Friday

Ahhhh Good Friday....it was the last day of work for us delegates. Since our first topic had resolutions passed, we began topic 2: The Women, the girl/child, and HIV/AIDS. Immediately, the former African bloc huddled together. This time, however, we split into two separate groups. One group focused on governmental aspects and transparency (taking more of a long term goal approach), while the second group focused on more of a "grass roots" approach and focused on maternal health and well-being of the mother, mother to child transmission prevention, healthcare education provided to said women keeping in mind the cultural sensitivity that the cultures may face. It was important for us to be able work with the local/tribal leaders. Seeing them on board, the community would be more apt to working with the organization. After the first meeting, we broke for lunch and I had one of the best hotdogs in New York (well, two). After we came back, we wrapped up our drafts, passed them into Draft Resolutions, and began voting procedures. I left a bit early (for religious reasons).

After I finished my obligation, Kurt and I had a chef's tasting menu at Lupa, a restaurant owned by the Iron Chef, Mario Batalli. It was PERFECT!!!! I loved every second of it! We were so stuffed, we decided to walk around and work off some of the food we consumed. It was a good thing we ate, because we went shopping afterward. I tend to buy clothes that are too small for me, so it was good to be full and buy the "appropriate size" haha. We had a lot of fun and visited a lot of places :-)

Thursday

Thursday was our longest day! We began at 9:30 in the morning and ended our last session at 10:30. We got so much accomplished!! During the first session, several people got put on the speakers' list and advocated for their working papers. Maddie and I sat in with the African bloc, and co-sponsored (co-authored) a paper emphasizing education, infrastructure and roadways to rural areas, mobile health clinics, and Emergency kits for expecting mothers to prevent mother to child transmission of HIV/AIDS. During the lunch break, I ate with members of the countries I worked with at Junior's Bar across the street from the hotel and had one of the most delicious burgers I've ever eaten in my life! Lunch was a very special time for us. We got to get "out of character" and really get to know one another. We had come from all over the world. It was so wonderful to hear everyone's story.

When we got back, we completed our draft and made the corrections. The Dias accepted the working paper and it became a Draft Resolution. To make a long story short, six papers in all were written. The paper Guinea (Maddie and myself) co-sponsored was the first one to pass into a Resolution, and was the only one that passed with no abstains or refusals. Everyone voted yes to our paper!!!! Later, I was told it won an award and was selected to be presented to the United Nations.

Later that night, I was dog tired. We didn't do much. Kurt and I went out for a quick cocktail (much deserved), and called it a night.

Wednesday

So, my reasoning for not blogging throughout the trip is very legit; lack of internet!!! OMG there was no internet in the conference rooms (where most of our time was spend), and very limited access to the internet in the hotel rooms. So, what I've decided to do is give a play by play of each day. My blogs will be shorter in length, and will be more interesting to read :-)

Wednesday morning Kurt and I woke up and went to a beautiful Belgian restaurant where Belgian waffles, coffee, and burgers were consumed. It was such a beautiful place! Afterward, we strolled around the city, and headed back to the room to prepare for formal session.

During formal session, we opened the speakers' list and set our topic agenda; 1, 3, 2. Our first topic was increasing healthcare access to women in conflict and post conflict situations. The body divided ourselves up and started our working papers. Maddie and I were in the "African bloc", which focused primarily on education, mother to child transmitting of HIV/AIDS, and establishing mobile health clinics. As a delegate of Guinea, our primary concern was how the mobile clinics would be able to reach the rural areas (primarily tribal territories) where roadways had not been established. The bloc included in the working paper the infrastructure to establish roadways to rural areas to increase healthcare access. We worked with countries such as Senegal, Nomibia, the Central Republic of Africa, etc. (you get the idea). We wrapped up our sessions at 10:30 that evening.

