Friends

Today I received a “ C U soon” email email from Legka! I regret that I couldn’t answer her before she left, but anyways I started to write. By the time I finished tears were running down my cheeks, but I was smiling. Maybe it’s what is called tears of happiness.
I’m happy and sad at the same time – so many people whom I met last year or even longer time ago are now starting (or started recently) new stage of their lifes, moving to other places, cities and countries, continuing their AIESEC career, starting internships, studying, adjusting to new environments, meeting new people, establishing new friendships.
Verily, you can never imagine where life will send you and your friends and how will it change their lifes.
I remembered myself about all my lovely friends that are moving now and now I have a nice picture of them and places they go:)

My essence??!! confused!

As you most probably know, right now I'm at IC. Everything goes cool so far, apart from my "identity crisis" connected to a simple question " where are you from?". Subconciously I'm answering that I'm from Ukraine, then realizing that most probably I have to say Italy and then get confused:) but anyways this post is not about it but about few things I've discovered(or just reminded myself about) about myself.

There were actually 2 "events" that exposed me to these kind of thoughts. First, is our chats with Federica that we have from time to time. 2 things I got to know about myself from her is that I'm a "chickie" cold girl. That actually made me think a lot as I've never considered myself to be chickie, not at all. Cold also no, maybe calm, but not cold.

The other thing is the Belbin test that we were doing today during DLD - I can remember at least 2 times I was doing it before. Today not so many things were changed - I definitely scored the most in "action oriented" types, in "Implementer" and "Shaper" particularly. That was not new. What was actually new is that I've noticed that I got scores below zero in "people oriented" types. Which made me quite disappointed - I don't know if it means that I'm totaly not a good person to work and communicate with...

Additionally to that I started to think about other characteristics of me that I've heard from other people, feedbacks that I've received - well organized, too structured, not sharing dreams and emotions.

So I the image of me that came to my mind was quite strange. Then the evening came and I talked to an old friend of mine, who told that it's not possible to catch me and talk during IC because I'm always busy with meetings, working groups and other chats.
Then night came and I came back after party to read email and accidentally found my favourite quote website, so I decided to have a look at "My quotes". What I've noticied there is that there only 3 of them related to love and relationship and other relate more to achievments, accomplishments, excellence and changes.

All of that created some sort of complications with conclusions:

1. I know what kind of value can I bring to work I'm doing (professionally). Without being shy I can say that I'm a good achiever. And that makes me confident of my career and my future.

2. But does that all mean that I'm not so good in intrapersonal relations and it's really very difficult to communicate with me? I didn't really find answer for this question, furthermore, I haven't come up with any kind of solution on how to improve that. Or is it something of my core, my essence that I don't realize? In fact it seems to me that I can be a good friend, and a good person to talk to and in general not so cold, structured and chickie. what is also funny is that it seems that being chickie and structured and cold totally contradicts to each other...

Should I use Johari window again or are there any better tools to evaluate yourself and see how otehrs see u?

In any way, I'm confused.. I'd be glad I guess to read some of your thoughts here?
I wonder if a person can realize himself fully in his life? or whether the life is continious self - discovery?

Would the life be fun if you could know everything about yourself and tell it to others? Would be live there in a perfect world of in a world of manipulators?

and the last question - why people are not as easy as 1,2,3?:) maybe our life wouldn't be so funny then?:)

I'm kind of feeling the need to have a meaningful conversation about that issue, maybe somebody knows the answer. I wonder who could that be...

