yesterday. A complete new world, that still manages to surprise me. Sometimes so different than everything I’ve seen before, and sometimes so similar to what I’ve known all of my life.

I’ve made many friends, met so many people, all crazy of course J.  Kidding, because here what I call “crazy” are people being alive, more alive than I’ve seen in any other place, just doing what they feel, saying what they want to say, dancing, drinking, singing screaming, anything that passes through their mind, anything they want to do they just do it. So you can imagine how I fit in this background, me the sarcastic, ironic, not emotional, not impressionable, far too self aware, the irrecoverable cynical person.
They expect me to dance, to sing, to do roll calls even when I’m sort of sober…

I think this is what I like and admire most about the people I’ve met here, the ability they have to just be themselves and act according to what they want, feel, desire.
This is I think the biggest difference between me and “the world”, but I do try to adapt, even though there are so many “bricks in he wall”.

It’s strange to see how on occasions life still manages to surprise you, well not to much of course, because in the end our life is what we make of it, and it’s directly influenced by our actions, our thoughts, our own self way of being and of interacting with the world around.

Damn, I can’t believe that 5 months, more than 5 months have already passed like in a blink of an eye.
There are moments this doesn’t even seem real, I can just wake up in my room back home like it was just a dream, but sometimes it feels more real than anything I’ve ever experienced.

It’s a powerful experience but not an easy one, the beginning especially was so hard… it made me question my decisions, my actions, my beliefs. I did many sacrifices, leaving my job, my friends, my family, my soft bed, a language I can speak, a world I understand to go at the end of the world, and all of this in the abstract name of development.
And keeping a positive attitude takes too much energy.
But I regret nothing of it, because as harder as it gets as much you learn from it, without challenges things will be far too boring, all you can do is get up, dust off, and keep going.

But I have met here people that truly made a difference, people who became a part of my life here and are not going to make it so easy for me to live this place.
It’s strange how it grows on you, how it starts to be part of you.
This is the place where my beer glass never goes empty, how can you reintegrate from this  ? :))

It was, it still is a bumpy ride, a roller coaster of events, emotions, differences that still manage to arise, and still surprise you, but it’s all part of the experience.

Still me, still there,