Not a normal day…

It was February 15th and all started at 6:00 am, while most of people were “waking up”, I was getting ready for a Not normal day… a day when dreams, work and fun merged together to be a unforgettable experience.

I arrived to Malpensa airport, and got a plane to a mysterious and really interesting destination, Egypt, as somebody said, “…all of us, has on mind the name of Egypt, the pyramids, the Nile, and millenary culture from when we were children…” and it is true, in my case, I was landing to a country full of this magic that can let us live more about a new culture, but it was not a simple tourism trip, I was proud to attend the AIESEC “International President’s Meeting – 2007” as a part of the PwC Delegation, composed of Karel, Mengting, the Global Coordinator, and Veronica from PwC Italy.

The first part of PwC involvement is AIESEC Symposium. It is an event to talk about “how to activate and develop the Middle Eastern Talent”.

The Symposium and the Partner Dinner were held on the “Intercontinental City-stars”, one of the most luxurious five stars hotels in Cairo. It was a pleasure to get to know Tarek Mansour, TSP from PwC in Egypt and Andrew Marritt from UBS Switzerland, Patricia from The Netherlands, and so many people from the Middle East region, who from now on, are part of the Middle East and North Africa Growth Network “MENA-GN”. It was an amazing opportunity to interact with them and get to know the reality on this region, full of history, cultural heritage as well as challenges to be solved.

On Friday morning, as Egypt is a Muslim country, you can hear their prays all the day, since their weekend starts on Friday, so, weekend went really nice, walking around Cairo streets, mosques, markets and delicious food! We were living the culture!

The Opening was gorgeous, held on a Palace built on 1864. Typical dances - the AIDA was also part of it. All of them perfectly performed with most of the Old Egyptian musical instruments. It was just amazing to be there!

Global village, with delegations from more than 95 countries, was full of color, sweets and sweeties from every part of the AIESEC World as well as the PwC Delegation.

The conference, hosted in the Pamala resort hotel off the Red Sea, was completely astonishing - the opening, the roll calls, all came to my mind like if it was yesterday and I just joined and lived the conference like a normal delegate.

The AIESEC International Team 0708, was elected at IPM, the speeches, the special events discussing about interesting topics, world issues, showing us the beautiful minds of who were applying to President of AIESEC International.

Mengting, introduced and presented the PwC Scholarship to the global plenary. We were having country Meetings during lunches and dinners, enjoying sometimes the “Shisha” (also known as Narghila). Also, together with Mengting, Marcelo (from UBS), I got some time to get to Giza, the pyramids are just incredible, to have this kind of archeological heritage.

We accomplished all the main objectives and also, we had a lot of FUN, refreshing previous experiences on IPM, joining the Roll Calls, regional parties (we missed the AP Party, “Global Legislation” rules!), and like this, 10 days of conference, enjoying AIESEC Culture, all of them were not a normal day, unforgettable experience in Egypt!