Things to Come

So I have returned home safely and enjoyed my first day back at school. But that doesn't mean that this blog is coming to an end. This weekend I will post some more photos and THIMUN retrospective. So just hang in there, I promise more to come.

Day 22: Amsterdam

It was sad to leave The Hague this morning - as I told you in my previous post. We gave our gifts to our host family (I was so happy that my mugs and plat I had brought as gifts remained perfectly in tact - go mum's packing skills!) and they were well recieved. We even taught our host sister how to drink tea through a Timtam. Exciting times being a tourist indeed. The train trip itself was uneventful although we did enjoy catching up after spending a week all but completely separated from one another.

After arriving in Amsterdam and checking in, we were set lose in the city. Our group grabbed lunch and then split up. I did look into going to the Anne Frank Museum, but the line would have taken half an hour to get through and it wasn't going to be worth the time. So my group explored and shopped. The city is beautiful, but, as we discovered, very similar all over. By the time it came to come home, we weren't sure how to get back and arrived back late because we were told to take the wrong tram and ended up going in the wrong direction. How helpful. But it was okay in the end, we made it back, an hour after we had set off for home.

One member of our delegation has already left, which is sad. Tomorrow we go our separate ways as some of us (such as myself) head off and others continue in Europe on private vacation. THIMUN 2011 has been an amazing experience. I promise I will post again soon.

Elyse

Days 19-21: The Hague!

Sorry for the wait, the THIMUN conference has been so full on I haven't had much time to do any blog posting. Mostly it's my fault and I do appologise, but I'll treat you now to a quick summary of my past three days (it has to be quick because I have to go catch a train to Amsterdam for my last full day before we fly out tomorrow :()

So, Wednesday was only a half day of debate, we finished debate before lunch and after lunch the Australian Delegation went out to the ICJ and met with Sir Christopher Greenwood, British Judge on the ICJ. He was an intelligent and very funny man who discussed the role of his job and how the judges were elected, as well as having a go at us Australians about the Ashes. It was an honour to meet him and learn just a small piece of the wisdom he had to offer. A very entertaining afternoon.

Despite a plan to celebrate Australia Day with the entire delegation, I did not feel too well and so decided to stay a home and get some much needed sleep. It was disappointing not to go out and enjoy The Hague whilst celebrating our national holiday, but I felt better in the morning for it.

On Thursday we had a full day of debate and I was lucky enough to be seconding the last resolution of the day. The issue of having set topics to write on had become very apparent as different resolutions came forward with the same solutions and clauses to ones we had debated and failed earlier. By the end of the day, most delegates were tired and my resolution I was seconding just happened to be the resolution they sought comic relief from. It was annoying that delegates proposed "funny" amendments on this resolution and I was disappointed that the resolution did not pass, but there was nothing more I could do. I was having an easier time that some of the delegates from Australia, so I thank my lucky stars for that.

Friday was the last day of debate and saw me seconding another resolution that experienced similiar problems to all the other resolutions on the topic and failed, sadly. When the two sub-commissions joined together we debated resolutions that had passed through one of the sub-commissions and the other delegate from the Commission on Crime and Punishment, Sarah, proposed one of them which was passed! Congratulations to her, I am so proud of her. She put in a lot of effort and the success was well-deserved.

Last night also was the final dance and our last night with some of the great people who have become allies, friends and occassionally hillarious enemies (in a good way) over the past week. The Australian Delegation left the final dance early with our hosts to go out and enjoy their company for what will sadly be the last time. I have met some amazing people and I now thank Facebook for its existance so I can keep in touch with them for what I hope will be forever. Well, at least until we meet again.

That is all there is to it, I have packed my bags and now look towards catching a train to Amsterdam. Tomorrow we fly home from what has been an amazing experience. Those who have participated in THIMUN before have not lied: THIMUN does change lives.

Day 17-18: The Hague!

Whooo! Two days later I get another opportunity to fill you in on the frustrations of THIMUN. It is very different to Australian MUNing which has caused confusion and a bit of stress amongst our delegates.

