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Dancing Days Are Here Again

Yesterday was a lighter day thankfully, it wouldn’t have been cool to ramp right up into work after the day in Istanbul. The Marketing team did some work and then we went to the pool. I was tired and didn’t want to take a shower or go all the way up to the dorm to change into swim trunks, so I just laid out poolside. But then, the scheming Tiffany and her Turkish minions picked me up with my shorts and underwear on and threw me into the pool – which she facilitated by innocently asking to borrow my camera (at least she had concern for its value). So that was unfortunate, since I was in a peaceful, restful state before. Also it sucked because I was very low on some necessary clean clothes, and when we went today with a Turkish guy to figure out how to do laundry downstairs the guy who deals with it did not tell us we needed to bring him detergent – so I won’t have clean socks or pantaloons until tomorrow evening. But life goes on.

Last night was the CC Global Village. Our sound system wasn’t pumping loud, but it was still quite fun. I felt ashamed that I had not brought any foodstuffs or alcohol, but I did not know that the CC would have its own global village before the main IC one. I really got into this herb-toast that the Indians brought, and the Slovakian delegate (whom I met at ITC) had some delicious cookie-things. And of course there was plenty of different kinds of alcohol, from the stomach-dissolving Serbian vodka to the reliable Colombian rum to the translucent Turkish liquor, which I had made the mistake of taking a shot in the bodega in Valencia, and so when I saw and smelled it bad memories rushed in and I knew to stay away. The room was extremely hot though, since it was small and they can’t turn on the AC and all we could do was open the windows but we were all laughing and dancing anyway.

This morning I woke up exhausted even though I got seven hours of sleep – probably because I only got four the night before. Today was a very busy day, and we had it full from the 9 AM plenary. I wanted to take a nap all day long, but I never got to – I was falling asleep in the evening full team meeting. We got a lot done though, and things are progressing well. The marketing team is coming together pretty well in a teambuilding sense, but the first real evidence of a full-CC connection only started to be felt at the full team meeting tonight when the Indians showed the official video from IC 2005 in Agra, India. Afterwards, Turgay, the Transportation team leader, said how the whole reality of what we were going to accomplish hit him as he watched the video and he wanted to be prouder of his achievement at the end of this IC than anything he’d ever done. If ITC taught me anything, it’s that a strong, connected team is the most surefire element in producing a great result for these things – even more than high skill. I anticipate things will escalate quickly from here.

Tomorrow there’s a CC soccer game in which I am participating. Except for one Friday evening with AIESEC GT, I’ve not really played since the end of high school – those non-Americans are going to school me!

By Preston

Agent of Change, Former of Entropy, Seeker of a Stateless World.

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