5 little trainees went on a world trip, 3 didnt want to stay

Well Gijs has already left and Nienke and Elke are still here, but they already had their farewellparty and they will leave this coming Sunday. Time flies. I ve been here for 9 weeks now, yes over 2 months, crazy eh.

I m leaving Padang in 35 days and will go on a road trip around Southeast Asia before hopefully getting back to Germany on June 7^th. At least that is the plan for now.

Well we ll see how that goes. Anyways, yes all 3 of them had their farewell parties and the more and more I stay here I get disappointed in some people. They are very friendly on one side, but then they are taking behind your back a lot and they saying they will miss you and all that, but then when Gijs left, noone even looked at him leaving. I don’t know what it is, but for me except for 3-4 people I will not remember too many of them. It is kind of sad, but I guess it’s a different culture. And then they make jokes about you, right in front of you, because they think you don’t understand and they are talking about our bad habits (western habits) without having ever been to another country.

Also there AIESEC structure is based on rules and regulations. Their VP Election process takes several days, but in the end it seems like its all fake and noone cares anyways. Its all about getting the position, not about doing the work.

Also if you re a “ white foreigner” you can feel like an animal in a zoo sometimes, because everyone keeps staring at you and wants to talk to you and it seems like you re from outer space.

That’s for some of the things we trainees have to cope with everyday ;P

Actually we ve pretty much adjusted to that and we just go with the flow now. Smile when they make jokes about you… ignore people when they stare at you. Don’t build a close relationship with the people. So for now its working out pretty good.

Other news (LOL)

I was really excited to hear about my baseball team back home. New players, 2 impressive wins and everything seems to be rolling there. Cant wait to get back.

We got dsl in the office now, only 2 hours a day for all office though, so I probably still wont have to much access to it, but maybe I can save some money through it. I m actually trying to survive on the money I have, which right now for the 35 remaining days gives me an average of 2,75 Euro per day to spend, which might not seem like much, but the last two days together I spent 1,50 Euro. So I think it will be possible, although when my sis gets here I might have to spend some more.. haha. Oh well… for my sis I will… LOL

I m currently still at 81 kg, and I didn’t work out for a week, because I was really tired everynight and just felt like falling into bed, but still had to do some work, but yesterday I started again.

Also the dance with Ivette I think is going to be really cool, if we can get everything together, because right now its about 12/13 minutes long, but we ve already practiced all parts, we just need to improve on them, but time is running out, so we ll see about that.

Also the new EB is elected and they are ready to roll at conference in 2 weeks, one week after nldc.

I wish I could be at NLDC, but oh well, you cant have everything, right?

Anyways, that’s it for most of the news as I have a tight schedulde now. 14 classes a week if I have to hold all classes, but normally some students don’t come or its raining to hard for students to come to office or the rector isnt in padang or students have a make up class at university…so blablbala… normally just about 10 classes I guess.

Hehe…alright… keep me posted, I m still waiting for emails… LOL

Take care°