So the first day was in full swing by 9am, when we recieved our briefing on the rules of procedure and the room was divided up into our separate resolution topics so we could be diplomatic, merge resolutions and the like because the chair said they would only accept two resolutions on each subject. So you can imagine my horror when pretty much my ENTIRE commission came over to Youth Crime with me. The worst part was, diplomacy really wasn't the main aim of the resolution discussions, proposing was. People gave the impression that if they didn't propose then their life would be basically over. Wow, talk about pressure. A group of us merged resolutions and I said that we should draw the proposer and seconder out of a hat to make it sort of fair (although people complained behind the proposer's back to me afterwards, cause being little girls is really diplomatic) and I was drawn out as seconder! So that's very exciting, the resolution went to Approval Panel today but I'm not sure how it went. I will find out tomorrow.

So that was yesterday at THIMUN in a nutshell, although my host sister, Laura, took me and Honeylyn out with her friends who were also hosting, so most of our delegation spent a night out with our hosts. It was a lot of fun, although we did end up getting locked into a train because the trains are entirly automated and when they shut down, they lock up so you can't get out. Much awkwardness all around. Other than that I made some really great friends who I have also spent today enjoying the company of. Tonight we are spending a quiet night in as tomorrow we are meeting with an ICJ judge and then celebrating Australia day, so we need to get our rest.

Today also saw the start of debate. So firstly, we sat through over 100 very repetitive opening speeches, all one minute long. Some people had some great things to say, others rambled on pointlessly, which was disappointing. I had not been allocated a speech, but the other girl, Sarah, who is in my committee and delegation was. Unfortunately, she had to take her resolution to the Approval Board during the opening speech time and so would miss her speech, meaning I got to deliever her speech instead. So, despite Sarah's misfortune, I was very pleased with being able to deliver a speech to the committee.

Today we debated two resolutions, one on youth crime and the other on cultural differences affect the concept of crime and punishment. There is no speakers list a THIMUN, speakers are called from the floor. This means that you may hear four speeches in a row from the 'for' arguement on the resolution and occassionally, no one from the against, purely because no one knows who is on what side of the debate until they start speaking. Today, in the youth crime resolution, the resolution was passed because we only had about one speech that was against the resolution. This meant easily swayed votes were tipped towards the 'for' side anyway. This was unfortunate, because I was against the resolution. After this, I started sending out notes to create an alliance of countries from Africa to make sure that a resolution is not passed that will be of detriment to Africa again. Whoo, politics!

That's all for now,

Elyse

Day 16: THE HAGUE!!

Boo-yeh! Today has been wonderously exciting, full of meeting new people and sleeping in (yes!) What has been also the saddest and least eventful day yet was also full of joy and thrills. Biggest joys of the day include:

 - meeting my host family
- waking up at 7, knowing after an 8am breakfast I got to go back to bed
- meeting other delegates
- knowing that the conference starts tomorrow

Saddest Moment: Saying Goodbye to Rob and Matt (our topdeck tour boys) as our tour with them has ended. :(

So this morning my alarm went off at 7am, so I got up and packed my bags - managing to do so effectivly enough to be able to no longer have to carry around a H&M bag to fit in all my clothes (Yes! A great triumph there!) I then went down to breakfast and enjoyed my last hotel buffet breakfast for a little while at least. Not to worry. I returned to my room and spent my morning napping and watching Bob L'éponge (SpongeBob Squarepants) on French TV. That show is weird in English, but on French it just takes on a whole new level! 


At noon, we left Brussels on our last bus trip. Most of this was taken up by THIMUN briefings, hightening the excitment as we entered the Hague. Hugs, presents and thankyous were shared as we sadly said goodbye to Rob and Matt. Matt has been a fabulous driver and both have been really amazing people over the past 17 days. Unfortunately, I never managed to be able to balance that lightsaber for 30 seconds, I might be able to do ten if I am lucky. They were great entertainment, very intelligent and friendly and definately made my first trip to Europe and enjoyable one. We will miss you guys.


