The day is finally here. Saturday April 9th 2011. The first formal conference would take place today.
As opposed to customary, and after our school officials having agreed to provide transportation to LAU Jbeil where the first conference would take place, we headed off to Jbeil as a group. After a long and winding road, tarnished by anxiety and nervousness while we could have been enjoying the lovely sights, we finally stepped on the school grounds.
LAU Jbeil was definitely a different sight then LAU Beirut. I can't really describe how, but it was.
Our first stop was the area where the Global Village was to take place, an event where each country is offered a stand allowing the students to present traditional foods and accessories to help introduce their country to visitors. We had fewer people than bags of clothes, food and accessories thus had to leave everything behind until the time came for the actual ceremony.
We dispersed and each went their way to join the rest of their committee waiting for the conference to start.
The day was planned as such; three hours formal conference, one hour brake, three hours formal conference, two hours preparation for the Global Village and finally three hours Global Village.
Thankfully, the conference hours were everything I had hoped they would be. I only spoke once during the speakers list saying my general position speech. I was really nervous as my time to speak neared. I was seated in such an awkward place that I had to prepare myself one speaker ahead of time. As I stood at the back of room waiting to be called I had to chance to talk to, I think he was an official but I'm not sure, who was standing there. He noticed how nervous I was and gave me a few words of advice that I gladly followed. A I finished my speech and went back to my place I looked at him and was ecstatic to see his smile of approval.
That was definitely the highlight of the conference sessions that day in addition to me picking a fight with the chairman during the unmoderated caucus for constantly mispronouncing the name of my country "Saint Kitts and Nevis" and repeatedly calling me either Saint Kitties or Saint Kittens.
Finally, the Global Village was here.
A few of our school officials had dramatically lowered their grade and come up to Jbeil to see us. They only stayed for a few minutes which gave us a little relief as to their sanity being intact.
Everyone started working on their stands. Everyone looked so excited to be there, and even though our stand didn't turn out to be half as bad as we had expected to, we still didn't know what to expect from the event.
And then it started, and it was definitely the most amazing event I had ever been in my whole life!
The music, the dances, the costumes, the food!!! Some schools had worked so hard on making this an unforgettable experience for their visitors and had definitely succeeded. I couldn't get enough of it! I took so many pictures and to so many people and laughed so much and screamed so much that it started feeling like an outer body experience towards the end of it. I was mostly glad to have seen the three closest friends I had made, Nour, Maroun and Patrick which I hadn't seen since the last training session, nearly one month prior to the event.
It was truly the most amazing experience ever and the only thing that had some of those previously not so excited about MUN, absolutely willing to do this again next year as advisers.
Only one more day to go...
Stay tuned...
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