Mariupol - an industrial City

We arrived in Mariupol around 9:30 am and I was very happy entering the hostel/hotel. But it was not so easy to identify the venue what is really should be: for a hotel it was too poor, but for a hostel it was somehow too fine. But what really stood behind that venue I should just realize later. First I was just happy to take a shower with at least hot water. In between some charladies cleaned the shower room as well as the toilet, but I was just wondering what they cleaned? Because it was not visible afterwards that something was tidied up. All facilities had been in very poor conditions; the whole building was approximately 30 years old, but all walls especially in the lavatories had been covered with mould or were not painted that it looked like in a building shell. Mirrors were totally missing, but the best had been the toilets: just black wholes in the cabins without lights, but for what you should see something when you are just peeing or doing your ‘big deal’. So the next days I really was balancing the advantages and disadvantages going to the toilet or not, is it really needed now or maybe I can retard the walk to the toilet for some hours.

Before Premeeting of all Facis started we had to wait for all other Facis who came with train from L’viv, so Gosia, Vova and me went to the centre of Mariupol to buy some stuff as well as to eat some lunch and had some minutes checking our mails in any Internet Café. Mariupol is a very industrial city, not very nice and beautiful and for me everything appeared in a disorder. Some stands here, some street hawkers there, lots of traffic everywhere and lots of poor people on the street. I was buying some stuff to eat in a Mom-and-Pop grocery store around the corner, some bread, sausages and sweets for the next days.

So the Premeeting started at 2:00 pm. It was quite strange up from the beginning because most of us haven’t known each other before and we met for the first time. We started just after 30 minutes Get-to-know with serious work, running through all sessions and its outlines and it was not easy to get deeper into this work and handling all people with all individual characteristics and personalities in a right way up from the very beginning. Some appeared to me very reserved, others had been more open up from the first minute. I really just can recommend the fact that Teambuilding is a really needed process for a starting team in order to get into the right mood and get to know the people better. Otherwise it is normally really hard to understand each person with its individual characteristics.

In our case it went out positively. After some hours and when it came to the discussion about how to create a good mood for the whole Conference we all started to understand each other better and gave up more or less the reservation. We became in the next days more and more a team in which al participants interacted in a good way with each other. We all supported each other in order also to have a Learning effect for our own development as Facis. It was really great to see the development of each team member and I really have to say it was one of the most deep and sustainable Learning experiences for me as well. I think we all took so much out of this experience and I guess we all will follow each other’s path in the future in and outside AIESEC for a long time. I’m really proud of our team. And this was just the beginning; what has happened then in the following days exceeded my expectations totally.