After many group hugs, we entered the THIMUN conference area to be registered. During this time, we introduced ourselves to other delegates and started a bit of lobbying. Of the almost 15 delegates from my Special Commision on Crime and Punishment, all bar one of them has written a resolution on Youth Crime. It looks like there will be intense lobbying on my part if I want my Youth Crime Resolution to be passed. Oh well, all the more fun to be had tomorrow.


We got on the last bus to the British School of the Netherlands and met with our host family. Can I just say, they are amazing. After spending only an hour, at a generous estimate, in their company, I already feel right at home. They have been so nice and welcoming. I will definately be enjoying going home at the end of a long conference day.


So excited for tomorrow


~Elyse

Day 14-15: Paris and Brussels

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

Day 13: Paris - FREE DAY!

Whoooo! Hi guys, just got back in, so excited and slightly overwhelmed. Just spent a whole day in Paris! It was amazing. I come bearing words and pictures of my day and all the exciting things we did. I am tired though, by the time I reached the Notre Dame I was pretty much overstimulated and hardly taking it all in. But enough rambling, lets start from the beginning....

We started the day as a whole group by going to the Eiffle Tower. We were disappointed by the fact that the top of the tower was closed because it is winter and the wind and cold just makes it unsafe, however, we did decide to take the lift up to the second floor. Below are photos of me at the Eiffle Tower and of the view from the second floor. The sun was rising and the rays of light through the clouds just looked amazing.

See - I'm actually there

The view

The sun through the clouds

So after that we broke off into our groups. I was in a group which included Claire, a seasoned Paris traveller with a plan for our entire day. We began by catching the Metro to the Arc de Triomphe where we visited the tomb of the unknown soldier and posed for many pictures.

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

The Arc before we went through the underpass to get onto the roundabout it is located on

After the Arc we walked along the Champs Elysee (meaning the "fields of peace", but I prefer "Elyse the Champ" :P) There we did some shopping and grabbed a bite to eat before getting on the Metro to go to the Louvre.

Yeah Boiz

Me on the stairs in Swarovski

Disney Store!

So after a bit of a shopping spree and a short metro trip, we arrived at the Louvre. Today I appreciated the fact i was under 18 as entry to most things is free for children (under 18) which meant that my trip to the famous at museum was free. It was amazing! There are many pictures I could show you, but lets just skip to the most important one:

That's right. Front row at the Mona Lisa. It actually looks awesome in real life, the images you normally see are yellow tinted so she looks sickly and bland. I was pleasently surprised at how pretty it actually was. And yes, the eyes do follow you around the room; I checked.

After the Louvre we went to see Monet's Water Lilly Paintings at Orangerie. There's no really good pictures to go here, just photos of the paintings in the oval rooms. Let me tell you though, it was very pretty. The works were fabulous and made me wish I was creative.

We were disappointed as our next trip was to the Paris Opera House, which was unfortunately closed for renovations. The Phantom was obviously busy today and we sadly decided to hit the shops for some Paris fashion. One of the stores there had a dome as a roof that was abolsutely gorgeous. See:

Yes, that is the roof of the local department store. Really makes Pitt Street Mall look second rate aye? Such is my continual realisation that Australia has very little to show for its age.

After we expressed our inner shop-a-holic, our group travelled to the Notra Dame (Church of our Lady.) We were originally going to stop at Saint Cathedral, however this place to was closed for renovations. So we went straight back to Notra Dame and spent a lot of time there, taking the place in. I even sat through part of a sung mass, which was interesting as it was in French so I didn't have a clue what was going on. I didn't get any decent photos of the inside, which is sad, but the images couldn't have captured the place appropriately.

On our way home Matt, our bus driver, took us into the Louvre courtyard to show us how gorgeous it is at night. he wasn't lying. Seriously, this photos I have to share with you:

Louvre by night

I know I am owing in other images and photos of me in other cities, but I don't have the time to share them with you tonight. Tomorrow we meet with the Australian Mission to Paris, which is very exciting. Hopefully, I can share photos i owe tomorrow night. Until then,

Elyse