Sup, So the last couple of days have been going pretty good. Tuesday morning I drove to the airport running on no sleep from the night before, but we manged to get there safely due to my awesome driving skills. Maddie, LeAnna, and Kegan manged to keep me awake with the random conversations. When we arrived at the airport I noticed that I did not have my drivers license with me. Luckily I was able to pass with having my student id and social security card. The plane ride was good etc...fast forward to when we started the conference. It started off slow because no one really knew anybody and then once we started to discuss the issues, it was a lot of fun. I meant a friend who is actually from the country of Guinea and we began to talk about varies issues that people deal with in her country. By Friday I was done with discussing the issue of sovereignty over natural resources and was ready to vote. The voting process was even longer. Countries kept wanting to vote by roll call and I was ready to go. When ended up staying overtime due to voting. Now it is Friday night and I am about to go eat dinner with my teammates and enjoy the rest of my evening. Peace!

Good Reads Come to Those Who Wait #procrastination

What up world? Oh, yeah, I already what's up, with each and every one of you. How do I know, you ask? Well, I'm in the rustic countryside of New York City at the National Model United Nations Conference hanging out with ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY ONE other countries. After hearing a ton of representatives give speeches and through caucusing, I think I know what most countries are thinking- at least regarding the subject of my committee (World Intellectual Property Organization), which deals with patenting rights and the fight against HIV/AIDS in developing nations. Since this is my first post for this surefire future award winning blog, I'll summarize what has happened over the course of the past few days.

Monday (and, technically, Tuesday)

I was absolutely determined to make some headway on future homework, finish packing, and fall asleep by eleven o'clock in order to wake up at 4:30 to meet the other Model UNers at the Kinard parking lot by 4:45. Of course, should have known better. My roommate had just synced his Netflix account with his XBOX 360, and he had spent several thousand hours watching various movies and TV shows in the past few weeks (undoubtedly trying to improve his SceneIt skills, of course). Sunday afternoon, he had discovered the show Jericho, and quickly had both myself and my brother hooked after watching the pilot episode. So, once 11 o'clock rolled around, I had yet to even start packing due to this addicting Jericho business. I decided to take my time packing that night while watching Jericho, and also learned how to tie a tie. This was perhaps the greatest achievement of my sophomore year of college.

Anyways, many episodes later, Sean Ray drove Vihara and me to Kinard to pick up Ryan and drive to the Memphis Airport. We were all in the it's-too-early-i'm-delirious-please-get-me-caffeine phase, so we had some really interesting conversations. Once at the airport, most of the gang decided to look for food. While some Model UNers quickly sat down at the first appeasing "restaurant" they found, neither Ryan nor I would settle. We wanted real food. We wanted delicious food. We wanted Popeye's. Thus, we embarked on a minutes long journey to another terminal to reach the Land of Gold and Honey. We quickly scarfed down our biscuits, then met up with everyone else to wait for our plane. After boarding the plane a few minutes early, I quickly found my window seat and then quickly fell asleep.

I groggily woke up two hours later to the captain announcing we were fifteen minutes away and to fasten our seat belts. I was happy we were almost there, but my bladder was not happy that we had to stay in our seats. My two Monster energy drinks and nearly endless supply of water had caught up to me. I impatiently waited for the plane to land 30 minutes later, then rushed to the nearest men's room.

After grabbing our checked luggage, four of us got a cab to drive us to the Marriot Marquis on Times Square. I had shotgun for the nearly conversationless drive, and singlehandedly saved our poor driver from crashing into another car ON TWO SEPARATE OCCASIONS. I had to warn him when he got literally inches from driving into other cabs. Seriously, a barefoot, overall-wearing, 12 year-old Mississippian could have driven better than this guy. Which, in the minds of some Model UNers from cultured states, is the typical Mississippian. lawlz.

But, we did manage to arrive to our hotel safe and sound, so a few of us went to H&M a few blocks away after eating at Famiglia's Famous Pizzeria. After looking around for some cheap clothes, I finally settled upon a cheap pair of shoes so I could go to the hotel's workout facility (which I'll refer to as the Turner Center). A few hours later, we made it up to our hotel room, showered, then went to the NMUN's opening ceremony at 6 to listen to DIKEMBE 'NOT IN MY HOUSE' MUTOMBO!!!!! This made my day. I've been a fan of the 7' 2" former NBA star from the Democratic Republic of Congo ever since I was a tiny lad playing Pee Wee basketball. He had a deep, hoarse voice, but his message was clear- use this conference to learn from one another in order to make the world a better place.

