Note To (Your)Self

Disclaimer: Songza's playlists have led me into a quasi-reflectional mood. Break out the Sigur Ros before reading this post.


"It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are." - ee cummings.

The Basics.
Travelling, especially alone, forces you to learn a lot of things about yourself, and it forces you to learn pretty quickly. 

In that sense, it is a lot like everything else you do in life. 

The Details.
I don't mean to say that travelling is like every other aspect of life. Nothing could be further from what I believe. What I'm actually saying is more along the lines of: everything you do in life has the potential to challenge you; it has the potential to show you a side of yourself that, for whatever reason, has thus been unseen. Someone who used to lead me always said something that inspired me everyday (if I'm being honest, almost everything he said inspired me, but for the sake of this blog post, we'll focus on one quote in particular). He said, "if it does not challenge you, it does not change you." It became a mantra for him, our team, and my life. 

Stop to think about it for a second, if you're reading this from the East Coast, it's 6PM. The day is over and the night is coming to a close as well. Think about what you've done today; think about all the things you've accomplished. Are you proud of what you've done or have you let today go to waste? I don't know you, reader. I don't know your life story or why you wake up in the morning. However, you've wandered onto my blog, so for all intents and purposes, you're in my world now. There is but one rule in Kiandraland (Kiandraworld? Kiandropolis?), and it's this: do one thing every day that scares you. Eleanor's words, my personal philosophy.  You only get one July 5th, 2013 in a lifetime. You may as well make it count for something other than silly tv shows (shout out to my newest obsession: Girls) and cheap food (I'm looking at you Hamm Burger). 

So by now you're thinking: okay, that's all fine and nice, Kiandra, but what does it have to do with travelling? Oh my dear, sweet reader...it has everything to do with travelling. Travelling enhances our carpe diem (read: YOLO) mentalities; it allows us to take more chances, explore more options, meet more people because when are we ever going to be in Szeged, Hungary or Krakow, Poland or Manila, Philippines again (seriously, when? I'd love to know)? The chance to be IN these places already adds flavor to the soup that is my/your/our life. It already takes us that much further from our comfort zones.

For some people, that's a hard pill to swallow (I have to stop with the cliched statements). For others, it's a door to exciting and endless possibilities. For every single one of us, it's a chance to find out what makes you tick, how you react under stress/pressure, and how you deal with a language barrier. It's a chance for you to grow without you even realizing it (and just like that, this blog post is back on topic)! 

I think that one of the most significant aspects of life is that it puts you in situations you've probably never encountered before and forces you to tackle them head-on. If you've ever been a part of AIESEC before, you know what I'm talking about. You're thrown into a group, or a team, or onto a project that has never been completed before, and you're expected to make it successful with only a handful of ideas and an army of support. You get frustrated; you get stressed out, but in the end, you get results--whether they're the results you wanted or not, you get results. You push yourself to (what you think are) your limits, and you survive, and next time, you're equipped with so much more knowledge and willpower, and it only gets better. That's what travelling teaches you. That's what AIESEC teaches you. That's what life teaches you. 

it's a real thing. i swear.

Yesterday LinkedIn sent me the "Top New for Kiandra" as they do every day, but yesterday something compelled me to actually read it. 
Inside the heavily loaded email was a section entitled Finding Your Passion In Work: 20 Awesome Quotes. If you even remotely know me, you're probably aware that I'm in loveeeee with quotes (so much so that my favorite high school teacher gave me a Big Book of Quotes entitled The Quotationary as a graduation present), so I couldn't resist opening that particular article. 

Now whether all twenty quotes were awesome are now, isn't up for debate in this particular post, but I will say that one jumped out at me.

Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears. 

Those are some powerful words. At least to me (and since you're in my world...to you as well, reader). We so frequently let our fears control us that we let life and all its many opportunities pass us by. Our fear of being alone. Our fear of being judged. Our fear of failure. Our fear of success. All these things are just pawns in the game of chess. In the grand scheme of things, they're irrelevant. You will out on so many more cool people, and places, and experiences if you let these little fears control you than if you just took the chance. 





Every day is an opportunity to discover something new about yourself. Every person you meet and every place you go is another chance to rewire your hard drive, and create a version of yourself you can be happy with.
I'm taking my chance, and I'm sure I'll take many others after this one is done. The question is: what will you do, reader? Will you shy away from the chance to create yourself, or will you dive right in?

While you ponder that, I'm gonna go dive into some SONA forms. (Don't kill me VP Make Shit Pretty)

A Trip to the City of Sunshine.

"Do I dare disturb the universe? In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse." The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock T.S. Eliot

Disclaimer: I can't promise that all of my blog entries will always be the most entertaining or even the most inspirational; all I can say is that all of my blog entries will be honest. They will be my uncensored, unfiltered thoughts as I journey to lands unknown this summer. Read at your own risk.

Seven--the number of days in a week, the neutral pH state between acids and bases, the number of deadly sins, and now, the amount of times AIESEC (that non-profit organization I'm involved with filled with young people hellbent on changing the world) has taken me to different places in the world. 

• Georgia
• Washington, D.C.
• New York/New Jersey
• Indiana
• Texas
• Panama
• Hungary

Well, here goes nothing. 

The Basics:

For the next 7 weeks, I will be in Szeged, Hungary working on a national project called Summer for Youth. It's a camp for high school students in the area to hone in on their soft skills and to instill an entrepreneurial outlook and a global mindset in them before they enter college (sound familiar, AIESECers?). I, alongside three other interns and a handful of facilitators, will be delivering sessions based on certain topics (innovation, culutural awareness, public speaking, etc) to these high school students in two two-week spans. 

  

The Details:

Szeged, Hungary wasn't exactly the place that I saw myself this summer. I could barely point Hungary out on a map, let alone be intimate enough with the country to know of any of its cities (apart from the famed Budapest). Sure, I knew an internship was in my future (it's poor street cred for the VPOGX, the person who sends people on exchange, to have not been on exchange), but the "when"s and "where"s of the whole ordeal were still to be determined. 

Since I'm being honest, I can say that I really just managed to fall into the internship in Szeged. I was looking for a way to get a discount on my exchange and to also be heavily involved with the L(ocal)C(ommittee) while I was there. Szeged offered me that opportunity, so of course, I jumped at the chance. 

I've been here for less than 72 hours, but I could not agree more with the naming of the city; You see, Szeged, means "the city of sunshine." (If you don't believe me, check out this video.) Not only is the city filled with sunlight, it seems to radiate in the people as well. Szeged is a European college town, a Euro-twist on Athens, if you will, but there are various generations of people that I run into every day. And after the initial two second double take (cause lesbihonest, how many black people do YOU know in Szeged?), it's not uncommon to get a smile, a wave, and a hello from people as me and my fellow interns walk the (not so) mean streets of Hungary. 

I'm falling in love with the eccentricities of the place that I will call "home" for the next 7 weeks, and I long to discover more and more of Hungary's little secrets. This AIESEC inspired wanderlust will surely be the main reason for many of my adventures this summer and is undoubtedly the cause for my intense interest, fascination, and comfort in smaller cities. 

If you're still here, and you're still reading, I invite you to travel with me (not physically of course, this is my rumspringa, and you can't have it) as I discover a little bit more about the world and a little bit more about myself. 

I suppose I should introduce myself. You may name me whatever you choose, but I'm typically called Kiandra.