True Love Waits

One great show of love deserves another in return - and so has been the motivation for our blissful passion. It has been by no means an easy journey, and although at times we both may have considered giving in to the pain and confusion, the journey has made us stronger and more committed than we ever could have expected. It's amazing what distance can do to a relationship, what it can teach a person about the relationship itself - but also what it teaches about the two people engaged therein. The last four months have been such an experience.

Distance is never something I would wish on any relationship, and certainly not on my own with Amie - but it is something with which our relationship has become ever more familiar. As our interests and passions reveal themselves to one another, they have forced important conversations about the reality of our relationship to survive the challenges that our seemingly diverging lives have taken.

Yet it is in the distance and the divergence that an ever-strengthening love and understanding have emerged. While I never would have wished this distance on each other, I know that what it really has done is made each other stronger and more committed to making it work. I could not be more excited to be going back to her for a brief moment, like a sweet oasis in the desert...

I love you Amie, my Beloved Friend

The Beginning of the AIESEC Oman Experience

It has finally come... the quintessential moment of the AIESEC experience, when students are first exposed to its possibilities and their own potential. For the very first time, Omani students had the opportunity to sit in their classrooms and learn first hand about what is coming to their colleges and universities through our information sessions. It was elating to see the excitement in their faces, the smiles, the questions and the already apparent commitment and dedication that some students have to do something more. These are important moments not only for the students to first learn and understand a piece about AIESEC, but also for the people speaking about their own experiences in AIESEC. I myself delivered my personal AIESEC story to yet another group of students - and yet again, I reflected on how important and impactful my experiences through AIESEC have been to me.

It is so exciting, and now relieving, to be able to speak and start to work with the Omani students. After four months of work and planning, the real purpose of why we are here is able to take place. Now the real work has just begun. Now we start to recruit our most direct stakeholders with the most to gain from what we are doing - the people who will be able to take the lead when we start to move on.

Through all of these experiences, I have been having my own moments of revelation and clarity. I am finally starting to understand what I am doing here, and the significance of this experience for my own development. The transition from our initial touch-down in Oman four months ago to now has been a flurry of activity, and a series of growing pains in which I've learned how to reach inside myself for some other source of energy and inspiration in order to reach back out. I've retaught myself how to live in a foreign environment, and to understand it as a place I belong, as yet another home. I've learned how to live and work with two incredible individuals who I've depended on for life in the work environment, as well as moments of personal troubles. I've learned how to get the best work out of myself, and how to encourage the best work out of my colleagues that makes us function as well as possible as a team. And through it all, I've rediscovered who I am, my values, and my purpose-filled life that I've worked so hard to build.

We are entering a new and exciting phase here, for AIESEC and for ourselves personally. Once again, I couldn't be happier with my choice to come to Oman in order to pursue the task I've bee given, for myself and the countless others who I will be working with. I've got to say that I am loving this life here, and I am ready for more to come.