My first committee began one hour after the opening ceremony ended. After a lengthy roll call (15 or so minutes) and a speech from the Dais, about 75 placards shot up in the air with each intent on motioning for a caucus. Once we voted on the length of the caucus, everyone jumped up and started shouting (which was against protocol, I later found out) "Africa!!" or "EU!!!" or "Middle East!!" while the U.S. of A. just casually walked around the room. As a first time Model UNer, I experienced an adrenaline rush and did not know what to do. I looked for some other African states, but could not find any for some reason. I found a big congregation of people just outside Astor Ballroom (where the WIPO committee is held) so I listened in on their conversations.

I found myself in the middle of European Union states who were debating the order of topics we would discuss. Everyone had their own opinion, and of course most of these states wanted to focus on climate change instead of fighting HIV/AIDS. Sweden, however, was undeterred in his plight to help developing nations. He argued that helping African nations fight HIV/AIDS would help strengthen ties among the E.U. and African bloc, but most of the European nations had apparently just seen An Inconvenient Truth and wanted nothing of the sort. Luckily for Guinea, most other nations do not care what Al Gore thinks; after caucus, a majority of the nations voted to help developing nations combat HIV/AIDS. Once committee was over, I went to the famous McDonalds on Times Square (I always end up eating unhealthy foods on days I travel). Once getting back to the hotel, however, I immediately met my new best friend- the Sandman.

Wednesday

I had fallen asleep around 12 the night before and woke up after 12:30 the next morni...er, afternoon. This was all fine and dandy, though, because we did not start committee until two hours later. I decided to head to a deli to grab a quick lunch, then ate it at the hotel (Oh, btdubs guys, New York is expensive. Like, Vaught-Hemingway Stadium concession-stand expensive. Good thing I'm gonna be rich and famous one day once my blogging career takes off so I don't have to worry about the prices).

When I was in the elevator heading down to committee, I met a delegate from The Gambia. As a fellow African nation, I made a point to sit near him at committee then meet up with him at our next caucus to see which nations he had met up with the night before. Roughly 30 minutes after committee started, we had our first caucus of the day, and I walked with him and the other Gambian delegate to the front left corner of the room to meet with (mostly) other developing nations. Yemen was spearheading the discussions with her laptop and bullet points, and I like the topics they and other members (Syria, Turkey, Myanmar, Argentina, and Israel, to name a few) had brought up, so I decided to work with them. I researched compulsory licensing until the caucus ended, and then we were out of committee moments afterwards. I was happy to have finally found a group to work with.

In between committee, I decided to take advantage of the Marriott's Turner Center on the 23rd floor. I changed from my jacket/tie/khakis combo in favor of a fraternity t-shirt, basketball shorts, and my "athletic" shoes I had bought the previous day. I was one of five people in the Turner Center, and one of those five worked the front desk. I sat down on a bench near the free weights, while a super super super super super super super super skinny and timid black man worked out by himself at the nearby Smith Machine. Knowing that the New York City Marathon had recently taken place, I thought that he might have run in it and then decided to stay in town for a few extra days to enjoy the sights.

Anyways, I worked out for about an hour and a half while enjoying daytime ESPN programs and grabbed a complimentary Granny Smith apple on the way out. I quickly showered, ate the rest of my pasta from the deli, and headed back to committee. I found the Speaker's List to be quite useless around this time, because most nations were simply sputtering rhetoric about how we must work together, and that HIV/AIDS is bad, and whatnot. We all knew this already. Thus, after every four or five speakers, we voted for to caucus every time. I spent more time researching the topics of my group's report, which included the TRIPS agreement and more compulsory licensing. After committee, I unwound in the hotel room and watched the NBA playoffs. I'm a big New Orleans Hornets fan since I live only 45 minutes away from the Big Easy, and I was pleasantly surprised when my Hornets defeated the number two seed Lakers IN LOS ANGELES this past Sunday. I was really excited to watch the game, but wound up going to bed disappointed once the Lakers managed to tie the series up at one game apiece.

