As a box of chocolate

From early memories about Ira Ruseva:

*She was chairing my first conference - AIESEC ICE in 2004, Moscow. I was positively surprised with the fact that she is bulgarian, but speaks perfect Russian.

*Another memory is from January meeting when she came for elections and stayed till next morning when teamleaders were presenting the results (actually, no results). She was leaving the plenary when one of them told

- And my team is the most friendly and the real team etc. etc. etc.,

- How many exchanges did you realize? - asked Ira

- Not yet

- Will talk about quality of your team after you do some. - told Ira and disappeared in snowy january morning.
*Third time was at my LC elections, after Q&A session (I'm lucky to have people whose opinion I value seeing me making speaches. It doubles the dose of adrenalin in blood), when she told:- You were ok. Confident. (should I mention that she was driniking milkshake and eating cheaps or pop-corn at the moment?:)
*And the fourth time I want to tell about was at my first Plan-it in a role of MC member. When I thought that everything is going wrong and nobody cared, and I was crying in her room about it. How naive it was.

Actually, I wanted to reflect a bit on different thing, not our story with Ira:)

Looking back, I'm smiling - how many things seemed for us the mountains we never gonna climb, or BIG achievements we want to have in "portfolio". Like become a teamleader. Or go to IC. Or apply for MCP. And we left them behind. It was so obvious WHERE to go, it just seemed high. Now nothing seems high, but where is this mountain I want to climb? We already have money for cool tracking boots but sometimes too heavy to move asses from office chairs.

At my early -teens first cereals cooked at open fire were amazing, first kisses were events to discuss, run barefoot in the forest was okay.

At my early twenties I easily read James Oliver in english and argue sometimes, don't think that random sex is for me and is afraid of bugs and snakes in the tent.

Again, the story was supposed to be about losses. Let's leave it for another time. But I'll finish with positive "thank you" to life which always gives us what we truly want (in the meaning of "even if we pretend to desire smth else"). Some of you know my applying-to-AI story. One of the small nice things I wanted to have is recognition from my team (I remember Ivan's photo with cake with "AI" sign after he was elected made by his team). And you know what? I was so stressed with two upcoming conferences, with news about L.T. ilness, that even didn't think about this "team" stuff at the moment when recieved negative answer. And one of the most amazing moments - just few minutes after I told them, people from two teams (we had transition then) came all together, huged me and presented a box of chocolate. I shared it with them. Because, these AIESEC XPs are the things I'm in AIESEC. Not AI.

P.S. Do you know what I'm listening to now? "Lucky I'm in love with my best friend" - depends, yeah?:)