GCI 2014 Staff in the UN
Here are a few anecdotes about the weekend to help you get a picture of my experience...
Opening ceremonies
We snaked students around the UN building and throughout the hallways while we waited for three hours to begin the opening ceremonies. During those three hours, we caught glimpses of indigenous people tramping through the UN headquarters in their traditional garb, ready to represent their people and inspire the delegates to maintain the rights of the people who lived on the land before colonization and megacities. I admit the wait was long, but knowing that real UN delegates were in session discussing important issues made the sarcastic questions from advisers ("Is this the opening ceremonies or the closing ceremonies? We've been here so long I don't even know anymore.") seem somewhat unwarranted and thus easier to bear.
When we finally made it in, the staffers sitting in the back began the blackmail, documenting and publically shaming (on our FB group) anyone who decided to take a snooze.
One of many snoozers. Was this one on #teamnosleep?
Taking it easy
A few months ago, I took a rather lengthy survey that would determine my roommates for the conference. It became clear on the first day that we had all stated our desire to not be part of #teamnosleep on the survey, so I figured my chances of sleep deprivation during the conference were significantly reduced. Our schedules were packed with early (like 6 AM early) morning meetings, late night staff socials, and training and committee sessions all day long. However, my roommates (energetic and social college kids who didn't have to worry about how sleep deprivation would influence their ability to enjoy a week of wedding preparations for their sister's wedding), were quickly drawn in by the thrill of the nightlife in NYC. This led to the following conversation on Thursday night...
Roommate #1: I think I'm going to go out tonight.
Roommate #2: I'm definitely going out tonight.
Roommate #1: Yeah, we took it easy last night, so we should go out.
Amber: Took it easy? I was the first one asleep last night and went to bed at 12:30. I got the most sleep, but I had to wake up at 5:00 to shower and get breakfast before our 6:30 meeting. That's FOUR AND A HALF hours of sleep. That is taking it EASY?
Roommate #1: Well we didn't go out, so yeah...
This was the beginning of many conversations between me and my roommates that basically consisted of:
Roommate: Noticing that Amber has brushed her teeth and is reading in bed in her pajamas... Wait, Amber... aren't you coming out...?
Amber: Thinking of how poorly she was representing Spanish nightlife but at the same time, really not caring... NO WAY, José.
Teacher Amber
The other members of my dais started to chuckle at me after a few days, talking about how they could see my personality and mannerisms switch into teacher mode whenever I saw the students. Then, after a few days they said to me, "Amber, you're such a teacher! It comes to you so naturally. So naturally that now we're starting to doubt which is your default. We thought that you switched out of social mode to go into teacher mode for the kids... but maybe that is your default mode and you have to switch into a special mode to be able to talk to us..."
The kids
Amber: Talking to Ankit as he gets out of the elevator... Ankit, have you seen the kids?
Ankit: No, not yet, have you?
Amber: As the doors are closing... Yep! I just saw two of them!
Doors close on Amber in the elevator with a young female GCI staffer.
GCI staffer: So, uh, you brought kids to the conference?
Amber: Yep, we have ten here with us.
GCI staffer: Ten?!
Amber: Yep, they just got in this afternoon from Madrid with their teachers.
GCI staffer: Ohhhhhhhh, they are students?
Elevator arrives to Amber's floor and the doors begin to open.
Amber: Exiting, Yep! I was in charge of the GC program in Madrid this school year.
GCI staffer: Oh, gosh. Phew! I thought you were a Mom!
Dumbfounded and with her mouth hanging wide open, Amber turns and watches the doors close on the young staffer. A mom?!
Cup point
Throughout the GCI conference, the staff was grouped into different bodies of the UN who were all competing against each other for the infamous 'cup points'. At the end of the conference, the team with the most cup points won the chance to drink out of a special trophy (in the shape of a cup) which seemed to have a huge significance for many other MUNers but to this day is something that I don't understand.
I was, however, a recipient of a cup point... that was awarded on behalf of an adviser. When one of the delegates hailing from Mexico started to feel dizzy during committee, I sat in the hall with her while we contacted all of the necessary supervisors and got permission for the student to be able to go back to her room to lie down. While we waited, we sat and chatted about the six week solo trip around Europe that her parents let her take when she was 17 years old. (Slightly shocked, I had NO problem coming up with more questions to ask her about the trip.)
I fully enjoyed the conversation, AND it gave me a chance to sit down after hours of walking around the room, passing notes between Germany and France and Swaziland and South Africa. Nevertheless, I wasn't about to deny the cup point since our team (which was one of the smaller teams) wasn't doing so well. But my roommate called me out on it when I got back to our room and joked with me, "Amber, you would get a cup point for that! It's not really fair... you're such a mom!"
