¡¡¡Congratulations!!!

It's official that Lindsey and Mel will be representing @CN as the first American delegates ever to attend WeGrow in Portugal!!!

I'm putting in an early request for lots of pictures and stories.

Hey @CN,

I just wanted to let you all know what I've been up to. I have been in Bogotá for about two weeks now and it has truly been amazing. The first week I did a lot of tourism in Bogotá and got acclimated to the 3000m altitude. This past week, I met the team for my project, Alcance Social. The team is made up of 25 people from 12 countries (11 countries and Colombia). We are working in 11 cities, with the same government organization. The idea of this project is based in something that I feel that @ hasn't adequately affected to my knowledge at this level. We will be working with the psycho-social and socio-economic problems of people who are forcibly displaced from their homes by the violence in Colombia and rapidly urbanize. Wow, through exchange I am getting the opportunity to work for the government of another country and use my skills to help out a rapidly growing problem.

For me, the project subject matter is enough, but what have made the experience even more powerful is the people who are on this project with me. They are very diverse even within the national participants. I have gotten to know all of them well and hope to remain good friends with many throughout the project and after.

@ in Colombia is also amazing. They have almost 800 members and have realized over 120 exchanges this year. The MC team works soooo hard, and for this I can definitely see the benefits of only having one year to do all you possibly can. The sense of urgency is almost draining to watch, but the passion is so inspiring. I don't know if anyone has seen the slogan "Colombia is passion," but in my experience, this is defiantly true.

I have been speaking very positively about this experience, which is not to say that it hasn't been incredibly difficult and challenging at times. I have dealt with a different style of education system, which relies heavily on long, detailed, and drawn out speeches. Not to mention, all of these speeches were in Spanish, a language that I struggle to understand and gain confidence using. Just as in any language as well, some people speak slowly and some are supersonic. Some can slow down and some lack this ability. For all the times that I have felt like my head will implode, vale la pena, because my Spanish has greatly improved this week and I am very excited to start work.

My goals for this week are:
to obtain a cell phone,
integrate into the office I will be working in,
get a national ID card,
study subjunctive,
read and write a bit everyday

To all of you who are jealously reading this entry, there will be more rounds to this project and it will be even bigger in the future with perhaps 40-80 participants. Look out for it and let me know if you have any preguntas.

Colombia es un pais super chevere y full bacano.

Chao nene!!

Induction is officially over and I am psyched. The final session on @ 2010 went extremely well in my opinion and I can't wait for @CN to "hit the ground running" as Luke said so many times yesterday. Not only are our new members passionate about the organization, but they're highly critical too. Every organization needs people like that to push it forward and to never be satisfied with where we are.

My group's first reactions to 2010 were incredibly skeptical, but still positive. Aside from Elise's deep-rooted hatred for the word "impact," our group agreed that it was "fluffy" and filled with "empty words." But they all got really into creating a vision for @CN for 2010. I think Nick was about to pee his pants when he saw Alexa and Oscar's vision, which included a guy saying "mmmm...I just had my @ moment...and if felt good." Nick was also represented as an alcoholic (attending AA meetings and all) and as a chicken winning first prize in the World Unity Games of '10. Oh, and I should mention that in 2010 we will be having the Finnish hockey team come play for us, Anne will be Prime Ministress of Germany, Harvard will be crying b/c CN is way better than them, we will have two @ buildings: one looking like Goldwin Smith and the other will be next to the clock tower with the "eye of sauron" on top because "we see everything" and tons of other stuff. The flip charts were amazing! People got so into it that you couldn't help but be excited about where we are going as an LC.

When we started breaking it down into individual statements it was obvious that these newbies have a much deeper understanding of @ than I think I did all of last semester. I know that a lot of things didn't turn out quite how we had originally planned and we ran out of time for lots of the great things we had wanted to include, but ultimately I think we accomplished our goal. We have 20 some well prepared @ers to add to our LC and I have high hopes for what we will be able to do now.

Watch out world...here we come!!