it takes one to know one...so they say

even after being vp icx for a year and involved with the icx (now six) team for awhile, i guess i still didn´t really understand exactly what i needed to do for incoming trainees...no matter how much you think you´ve thought of everything, maybe you haven´t, and now as a trainee myself, i´m beginning to realize the amount of impact you can truly have as a local for a foreign person.

i´ve been here for a little over 2 weeks now, and in those 2 weeks, i´ve learned a lot and had a lot of fun :) i´ve also been a little frustrated though, and homesick as it turns out...there´s not much you can do about the latter except just get used to where you are (which has pretty much happened by now), but some of the frustrations could have been avoided had i just known a little more...after reading caitie´s blog post about her experience in morocco, i was surprised to find that she shared some of my feelings about feeling like you don´t even know the aiesecers near you. i have met some of the aiesecers here, namely the vp exchange that helped me get here, my "buddy" assigned to me (she´s really cool), the other trainee that´s here now, and 3 other aiesecers that have helped me out at some point or who i´ve gone out with for some stuff. everyone that i´ve met has been super nice, but i don´t really feel very connected to many of them...some of them i´ve met once, some a few more times than that...others, not at all. the family i live with here has helped me a with a ton of things, as well as the people i work with. the aiesecers have too, but it´s not the kind of relationship i expected it to be.

maybe i should´ve though...i don´t know about other lc´s in the country (or the world), but for those of us in atlanta, can we all think for a minute how much we´ve done for our trainees? sometimes things were beyond our control, granted, but everyday things...did we ever call them randomly just to come hang out with us and our friends? ask them to lunch? send them messages just to make sure everything was going well? helped them figure out cool places to visit in and around atlanta? help them to figure out the best way to get there?

i´ve been given some of these things here by the grace of some wonderful people that i´ve met, and some are in aiesec and some aren´t. i´d like to thank all of them, but i´d like everyone to think about these things too, because sometimes you can forget how hard it can be for someone to settle in without a little bit of help.

i intended this to be a little update on what i´ve been up to, but it´s gotten kinda long, so i´ll save it for another post...check out my facebook for pictures, they can tell more than i can in words anyway :)

beijos do salvador!