(Are we noticing a trend? The other staffers thought I was old!)
HRC (Human Rights Council) Dais - the best dais ever - selfie! HRC is of the three daises that is part of the Functional and Subsidiary Bodies team.
Selfies
I had no idea that selfies were such a big deal. At our USG group dinner, someone tried to take a selfie of us and wasn't able to fit us all in. One of the staffers from the other table took the picture for us, but instructed the guy to stick his arm out so that it looked like he was taking a selfie. Everyone considered this to be #protip (so much #ing and so many pro tips during the week...) worthy and I seemed to be the only person who had missed the memos that selfies had become a desirable look for a photo. Who knew?!
GC Madrid selfie! Gone are the days when we would ask the teacher standing right next to us to take the picture for us...
Senior Secretariat selfie! And Amber? Somehow the newbie (me) ended up riding back to the hotel in a fancy SUV after the staff social with the people who ran the conference.
Senior Secretariat selfie! And Amber? Somehow the newbie (me) ended up riding back to the hotel in a fancy SUV after the staff social with the people who ran the conference.
The missing passport
On the last morning in New York City, I got a bit of surprise teacher training.
For the first time throughout the whole conference, I was finally going to get the chance to hang out with the students who had come from Madrid. I had passed them a few times coming in and out of the elevators, but we spent all day in different committee sessions and they were out touring New York City with their teachers by the time that I got out of debriefing meetings at the end of the day.
So, on Sunday morning, we all met in the lobby at 9 to leave our bags with the concierge and grab some breakfast before heading out to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. Since the Grand Hyatt is attached to Grand Central Station, we decided to go to Junior's in the food court for some bagels and breakfast sandwiches.
After breakfast, we headed back to the hotel lobby to pick up the stragglers who had overslept and forgotten to pack. Once we met up with them, we did a quick count, only to find that we were missing a student. Seconds later though, Iván showed up. I began to herd everyone out the door, despite the commotion and chatter that seemed to be stalling the movement of our group.
As we approached the exit, one of the teachers came up to me and revealed the reason for the chatter: "Iván lost his passport."
Oh, gosh. Surely it wasn't lost... it had just been momentarily displaced. In packing up to leave he had probably just left in the safe or put it in a different pocket in his bag or threw it in his suitcase or something....
"I had it in my backpack and I left the backpack under the table at breakfast. I just went back to the food court and it's gone."
SHOOT.
Not knowing what lie ahead of us, I sent Ankit, Lucía, and the rest of the students off to Ellis Island, not wanting all of the students to miss out on the big trip of the day. Meanwhile, María Jesús (Yes, Mary Jesus... I know more than one of these here in Spain), Iván, and I began the search.
Upon re-entering Grand Central Station, I asked: the patrolling officers, the people who were sitting at the table where we had been, the workers at the food stands, and, finally, one of the maintenance managers. The maintenance manager explained to me that if he or any of his guys had found a backpack, they would have called the police officers, who would have brought the bomb sniffing dogs over to investigate before touching the bag. Figuring that only 10 minutes had passed and nobody had seen that happened, I didn't expect to get much information from the police. But, after checking with the station manager and searching through the bathrooms and trash cans, we figured it was the next stop.
When I walked in, all I could see was the bald shiny spots on the top of the policemen's heads, since the desk was an awkwardly high height. I stood up on my tip toes to get their attention and then explained the situation. My student's backpack had been lost, his passport was in the backpack, and he was supposed to be leaving for Spain that evening.
The policeman gave us an apologetic shake of his head and told us that they hadn't been called to check out a backpack and customer service was closed, so there was no lost and found to check. Anything that someone else had found would be dropped into the blue box in the corner of the room, which was locked for security purposes and could only be opened by an employee from customer service Monday-Friday, between 8 and 5. But, he had been sitting in the room for the past hour and nobody had dropped off a backpack.
Disheartened, we waited as he wrote down the information for the Spanish consulate and went back to the hotel, where we could make a few calls and begin to get ourselves organized. First we called the consulate, where I ignored their claim that a lost passport is not an emergency, and encouraged Iván to play up the "I'm a 14-year old who is about to get left in New York with no money" card to see what help we could get on a Sunday morning. I called up the Fulbright Program Officer and the head of the bilingual program in the Consejería de Educación to see who would pay for the change in flights (or new flights) and an extra night at the hotel if that became necessary. Iván called his parents and shed his first tears when his mom responded with pure silence, the kind of silence that fills any kid with dread. Then we began a long series of back and forth conversations with the consulate as they tried figure out a way to get the paperwork done on a weekend.
