MEXICO!!!!

Very spicy Chorizo tacos

We are actually in Mexico.

I cannot believe it.

Right now I'm surrounded by people from all over the Americas at 6am waiting to check into our really nice and Mexican-looking hotel. All the people from the US know about (and love) Get Golden. I love being a hero :-)

Had some delicious and very spicy chorizo tacos for breakfast / dinner and they have Starbucks here!

Well, now it's time to enter the conference bubble...

Me and my Guinness

Me and my Guinness

I had a Guinness.

I enjoyed it VERY much.

After 8 months without real beer and after saving this since Christmas it was a great reward for getting some good results for AIESEC, and for it being St Patrick's Day of course.

MEXICO TOMORROW!!!!!!!!!!! :-D

The wonderful world of Dan

Miss World 2005, Me, Miss World 2006

I think this is the first time this has happened.

I’m sitting in my flat at a lost end for what to do.

I think the problem is the internet has turned off, so all access to media, work and those so-important time-wasting activities is cut off.

So, time for an update from the wonderful world of Dan.

In December I received a brilliant Christmas present – a can of Guinness Draft from a visiting AIESECer from Ireland. I thought about enjoying it at the time, but wanted to wait for a special occasion. So I said to myself: right, I am only allowed to drink this once I sign a major sponsorship deal for AIESEC Venezuela.

It turns out these things take time. It came very close with getting partners for our national conference, but in the end one deal fell through and others only resulted in product donations or participation without sponsorship. Good, but not good enough.

But now the Guinness has been liberated! A fantastic organisation called CEVEDES, part of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development are running a project with AIESEC and sponsoring one member of our national team to go to our regional conference in Mexico. Finally, the great meter of ER income has some blue ink on it (signifying income from sources other than exchange). The Guinness can be consumed.

Of course given the date it has to wait - just a little bit longer - for St Patrick’s Day is just around the corner.

In other news, I’m feeling very patriotic at the moment after setting foot on British soil for the first time in 7 months. The Embassy was almost I had hoped for – with the BBC humming away in the background, British newspapers and a nice donation of educational materials and really cool British flag badges that everyone wants. I was surprised not to be offered a cup of tea though. That situation has got desperate, with only 7 bags of Tetley and 2 of Assam remaining.

Back to my slightly confused national identity, after watching The Last King of Scotland (very good, Babel was too) I decided to use one of my national identities more to my advantage. It works! I managed to save a ridiculous $70 they were asking us for to get into a quite fancy club in San Ignacio, just by saying I was from Scotland and this was my first time in Venezuela.

It’s really shocking that people are paying more to get into a club than families just a few hundred metres away are earning to live on for about a week. Every now and then something like this highlights to me the huge division that exists in Venezuela.

But back to good stuff - I brought the good word of Dan’s pancakes to Caracas a couple weeks ago, enjoyed by all – including some trees in our garden. Got a bit of a pancake addiction now. They’re so versatile!

Oh, and yesterday, at an event launching Accion Solidaria’s HIV/AIDS awareness campaign, I met two Miss Venezuelas!

Almost all my objectives in Venezuela are complete!

Hopefully the next update will be from Mexico...