Why Moscow? Why Not?

So why would a student from Ireland choose to spend their summer working voluntarily in Moscow? There are many good reasons and also some lame reasons but let me try make it clear. Growing up as a kid, I always had my head in the clouds but never had an opportunity to go travelling outside my country. I joined AIESEC with the promise that I could travel the world and so far it has been true.

I think me, as most AIESEC people, never like to visit the normal places and want to see the most extraordianary things this world can offer. When I decided that I wanted to do a traineeship my preference had been Africa because that gave me a chance to work with HIV/AIDS. After running through it properly, it was not financially possible for me. Where could I afford? Well nothing outside the european boundaries and I became dismayed at this. I wanted something totally different and magical to what I'm used to and was afraid Europe would not deliver this.

Western Europe, I had seen quite a bit of last summer and wanted to go beyond the EU. Eastern Europe was my choice and the Baltic States is where I wanted to go. Well this is what I thought, I had wanted to go there for the reasons of its association with Russia. Russia has to be the most impressive country in the world, its size by itself is breathtaking. I started to look up possible traineeships around Russia and was so happy when I saw the possibility of a HIV/AIDS related one, but more bad news it had been matched.

I was getting really demotivated and could not find a development traineeship I could do, so I decided to changed to a management one, although I didn't particularly want to. Then I'd say someone had planned this, about 40 mins after I had changed my form, I received an email saying that a traineeship had been raised and it turned out to be the one that I accepted.

This is how it happened but why Russia, well with its amiable people, its unmatchable history, the beautiful cities and countryside and my undying affection for Mr Putin. I'm like his stalker and read up on him quite regularly. I'm not going to write much about him as this is already very long and I will be writing about his meeting with Bush during the week.

Moscow Be Afraid! Be Very Afraid!

Ok I might not be able to speak Russian and I might not have any prior social work experience but today I found out that I have been accepted for a traineeship in Moscow, its one that I have wanted so much. I might not have had all the criteria that they wanted but what I do have is a lot of motivation and enthusiasm, that I don't feel can be matched.

The traineeship lets me work with a topic that I have being really interested and maybe sometimes addicted to for a while now, HIV/AIDS. What HIV/AIDS in Russia? Surely there is no problem there, well thats were people are wrong, although Sub-Saharan Africa is the worst infected, Ukraine and Russia have the two fastest increases of cases in the world. The rest of the Baltic area is also very badly struck with drug use being the main cause of it.

This has made my day much brighter and no amount of snow is going to bring me down. Ye it is actually snowing in Ireland at the end of February, I don't know where they get the idea of global warming from.

Start of a new era

I am now a blogger. What does this mean that I will spend all day just endlessly reading everyones blogs and become a cyberspace junkie. Will this lead me to abandoning all sense of reality and creating my own warped world where my blog is the central system for all life. I could be the blog king and people will worship my blogging and wow I have got to stop thinking.

Hopefully there will be no more of that in this blog at least it tested for me if this thing is working. So for those of you who don't know me yes I'm in fact Irish and this will be my new home for a while.