Finally, they called us with the good news that historically, when this has happened to a minor traveling with a group, he or she has been able to fly with the rest of the group with the police report stating the theft and a photocopy of his passport. There were no promises, but there was hope.
As I reported this back to Iván, I saw his face fall at the mention of the photocopy. He put his head in his hands and his chest began to expand with the deep breaths that could not be read as a good sign.
Quietly, I asked Iván, "Iván, is something wrong?"
He slowly looked up at me and said, "The photocopy was in the backpack..."
Thankfully, everything is digitized nowadays and he had a PDF of the photocopy in his e-mail. At least one crisis was averted. The three of us were feeling a little more positive and we headed back to the police station to get the police report for Iván to take to the airport with him.
When we walked into the police station, I glimpsed the shiny bald head and began chattering away, "We're back... apparently if we take the police report he still may be able to board. So we just need to get that report and hope for the best."
Confused, the officer on the other side of the desk stood up and said,"I'm sorry, you're going to have to catch me up. I wasn't here earlier." So, I began to explain the story yet again and when I got to the part about his blue backpack, the police officer asked me, "Did it have school supplies in it?" Surprised by his question, I nodded slowly and felt myself gasp for breath when he said, "The backpack is in that lost and found box."
WHAT?!?!
WAHOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
WE'VE FOUND IT!
OH WAIT.
CRAP.
THAT BOX IS LOCKED.
UNTIL TOMORROW MORNING.
While I tried to explain to the policeman the importance of finding someone to open that box up for me, I became more and more excited about having "found" the backpack. The policeman starts listing off people for me to go talk to when he finally says, "Unless you want to see if you can reach it...."
I ran over to the box, which is very similar in size to a USPS mailbox, but functions like a drop box in that it seals completely when you open it up the whole way. I began to fight to get at the right angle to reach it and when Iván looked in and could see it was his, I decided nothing was stopping me. I tried to get the policeman to get me a hanger, which I planned on using to pull the backpack up to the top with. When he didn't have one (Me: "You don't have a hanger?! Don't you hang up your uniform?!"), I decided to stand on a chair to be able to reach in deeper.
Meanwhile, I apologized again and again to the policeman, hoping he wouldn't get in trouble for my lack of inhibitions. But he stood there calmly and told me, "Don't worry, you're on camera." Not knowing where the camera was, I gave a monologue to the exit sign explaining my actions as we proceeded to tip the box (Policeman: "I've never seen one that isn't bolted to the ground before...") and lie on the floor, reaching into it until the teacher could grab the backpack and pull it out.
As soon as Iván got a hold of his backpack, he opened it up and joyfully pulled out the notebook from the MoMA that he had bought for his sister. (Me: "The passport, Iván, the passport!") María excitedly asked Iván to find the award that he had won the previous day and they happily admired it. (Me: "The passport, Iván, the passport!") Finally, I got him to find his passport that was tucked under everything.
Insert: MASSIVE SIGH OF RELIEF.
Iván and I with the passport in the police station
Needless to say, we were on top of the world. And the policeman was hands down my favorite person of the day.
What a trip! These are some of the more humorous anecdotes, but when I think back on the trip, I also have countless positive memories from committee sessions. I witnessed impressive students from all over the world (Egypt, Germany, U.S.A., Mexico...) use diplomatic language to talk in an educated manner about Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. I observed the U.S.A. delegation maintain their cool in committee when the guest speaker from Amnesty International gave other delegations loads of ammunition (poor metaphor choice?) against their policies. I encouraged as delegations who had been excluded from the major blocs wrote their own resolution in the second to last session (which then ended up being the only resolution be passed by the committee). And most importantly, I met amazing people age 14-25 who inspired me to take MUN with me long after Fulbright ends.
Thank you all for a wonderful experience.
It's been MUNderful.
What a trip! These are some of the more humorous anecdotes, but when I think back on the trip, I also have countless positive memories from committee sessions. I witnessed impressive students from all over the world (Egypt, Germany, U.S.A., Mexico...) use diplomatic language to talk in an educated manner about Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. I observed the U.S.A. delegation maintain their cool in committee when the guest speaker from Amnesty International gave other delegations loads of ammunition (poor metaphor choice?) against their policies. I encouraged as delegations who had been excluded from the major blocs wrote their own resolution in the second to last session (which then ended up being the only resolution be passed by the committee). And most importantly, I met amazing people age 14-25 who inspired me to take MUN with me long after Fulbright ends.
Thank you all for a wonderful experience.
It's been MUNderful.
Un abrazo fuerte a todos,
Amber
