Why Romania? And why with AIESEC? These were the most asked questions when I told people about my plans to go abroad again. The second question was easy to answer because I worked for 2,5 years in AIESEC. The first one: Well it was coincidence. I just planned to go to an Eastern European country and the only reason why it was Romania was the date of the internship. It was a really nice coincidence.

Arriving in Cluj some people were already waiting for me to pick me up from the airport.

  From the beginning on people took really care of me and were very friendly, so I felt warmly welcome from the beginning of my time in Cluj. Cluj has a lot of international trainees. In the first days I met people from New Zealand, Greece, Ukraine, Poland, Azerbaijan, Puerto Rico, Hongkong, UK, Georgia, Turkey and Moldova. We also had a big global village in Julius Mall to present AIESEC and to get to know each other.

In my internship I worked in the Sunny Days project. It was a development traineeship. We worked with a Romanian NGO and socially disadvantaged children. Sunny Days was held in two centers of the NGO. I worked with Irene from New Zealand in my center. In the other one we had Giannis from Greece and Giorgi from Georgia. The work in Sunny Days was at the same time hard and interesting. I learned a lot about myself in this time.

The NGO works under very difficult circumstances, which means there is not enough space for too many children. We initialized presentations and projects about drug abuse, prepare yourself for the future, ecological day, human rights and the European Union. Additionally we presented ourselves and our countries. Even though the internship was difficult I learned a lot there and wouldn’t wanna miss this experience.

At the whole I had a great time in Cluj-Napoca. I made a lot of good friends there and people were very hearty to me. I always felt welcome. I also had the chance to visit the country and travelled to Sibiu, Brasov, Craiova, Pitesti and Bucharest. Also in these cities I met AIESECers who took care of me. Partly I even had free accommodation. My personal highlight was the RockMe-conference. As the only international delegate I had the chance to join a Romanian AIESEC-conference and it was a great experience for me. I got to know the people from LC Cluj-Napoca better  

and met so many Romanian AIESECers from all over the country. It was my 10^th AIESEC-conference and the first one abroad. So it was something really special to me.

I cannot close my little report without saying a few words about our network. I already knew Giannis from Greece from an AIESEC-conference in Germany last year. It was just nice coincidence that we met here again. But I also met Cristina from Brasov and Oana from Bucharest again. They were also at the same conference back in Germany. And after my internship I started travelling with Irene from New Zealand and we went to Belgrade where we met Branka, who was again also at that conference. What do I want to tell you with that? AIESEC makes the world a lot smaller and gives you so many great opportunities. In these 2,5 years I’ve met AIESECers from about 40 countries and no matter where I go to now, I know people in nearly every country. No matter if Wellington/New Zealand, Thessaloniki/Greece or Cluj-Napoca/Romania and these are just a few examples. And you don’t just meet any people. You meet people that want to have a positive impact on their countries, their societies and the whole world. An these people do something. They act.

So I want to thank AIESEC and especially LC Cluj-Napoca for an amazing experience. You were the most hearty people I could imagine.

LIVE THE DREAM!!!!

FOAIE VERDE CLUJ-NAPOCA

Alex, 27, LC Giessen, Germany