20th Anniversary!

It was a really special Wednesday for all of us Internex people. Because you won’t believe it but Internex has already celebrated its 20th anniversary. Many people from all over the world came to experience this special moment with us.

But let’s start at the beginning. To celebrate the 20th anniversary a surprise party for Tim has been planned for years. Former participants and employees came to Vancouver especially for this day and had to hide for years that they will come to Vancouver. It took a lot of strategy from Simon to keep Tim from finding out.

After years of planning it finally happened yesterday. The party of the year could finally take place. Now the biggest challenge was to get Tim out of the office. Ann, who is in charge of the Ranchstay, called Tim and asked for a spontaneous meeting as she was in town. Of course, everything was planned in advance !😉

After Tim agreed after some hesitation, the surprise party, which took place in the pint, could begin. Tim didn’t suspect anything and was more than surprised when he saw all the familiar faces from all over the world. After he realized what was going on, it was finally time to celebrate. We had a very enjoyable evening in the pint with both current and former Internex People. The party was moved to Yale in the course of the evening and continued there diligently.

 

It was definitely a successful evening and a fantastic surprise party!

-Lilly

INTERNeX International Exchange
International Village,
Suite 2077, 2079 – 88 West Pender Street
Vancouver, Canada -V6B 6N9-
Web: http://www.internexcanada.com
Email: pr@internexcanada.com

How was your weekend?

My weekend? Sunny, active, great!

Saturday morning, 7.45am. Prepared with hiking shoes, sunglasses and lunch packages, 16 motivated people gathered at Pacific Central to spend the day in Squamish. Everyone was ready for the big hike. Well, everyone except for our bus… Unfortunately, the bus company cancelled the ride we booked our tickets for. To be honest, that was not the best news to hear at this time of the day. Going back home? No way! So, some hot discussions later, a bus was eventually arranged for us and the adventure could start.

About an hour later, we stepped out of the bus. We stood directly in front of the gondola, the one we would take to get down after our hike (at least that is what we still thought would happen). But before heading to the trail, we had to celebrate. It was Lore’s birthday! And so, we had a chocolate cupcake for her with a candle, a birthday song, a crown and even a birthday balloon; the full package for our Belgian birthday girl.

The sky promised a lovely day and even in the shadow under the trees, it was perfect! Just like many other people, we followed the signs of the sea-to-summit trail (again, that is what we thought). The first part of the trail was quite steep with many stairs and steps of stones. No problem for our motivated group, so we made our way up along the waterfall with some breaks to enjoy the views. Every ten minutes, I heard a ‘Happy birthday’ – ‘Thank you’ conversation between Lore and some hikers on the trail. The balloon did its job, so she a lot of attention during the day.

The final part before reaching the top of the mountain was more challenging. The trail ended in rocks that we had to climb up. Ropes installed in the rocks and a ladder helped us to overcome the last metres until the top. Not being surrounded by trees anymore, finally allowed us to see where we were actually standing. Wow! The view was just amazing! After the past exhausting hours, it was time for lunch break. We found the perfect spot and could enjoy our sandwiches while looking at mountains with snowy tops. Some people took a power nap and some even came up with the great idea to use some sun cream.

Recovered and ready for the next part, we continued our trail where we spot even more
beautiful sceneries. While looking around and taking pictures, we suddenly saw it: the gondola that was supposed to be our destination of the hike. Frankly, it was still quite far away, so we better hurry up a bit. It was weird though that the trail continued downhill… That is when we became doubtful whether we were on the right trail or not. A local hiker could confirm that we actually weren’t. Without noticing, we left the official sea-to–summit trail already hours ago and hiked the Stawamus Chief instead. Next surprise of the day! There was nothing else we could do, but walking down again. So that is what we did until we reached the base of the gondola again. Since there was still time left until the last ride down, some of us decided to take the gondola up. And what a beautiful outlook we had waiting for us at the top: White Mountains, a blue sea and a green forest. Amazing! We walked over a suspension bridge and enjoyed both the sun and the landscape.

After riding down the gondola (surprisingly, no one wanted to hike), some of us took another ten minute walk to the Shannon Falls. Impressive to see how much water can come down from a mountain. We rounded the day off with dinner and laughs about this day full of surprises. At least the bus ride back to Vancouver did not have any problems and we could all get our well-deserved sleep. I had a great day and was happy that so many of you joined us on this adventure!

Sunday, it was time to relax. Well, only in the morning though, because the next active program was already planned for the afternoon. We only trained our legs Saturday, so it was time to get the arms active as well. We reserved our seats for a dragon boat session during the Community Paddling Day of the Dragon Zone Paddling. Perfect weather for that! After a short introduction, Stefan, Lisa, Lotte, Angy, Nadine and I were equipped with lifejackets and paddles. So, we spend our afternoon learning how to paddle in a dragon boat on False Creek. As a highlight of this hour, we could spot a sea lions’ head above the water. Finally, we competed with the other boats in fun races. I spent the rest of the afternoon with coffee and our paddling crew at the seaside enjoying the sun.

Take care of your sunburns and see you on Wednesday for our PuB NiGHT!

– Kerstin

INTERNeX International Exchange
International Village,
Suite 2077, 2079 – 88 West Pender Street
Vancouver, Canada -V6B 6N9-
Web: http://www.internexcanada.com
Email: pr@internexcanada.com

PuB NiGHT Review: Portside Pub

Wednesday nights are our favourite one’s! Why? Because it is PuB NiGHT of course! Every week, we are meeting at another place in Vancouver to enjoy a fun evening together.