Thursday

ThursDay was a good day for me, but ThursMorning was not a good morning for me. I earliest class each day of the week this semester has been at 11, 1, 11, 9:30, and 12. And that's Central Time Zone. NYC wants to rush ahead and do everything one hour in advance of everyone else in America, including the act of waking up. My committee started at 9:30 that morning, which is like 8:30 in Mississippi, so I had to wake up around 7:30 in MS time. My body was not happy. I was sore from working out the day before, and was starving from hardly eating anything that day too. So, I trudged along through committee and caucuses that morning, as I had absolutely no idea where the Starbucks was (the Marriott is 43 floors I think, and the first eight are filled with either general lobbies, shops, information centers, or tourist traps). I did not want to waste time looking for it, so I was impatiently waiting for the first of the three committees scheduled for Thursday to end. Without energy, everything seemed to take even longer than it actually was: the already-lengthy roll call, the counting of placard for voting, the researching, the sixty second speeches, the whole shabang. Jon needed caffeine and food.

So, once the highly anticipated time of 12:30 rolled around, I was ecstatic and ran to get food. I met Ryan and Rachel "WhatchuTalkinBout" Willis in the lobby downstairs and walked briskly in the wind to Chipotle's Mexican Grill, where I ordered an absolutely ginormous steak burrito and scarfed it down in minutes. I was the first one done, then Rachel finished a few minutes later, and Ryan only ate about half of his. It was a big burrito, and my stomach was happy.

I then ventured to the Turner Center for only a quick workout because our second three-hour committee of the day was approaching, but returned to committee with my Galaxy S in hand, ready to research (the Marriott's internet is unbearably slow, like Ole Miss slow, so I made due with the tiny screen of my cell phone to research information). Surprisingly, however, I did not have to research at all. When I was dealing with my body's hateful nature towards me that morning, my group had actually finished the report. In the first caucus of the second committee, I was handed a freshly printed report. So, naturally, I spent most of my time looking over the report, hoping to understand everything it said in order to be able to persuade others to become signitories. During this committee I also made sure to see what other blocs/groups were researching as well, much to the Dais's delight I'm sure. She had announced that they had received over fifteen papers, which is a lot. She recommended finding like-minded groups and merging papers, so I tried to do this. It didn't work out exactly as I had planned. Oh well, on to our second break of the very long day.

I met up with two of my roommates, Kegan and LaBrandon, and I led them to a Japanese restaurant for dinner. I take Japanese language classes and hadn't eaten Asian food in a while, so I was craving Japanese and I'm glad my roommates wanted to eat there as well. All three of us ordered a different kind of sushi, but I also ordered teriyaki salmon- I was starving after working off that burrito at the Turner Center. We had some good conversations, which ranged from food (of course), to Model UN, to life after college, to basketball, to do-rags, to #hashtags, and to many other topics. Kegan then surprised us by ordering fried ice cream for dessert, but I was perhaps even more surprised that a Japanese restaurant actually served fried ice cream. My small-town Mississippi mind was blown.

We then geared up for our final committee sessions of the day. At this point in the game I was basically just doing the same things I did from the second committee. So, I'll give two color commentaries (#NBAtalk) from what happened instead:

1. EVERY time the Holy See was called during roll, the delegate would always say, "The Holy See is Present" instead of simply "Present" or "Present and Voting." A majority of the room snickered every single time (myself included).

2. Another roll call story- There are four different nations that have the word "Guinea" in them: Equatorial Guinea, Guinea, Guinea-Bassau, and Papua New Guinea. When "Guinea" was called during roll, I would look at the Chair, stand up, and say "Present" loud enough for him to hear me. Then, without hesitation, he would call for "Guinea-Bassau." The first time roll was called, I was nervous and thought that I was the first delegate who he didn't hear or that Guinea wasn't important enough to merit a delegate for the WIPO. But then, once my nerves settled, I realized that he had simply called another country. I thought like this for at least half of my committee roll calls.