P.S. I don't know why I reminded myself of Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevskiy and his Raskolnikov in "Crime and punishment". Maybe I should read it again since this is the book which I from time to time refer to in my discoveries:)

Czech Republic

This is the first time for last 2 or 3 years when I officially have holidays:) It feels great to know that you have 10 days to rest, do nothing (or do something important but not connected to my work). So first thing I want to tell is that I FEEL GREAT:) Today in Sunday and I still have 4 days of holidays ahead, but now it's time to tell about first week that I spent in Czech.Rep with my parents!
I was looking for it a lot for this trip since I haven't seen my parents for a 1,5 already, well, I know that the more is to come later. So I was counting days till 4th of August:)

I had my plane quite early, at 9.35 which means I had to leave Via Andora at 6 am. Everything went fine in the begining - taxi arrived on time, I got to Malpensa bus station safely, got into the bus, but then adventures started:)
Bus arrived to Malpensa airport (biggest out of 3 airports in Milan) and people started to get off. So did I. I entered building of the airport and started to look for my check in desk, but I couldn't find it. Then I found a note that I'm in Terminal 2 and my flight is from Terminal 1. It wasn't mentioned anyhow in my ticket. I had no idea where to look for Terminal 1, I decided to walkt there but then I realized I got is that it's quite far from the one I was in. I was about to take a taxi, but then I saw bus going there. Driver was a nice old man and he agreed to take me there for free. Indeed it was quite far from T2 - about 10 mins by bus.
I saw a lot of airports in my life, but I've never seen such mess as I saw in Malpensa - there were thousands of people, huge lines for check in desks(check in desks were also quite strange - all operated by Alitalia (have got no idea why), with one huge line for 5 check ins. I regret that I don't have a picture, but I was in the line with I guess more then 300-400 people and I spent 65 mins in line for check in. I was almost sure that I'm going to miss my flight. During check in I cross checked whether everything is correct and I have my trip Milan-Prague, Prague-Brno, my luggage was sent to Brno, so everything seemed to be quite ok. In plane I met a guy from US and we had very nice conversation. So even that flight was delayed for 1 hour I wasn't angy with that.
Flight was good as well, it was first time I saw plane passing trough soo many clouds - it felt like dashing trough snow mountains, shaking a lot, but very nice! I don't know why I never noticed it during my previous flights:)
When I arrived to Prague I started to look for my second flight but I couldn't find it in schedule, so I started to look for help. It took me 20 mins to get info that in fact I have not a flight but a bus to Brno, and they made a mistake in Malpensa sending my luggage to Brno. I spent terrible hour trying to get my luggage and I must say that I succeded:) 30 mins more changing Terminals, checking in for bus, 2,5 hours trip and I was in Brno:)
On my way in bus I was thinking about this strange habit to have challenges during all my travels:)dunno why it happens. But in the end, I have soooo many funny stories to tell about my travels:)
Time in Czech needs additional post maybe. I visited almost all big cities in CZ - Brno, Ostrava, Olomouc, Prague:) We stayed at our place in Roznov pod Radhostem - amazing small (22,000 people) town with beautiful nature, amazing view from my window at home and the oldest in Central Europe museum in open air. Rožnov is a sort of miniature Wallachia, at least as far as it concerns the history of its settlement:)
So about the museum, it's called Valasske Museum v Prirode, it includes 3 big parts: Little wooden town, The water mill valley and the Wallachian village. The Little Wooden Town is the oldest part of the museum. The setting roughly imitates the Rožnov square which boasted a number of local burghers’ timbered houses up to the second half of the nineteenth century. The Water Mill Valley is an area composed of technical buildings that have been located on the piece of land around the original millrace since 1982 – the Water Mill, the Woollen Mill for making cloth out of the wool yarn, the Saw Mill for sawing planks, the Oil Crusher and the Hammer Mill. The Wallachian Village occupies the largest area of the museum which consists of a lot of dwelling-houses and farmhouses that are showing life of a lot of generations of Moravian people.
I wrote before maybe that I get this feeling of touching history in all museums, but in this one especially since you have the chance to see real houses, real way of life of people. By the way, the funniest thing I've noticed is the fact that Czechs were really short and small - beds in houses were very small (как диван-малютка):) Even I with being quite small would seem to be giant for that people:)
I didn't spend a lot of time in other cities so I don't have a lot of stories to tell. Maybe only about Olomouc. A lot of memories connected to this city - I wanted to enter Uni there, I was there for my first Presidents meeting during my CEED in CZ, I got lost thousands of times there! Beautiful city:)
One of the most important places I've visited this time was famous place of battle between Russian and Frech troops in 1805 - Austerliz. Honestly saying, I never knew that this famous place of battle of three Emperors is in CZ. In fact it's:) Since CZ territory was part of Austriab empire in that times. Now the place is called Slavkov and there is a momument called Mohyla miru and museum of famous Austerliz battle with multimedia exposition!

