A Mexican in India – Before coming to India!

July 28th, 2010 by Dariela Escobar

August, the dream begins…

“Try to say YES to every opportunity that comes along” I thought. Then my friend Rod called me and said “Do you want to come with me to the Panamerican University to hear a talk about an exchange program?? It’s about something called AIESEC“. And so we went. everything seemed so unreal… How could you get a job in any country other than Mexico so easily?

I signed up anyway (going along with the say-yes-to-everything theory) after a full explanation about the AIESEC process from Leo, the Exchange Vice President (now President) for AIESEC UP and there I was next week having an interview and again the following week at my review board… Suddenly I was in!

My schoolwork didn’t leave me much time to apply for anything, so I had put AIESEC on hold. Next January I started applying for jobs, I wanted somewhere in Asia and something design related. I thought of China, Malaysia, … and then suddenly one day in February I received a mail from India, a girl from Delhi wanted me to apply for an internship there, I hadn’t considered India before, but I thought why not?

I knew what many people say about India… bad things mostly, but I wanted the adventure and the experience, so I applied, and suddenly I started looking for more jobs in India and I found a very cool internship in Bangalore. I entered the company’s web page but I didn’t have the time to see it properly, it was March 4th and I was packing my suitcase for a short visit to New York City.

Next Wednesday I wanted to send my application for this particular internship, but I had lost the TN ID necessary to send the application to the people in AIESEC! All I had was the URL of the company’s web page saved on my computer’s history, and so I decided to read everything in it and I found an email, it also said: “send us your application and if you’re from AIESEC let us know!” I didn’t know if I could do this or if the right way should be contacting only people in AIESEC, and I didn’t imagine they would answer, but they did!! And so less than a week later I had an email from Venkat Ramana, I was online when I received it, I answered immediately and 5 mails later I was accepted at the company!

It was too unreal, I had to call my friends and the people in charge in AIESEC UP in Mexico, and wake up my parents (it was around 2 AM Mexico time). After that everything happened incredibly fast! Next week I had all my documents ready and I went to the embassy, I got my Visa with no problems and I immediately bought my plane ticket for April 11th, I barely had time to get my things in order and say goodbye to everyone I needed to, only 3 weeks to eat all the beef, Mexican food and my mom’s cooking I could get before leaving my country, but even after packing and figuring out how to fit all my life into 2 suitcases, I still couldn’t believe i was really leaving!!

Do you want to watch my pics?? Click here!!