Hi Everybody, AEGEE people!!
My name is Carol and next April it will be two years since I joined AEGEE-Alicante. I belong to the small percentage in my antenna coming from Murcia, a city 75km south from Alicante. So when I joined,I thought: "I don't think I will be able to do much for this association, but at least I will travel cheap this summer with a Summer University". Finally, I was not selected for the SU and I thought it had been a small waste of money; but they offered me the possibility to join Alicante SU as a helper. I decided to go there and give it a try, I went to spend a weekend in Calpe with people I did not know at all... I was quite edgy and the first faces I remember are Miguel and Isa...
After the summer, with the excuse we have quite a lot of Murcian members that needed a delegate, I became part of the local board. That meant one trip per month to attend board meetings. Meetings that soon were organized together with Tapeo-meetings later. And one of these nights, something came up... When will we organize a Tapeo Meeting in Murcia? This tapeo-meeting ended up being a whole weekend event called "¡Acho que finde!", the first event I was the main coordinator, and the first experience for almost the whole team :S Today I read again the entry that Chema wrote in our local blog after the event. It is true I was a bit too stressed, he he, I had forgotten! One year after, just the good memories last. There were some mistakes, that is of course true, but we worked as a team and we started creating bonds that helped it be a success. I keep in my memory the team spirit, and the participants we had... because weather was awful! And sure, everything we could learn, but you just realise how much you learned until you are again facing a similar situation.
In 2010 we organized our SU ALC Confidental. We had the core team of Acho que Finde Event, and some new people too. What a blast! 12 days for find where your phisical limits are, until you fall sick... but what a team we had! And this is not just my impression, but also our participants' opinion, who gave us in exchange the most they could (we don't earn in AEGEE anything more than experiences and friends). Because of a great team and a greatest group of participants, we were able to achieve the recognision of Best Summer University 2010 in Europe. It is just some words, but they condense so many emotions! That moment, when in Agora Istanbul the Summer University Coordination Team said "...and the first position for ALC Confidential...", became suddenly all blurry, because you can just jump, laugh, keep the tears away and remember all the team that helped us but could not be there in Istanbul with us. Everytime I looked at the diploma, I could not stop smiling. Because we all knew that it had not been an easy road, a year of hard work with many obstacles saved in the last minute. Congratulations to the whole team I had the honour to belong to.
After some more time, and as usually happens in AEGEE, that means, not knowing exactly how it happened... again I became the main coordinator of an event... well, let's say the Agora, the biggest AEGEE event, at least according to the number of participants: 700-800. At least, it was quite a progressive arrival to this position, so there was not a big shock when I thought: "Oh my God! What did I do!" This happened some hours later, when I could understand what it meant! Ha ha ha! Once I became aware of my new responsibility, I just had to get to work seriously! And when you have all full of ideas and schemes and diagrams, you look at it, breath deeply, and see that it is not a task for a single person, not even for a superhero! And with my previous experience, that as you have seen it is not too broad, you realize what is the most important part of any event, no matter how long or big it is, what makes an event succeed or fail is... the team!
You will get to know the Agora Alicante Team through this blog, and you can also see their faces all together in the right section of our blog (
www.agoraalicante.org). Wonderful people one by one, who invest their free time and inmense efforts to make the best Agora that we can do! We juts hope that at least you enjoy the Agora as much as we are enjoying the whole process of organizing it.
See you in April!
Carol Bello
Main Coordinator Spring Agora Alicante.