After this third committee, Rachel Willis came up to my hotel room to hang out with the "cool room" people: Kegan, LaBrandon, Ryan, and myself. We played cards for a long time, watched The Simpsons and then the Trailblazers-Mavericks game, and talked until the wee hours of the morning (i.e. roughly 1 AM). We all had to wake up early for Friday's first committee, so we went to bed rather peacefully.

Tomorrow (or Sunday on the plane ride back to Memphrica), I plan on filling you guys in on Friday's committee sessions and Saturday activities. A lot of stuff happened today, and I can't wait to tell you allllllllllllllllll about it.

Pray for me that I don't die tonight..I know I won't be resurrected on Sunday #goodfriday

Until next time,

Jon

New York: Part Dva

Well the last two days have been jam packed with committee and exploring New York City. Wednesday, a group of us decided to venture out in Times Square looking for some decent food. We ran into a Chinese buffet for like $8.00 a lb. which was pretty expensive but started a general craving for Chinese food. Thanks to our handy-dandy iPhone, we managed to find an incredible Chinese restaurant about six block away with huge lunch plates for about $7.00. Definitely worth it!

Once the Security Council reconvened, all attention was on the topic at hand: the Responsibility to Protect. Initially, our delegation split up so as to sponsor two separate working papers. The number of papers a delegation sponsors is one of the criteria used to judge their performance at NMUN. The working paper I was associated with emerged out of a group composed of Uganda, Japan, Austria and Mexico. Our main focus was creating an early warning system within the structure of the UN Security Council to monitor possible breaches of the responsibility to protect by coordinating information sharing efforts with regional organizations around the world. The rest of the day was spent addressing concerns from other member states about the exact implementation of the early warning system and hammering out a compromise between the different positions.

This effort was continued bright an early on Thursday as our committee convened at 8:30 AM. By this point, the sponsors of our working paper knew that we would eventually have to merge it with the other three working papers proposed in the Security Council to create a coherent document. Our efforts to facilitate this integration were often frustrating because it felt like some delegations really weren’t interested in understanding our position. After nearly twelve hours of constant discussions between our delegation and other members of the council, an acceptable compromise was reached which maintained the original intent of the working paper while actually highlighting its importance by placing it in an annex to the final resolution itself.

The final vote provided a bit of humor as there was a disagreement on whether the resolution should be adopted by acclimation (a verbal declaration by the group) or a roll call vote in which each country must vote yea, nay, or abstain. It was our delegation’s position that adoption by acclimation would present the most united front by eliminating officially registered abstentions. The Brazilian delegation objected on the grounds that any abstentions were unacceptable and called for a roll call vote. Unfortunately for them, the delegate from China unintentionally abstained and the Russian delegation followed suit. All that could have been avoided with an acclimation vote, but sometimes people just have to live and learn.

Looking forward to another early morning tomorrow; we’re not sure whether we will be discussing the Security Council’s second topic – the situation in Afghanistan – or deal with a crisis simulation, but either way the session is sure to be spirited. Stay tuned for further updates…

- Isaac

New York and CSW

Wow!!! Who knew New York was this big?! Being a first timer, I was overwhelmed at all the sights, sounds, and wonders the city has to offer. I am in between sessions, so this blog will have to be brief.
We arrived in New York on Tuesday, a little after noon. After arriving at the hotel, the sight seeing began! Being a 'foodie' I went with Kurt to explore the culinary delights the city had to offer. While out, we visited one of the H&M stores, bought a few casual clothes, and then came back to the hotel for our first session. I have to say, MUN is like any career or field; you learn about 30% in the classroom, and 70% in formal session. There are so many people! At first, everything was very overwhelming. There are delegates that have extensive knowledge regarding the history of the United Nations, its Commissions, Committees, and all participating countries. I was fortunate enough to sit next to a delegate representing the country of Namibia. She was kind enough to show me the ropes and walk me through the first day. Y'all would be proud of me! I was the first delegate to speak at the CSW during the first formal session! Woop Woop!!! Okay, I have to get to session. I'll be back on later to give a slightly more detailed account over what has happened. Keep sending the good vibes!!!