There are cities that makes you feel like staying there, Prague is one of such cities for me:)
I've been there 3 times already but never with good guide to get to know everything about the place. So I promised myself to come back next time for a real sightseeing! I wonder only when will it happen:)
Yesterday night I came back to Milan, of course with some challenges...:) But not very difficult - it's only about my luggage which was 34 kgs (shopping is not easy for me, you know:)) and since I didn't know how to call taxi and I didn't want to bother anyone on holidays I had to take metro.. On my way from Centrale to QT8(station near my home) I was cursing myself for being so shopoholic and so spoiled by taking taxis and using help of males with bags:) But nevertheless I arrived successfully to Via Andora, feeling extermly proud of being able to manage everything:)
Now I'm having completely lazy day, reading emails, unpacking and washing.. and planning the rest 3 days of my holidays... More will come soon!

Animal stories 2007-08

Today is a crazy day, definitely...:) It all started with the news about Matteo and by evening I found out that I have to share more stories about my team! Let's call it "Animal stories"...

Apparently, we found out that all members in our team have sisters and brothers from world of wild nature (not always wild in fact to be honest):)

Definitely all of you (especially VPXs 06-07) think that you know what kind of animal am I! But I have to disappoint you - I changed my image totally and now I'm (sorry, Lara, I know it'll hurt you:) what Italians call piccolo criceto (small hamster). It appeared after our nice adventure with furetto (polecat, хорек) that visited us one day! I'm too small and too nice to be furetto:) and this is the way how hamster assosiation was born:)you have the unique chance to compare:)

The next one would be our lovely TM girl Anabella or Annare how we call her! You can never imagine who this small blond nice girl can be...But the truth is that somewhere deep in the soul she is white (I'm not sure they are existing) monkey! See yourself...

Fedorka (no, sorry, Federica Rosi) apparently came our to be hyena! Till I went through couple of pictures while I was trying to find suitable for blog I found out that you can find some similarities:). But it's still unclear for me how this decision was taken about nominating Federica to be such a nice wild animal!

Dany is very nice, very soft and positive! Just not yet pink enough to be like his animal brother pig. We wind more connections with pork (but in Italy it has rather negative meaning, not connected to Dany).

The last but not the least of our lovely MCP. It took us quite some time to find out his essense:) The process was quite hard since he used to be grande furetto (big polecat), he himself wanted to be a bear once. But after long and tough discussion we found out his animal brother - skunk (скунс)

And I'm grateful to my team for these nice stories that we have together and experience that we pass trough:)

I'll be missing you during holidays, my lovely animal friends:)

My MCP Matteo Orsi:)

Dear members of AIESEC in Italy and all others who are reading my blog. Morning in MC Italian MC office started today with shocking news about our MCP....But it's better to know the truth later then never....:))))
For those who still doesn't know, follow the link to see and read info about Matteo! But we love him anyway:))
Follow the link to find out more information
http://www.matteo.orsi.esgay.com/
P.S. If you can't get in touch with me during 1 week, it means that Matteo killed me... :D))))))

Вниз или вперед?

Прочла сегодня. Очень понравилось, но видно я что-то пропустила в школе:)
Это старая история. Ее рассказывают детям еще в школе, если не раньше. Но взрослея, мы часто забываем об этом.
Чтобы человек мог идти или бежать вперед, он должен все время падать. Делая шаг, человек наклоняется и нарушает равновесие, и только следующий шаг другой ногой спасает от падения. И так во всем: движение вперед сопряжено с риском и потерей равновесия.