Just like AIESEC Halifax just hosted NLDC, Kiev just hosted LDS, pretty much just the Ukrainian version. It was really cool to see another national AIESEC conference, since I haven’t made it to any ICs haha. One of my big things that I was looking for while matching was the chance to get to attend a big national conference in my host country. With the Ukrainian organization I was thinking it wasn’t going to get to happen, because the organizing committee was just crazy leading up to the conference. It was also funny to see the problems they were going through, because we had pretty much the same issues when I was working on the OC back in Halifax.
It was a really last minute decision that we were heading to the conference. Most of the day sessions were in Russian, so our really only good opportunity was to go to evening plenary. We debated over going because it was getting late, it was hot, and it was really far away towards our 3rd school where we had already spent most of the day and our time in transit. It ended up being so easy to get there though. If we made every connection right away, we would make it in time for closing plenary, but I never thought it would be possible in Kiev. By some miracle and with the worst directions I’ve ever had we got the metro right away, caught the bus where it should have been on my shitty map and with no address, or phone we somehow found the college site way out in the woody suburbs.
I went with Kavi and Angad, two AIESECers from India. Most of the other interns aren’t active members yet, so when they heard the parties were no good they had no interest in going out. When we got off the bus we heard the noise. We thought the plenary might be over, but everything was late and it hadn’t started yet. We got to get in room VIP before it started because we are the interns and good seats.
The AIESEC Kiev LC and the chair got us to do out role calls. I did “AIESEC Canada’s hot to go”. I guess this is also used for a lot of other things, haha, because I got booed (in Ukraine it’s the exchangers cheer). So I did a modified version of “Who’s your daddy?” with the answer being Canada. The Indian’s cheer in Hindi also got some boos, it was a tough crowd. But I got to do the “We are the interns” cheer, which was sooo cool to be on the other side of for once. We met some of the interns from the other LCs in Ukraine from Taiwan, India, and the Netherlands. The Dutch guy didn’t know his country’s cheer at all, so he got the most boos. Don’t go on exchange if you don’t know any roll calls.
It was very eerie how many things were similar between a Canadian conference and this LDS. There was a Gossip Box, which they read in Russian, but was apparently very scandalous. The Chair of the conference was from Ireland, but was half Ukrainian I think. He works for Google but was keeping it a secret so not to detract from other good conference discussions. I got the inside scoop haha.
There were some really hilarious punishments. In Ukraine everyone is late, so of course there were lots of people punished. The worst might have been when the girls had to roll the pen with their nose up a guy’s body while he lied down, or maybe when they stood in a line and sucked the ring off one finger and put in on their own finger to have someone else suck it off, or maybe it was when two girls coated each other’s face with yogurt and then had to lick it all off each other.
I also got to meet some of the MC members who were there. There was some entertainment like a comedy troop similar to Picnicface but in Russian. They had a recap of all the sessions. This conference was a lot more externally focused than NLDC. Instead of facilitators they had companies and partners run sessions. One company donated free beer, even more than we got Guru. The party was dry, but people snuck in booze I guess. Each night was a different theme, tonight was Latin night. It wasn’t really our theme and we needed to head home in case the trip back wasn’t as smooth, and it was now dark.
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