AIESEC Annual General Meeting

Big day for all AIESECers today – IBA had its AGM (Annual General Meeting) and we didn’t know, what we had gotten ourselves into…

It was quite a formal event, so I finally got to wear my new fancy kurta and everybody loved seeing us in traditional fashion – this must have been one of the occasions when I got the most compliments in my life, so far. People got excited about how we tried to adapt and told me quite a few times that I looked like one of them, now, which I wasn’t exactly sad about hearing – because how cool is the feeling of being able to adapt anywhere, feel at home anywhere? It makes you feel like a world citizen, a cosmopolitan rather than “just German”.

Faria had shown me the event’s agenda the night before, so I knew it wouldn’t start on the time stated (smart move to plan ahead and distinguish between Pakistani and international time) and still it started even another hour later, but I overheard a girl saying that this was typical for AIESEC in IBA and wasn’t surprised anymore…
It was an event full of people I hadn’t met yet, speeches about achievements and goals I didn’t understand, power points personally dedicated to the old and the new EB… Basically, this event was to say a big”thank you and good bye” to the old EB and a “welcome and good luck” to the new EB in every way possibly imaginable. Motivational AIESEC chants and rythmical clapping included.
Overall, is was interesting to experience, but for a non-AIESECer like me a bit lenghty and confusing after a while, as most of the time I didn’t know what was being talked about and all the AIESEC-internal abbreviations weren’t very helpful. We had had a quick lunch before, because we knew they wouldn’t serve any, but not everybody had known and people started to get hungry, very hungry. We were sitting at the table in the back, which was the closest to the snack buffet, and Sufian explained us, how it is the same concept on most official events, and especially weddings, when it comes to food: Because events usually start late and people come with an empty tummy, knowing there will be free good food served, after a certain while people get hungry and start getting ready to storm the buffet table. The second the waitors open the buffet plates, people start appearing out of nowhere, the ones sitting closest to the buffet being the first ones in a quickly building queue.
Due to the advantage of a short distance between us and the buffet, we probably made it under the top 10 and got to taste everything, but when we wanted to go for another round 10 Minutes later, the plates were empty… sadly. The mini pizza was really good.

After the snack we had some chocolate cake and sparkling wine – alcohol-free, obviously, as you can see in the pictures.

Food and drinks marked the end of the official AGM, so pretty soon afterwards we went to Usman’s house with some others to just hang out together; we had some really good talks about religion and other things, even though religion is a taboo topic when you don’t know someone that well, but  what I like about AIESECers is that they are generally respectful towards others, open-minded and not judgemental.