Yesterday, we were welcomed at the Portside Pub in Gastown. As the name might tell you already, this pub gives you the feeling of sitting in a cozy boat while drinking a beer and sailing on the big, wild sea. The chairs around our table were taken quickly, so it was time to share the newest stories about placements, work, future travel plans, the annoying roommate or the lovely host mom. It is always fascinating how much we actually have in common, even though we are all coming from different parts of the world.

After a while of chatting, the serious part of the night started: karaoke. The lyrics were projected on a big screen, so everyone could sing along with the brave person behind the microphone at the front of the pub. (So it was actually not that serious.) The star of the night: Julian who surprised the crowd with the song “To love somebody”. Wow, that was amazing!

The rest of the night passed by quickly with singing and dancing along to great performances. And one, maybe even two freshly tapped beers. However, at the end of the night we found ourselves not back on sea, but in beautiful Gastown. Luckily!

Keep your chins up, soon it will be weekend again! I hope to see you on Sunday for a tour behind the scenes at the Rogers Arena.

– Kerstin

INTERNeX International Exchange
International Village,
Suite 2077, 2079 – 88 West Pender Street
Vancouver, Canada -V6B 6N9-
Web: http://www.internexcanada.com
Email: pr@internexcanada.com

PR-team Adventures

It is always exciting to work at INTERNeX. Almost every week there is something happening here and so did Friday.

It is always hard to miss your boyfriend for such a long time and Daniëlle knows all about that. Her boyfriend left the Netherlands for his internship at the beginning of the school year and they would not see each other till the end of August. This meant that they would not see each other for a whole year. Little did she know that he planned to come over for 2 weeks as a surprise.

He already planned it for months and told Daniëlle that he would not be able to visit her. This all made sense to her, as he had been spending a lot of money during his internship and therefore could not afford a flight to Canada. Her boyfriend planned everything around it; the days off, the flight and getting picked up from the airport.

Friday was the big day, Daniëlle’s boyfriend would arrive in the afternoon and we had to keep her busy till he would arrive. It was good timing that I had to film for INTERNeX Explorer the whole day, as I am very bad in keeping secrets. It was therefore no surprise that I only found out about it a few days beforehand. Simon had been teasing her the whole day and said that we would get a surprise in the afternoon. I think it was good that she did not know that the big surprise was for her, as she just said that she hates surprises.

When Daniëlle finally saw her boyfriend walking towards her, you could see that she was overwhelmed by different kind of emotions. “What are you doing here?” was the first reaction she had on her big surprise. That reaction totally made sense to me, because it must have been very confusing to see your boyfriend in Canada while he was supposed to be in the Netherlands. After that she was kind of in shock, but overall she looked really happy to see him again.

It was great to see both of them reunite in Canada and I hope they have a great time together!

– Iris

INTERNeX International Exchange
International Village,
Suite 2077, 2079 – 88 West Pender Street
Vancouver, Canada -V6B 6N9-
Web: http://www.internexcanada.com
Email: pr@internexcanada.com

See you later alligator, after a while crocodile!

It seems this will be doubling as my ‘Goodbye’ post as well as the Pub Night Review for yesterday.

My time here in Vancouver with INTERNeX has been an indescribable experience for me.
When I arrived to begin my practicum as a PR Coordinator I received the orientation just like everyone else but of course there was a more. Because from then on it would be my job to take care of all the planning and organization of the INTERNeX events. I was preeeetty overwhelmed by everything. However, I was quite lucky! Natasja was there as well and she was already a pro when I met her. So, over the first few weeks I tried watching her in order to do just as an amazing job as she did. I had also set some goals for myself. I wanted to overcome my extreme shyness in the beginning. Hopefully not many of you remember this but in my first weeks I was super awkward and felt like a chicken with its head cut off.
Fortunately, I was able to complete my goal and take charge. From then on I can definitely say that I’ve had some of the best times of my life. I’m extremely thankful to Natasja and of course Tim, Simon and the rest of INTERNeX for being there to help me grow. It wasn’t only the people here at the office though. Without you guys, the INTERNeXers my stay in Vancouver would only have been half as awesome. I’m seriously not sure how it would have been if you hadn’t been there to accompany me on every trip and event.

Sadly, this blogpost cannot do the way I feel about my experience with everyone in Canada justice. I just hope I’ll be able to convey a fraction of it. For this practicum it’s really true that you get back just as much as you put in and much much more.

Which brings me to my last week in Vancouver. Originally I was planning on having a normal last Pub Night with everyone. However, it seemed like none of you would let me have that. Instead everyone threw a surprise party for my farewell. And I had no idea! It was a total success!
Tim and Steve tricked me into going to the HR Footprints office where everybody was waiting to ambush me. I was completely speechless and all I could repeatedly say is: “I didn’t expect this!”
Thank you all so much for doing this. It will certainly become one of my most treasured memories.

After recovering from the surprise attack and consuming all the cake, snacks and drinks that were prepared we headed over to the Morrissey which is where the Pub Night was supposed to be. Arriving there even more people were waiting.

We had an incredible time together and I’m really going to miss all of you!
But hopefully not for long 😉

 

It would be awesome to see you guys around some time.

Cheers!

INTERNeX International Exchange – PR Coordinator

work + live + learn

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