Sorry I didn't post yesterday, I needed the sleep as this morning we were leaving at 6am, so sleep was more important than blogging. But I can give you a summary of the past two days whislt I have a lot of free time here in Brussels. Also, I am posting now because Hagen was bugging me to do so. Shout out to Hagen!
So Paris yesterday was characterised by a diplomatic meeting with the Deputy Commissioner to Paris, whose main role is to be Australia's Ambassador to UNESCO. In that meeting we also met and spoke to the ambassador to OECD and one of the lower ranked diplomats in the mission to Paris, UNESCO and OECD. It was just by coincidence that we happened to meet with the Ambassador to Paris, head of the delegation as he was coming out from a breakfast meeting. He walked past and just chatted to us, asking us where we were from and about THIMUN, it was really exciting. I didn't expect that the ambassador would do something like that (I imagined he'd be too busy with furthering Australia's national interests to have time for a chat with 17 high school students.) The meeting itself was really interesting, discussions on how to get a role as an australian diplomat and the overlapping roles of international organisations such as UNESCO and OECD were in depth and detailed.
After the meeting, we broke off for lunch, after which we went to the Palace of Versailles. This place is absolutely huge, I was hardly surprised the peasants revolted after they were taxed so heavily to build a palace like this. I mean, people were living in poverty and starving to death whilst the King and Queen had separate bedchambers and gold all through their palace. Let's not get started on the servants they would have needed to keep the place clean. It was just obscene.
It was with sadness that we left Paris, although most of us slept away our sorrows on the bus after getting up before 5am to get ready for Brussels. Upon our arrival in the new city, we enjoyed a lovely morning tea and diplomatic meeting with Dr. Brendan Nelson, Australian Ambassador to Brussels, NATO and the EU. Aside from the incredible and funny stories Dr. Nelson shared with us, I was amazing by his house and the caramel slice that was served for morning tea. It was an absolute pleasure to meet Dr Nelson and his wife, something I would never have been able to do if I had not gone on this trip.
Originally, we were going to grab lunch and go meet with the International Crisis Group, however the representative we were going to be meeting with called in sick and our meeting was cancelled. Instead, we got to experience Brussels, which naturally meant chocolate shops and going to see the Manneken Pis (statue of a little boy weeing.) Brussels is a beautiful city with some amazing shops (Tin Tin!) so today was definately a lot of fun.
Tomorrow we leave for THIMUN, at long last. I am very excited, if somewhat nervous, to begin the actual conference. I will be meeting with my host family tomorrow as well. Wish me luck.
Elyse
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