And so it begins. In one minute, you are opening an e-mail from your university saying " Do you want to teach abroad?", and in the next one, you are.
That's how fast, thrilling and exciting my AIESEC experience began.
I applied in one morning (aiesec.pt) and by night they had called me and explained me which programs they had and how it all worked. I got super excited and immediately started to search about stories from different people and their feedback from these internships. As i kept reading their experiences and life changes and the culture shock they went trough, I soon realized that that's exactly what i needed in my life right now. I'm a recently formed Biology/Geology teacher who's working on a little stand selling cellphone's cases. Some may say "Living the dream"? But, not really. Here in Portugal the "Teaching Job" isn't going trough a good phase right now, and there are thousands of more qualified teachers applying for the same positions as me. So my teaching career doesn't present many prospects in a recent future. Also, and not less important, I "recently" had my heart broken in a way I never thought could be possible. And I think that just the thought, and the dreaming of going away and be part of something that big, made me forget about it a little. Gave me something to focus on, to work for, to live for. And for that, I'm deeply grateful.
After that, I did my English exam, I did my AIESEC interview (which was horrible! Thank you Beatriz for that!) and took part on an Preparation Seminar that guided us and explained well... everything! I have to say here that without Federica to inspire me, things would probably be a lot different.
Moving on. After investigating a while, I got my heart settle in Colombia and in Latin American Culture so, that's where Helena (my AIESEC mentor/guide counselor) and I focused on. We applied for lot's of internships and I even got answered by a few. The problem was that I was searching for an opportunity with one year duration, and most of them were only for 6 months. Since I was investing so much in this amazing journey, I decided that I would only go if I could be there as longer and enjoying it as much as I could. So, we kept applying and we kept waiting for that special one to came along. And one day it did. I applied for an internship teaching English in Dominican Republic and their AIESEC president answered me and presented me with the opportunity to teach Sciences there. That was the beginning of this Story that I'm about to tell, each day, for the next 10 months.
