A week back in the good ole U S of A

Well it's been a week now since my last blog. I am back home and it feels great after being gone for 2 weeks. A lot has changed around Lowell especially UML. South campus has begun construction on the new academic building which isn't going to be completed for a while. This has lead to many changes around the area; first being the bus stops are moved over onto Wilder St. rather than Broadway. I find this to be a better location as it spreads out the flow of students from streets to a central quad location. When the buses were still running on Broadway St., you would have students waiting for the bus on both sides of the street in addition to the foot traffic of students going to class. You can just imagine the cluster and traffic jams that were caused by this much movement in a small area. While students have complained about the switch, I firmly stand behind the location of the new bus stop. This might have to do in part with what I know about the future of the campus and the area surrounding it. But even if I didn't have that information I like the change and understand it.

While UML was changing, a lot of other things have also in my life. I am still kinda jet lagged from the trip even though it has been a full week now. I find myself sleeping at 9pm sometimes 10pm at the latest. While most people would say thats amazing, they need to remember I don't get home til 6 or 7pm some nights. This leaves little time for me to do homework and just relax in general. To add on top of that, I have been waking up at 5 or 6am. Yes I could do my homework during the 2 or 3 hours I have free but I'm not a productive person in the morning. I need to shake off this "jet-lag" and get back to sleeping at 12 and waking up at 7.

Speaking of productivity, UMLMUN 2011 is coming up soon, a week and half to be exact. There is still a lot to be done and being one of the few people who have put in the effort to make it happen is annoying to say the least. This is the first year the UML administration has put its 100% support behind the IRC and Model UN program. They gave us a lot of funding to represent the University in Turkey. While we did an outstanding job in Turkey, it is time we show the same dedication back home at our own conference. We will have the Chancellor, Provost, and other high up administration members buzzing around for the three days. Even with our budget being as tight as it is, We can not hold back. We must put everything we have into and make it the biggest UMLMUN. With that being said, I can't be a one man show on getting things prepared. People know that I am not one to ask for help regardless of how stressed I am, but this is the time I need it. Thankfully there are people willing to step up and see this conference go to its full potential. I want to thanks those people for the dedication and I know that this conference will go on without a hiccup. So heres to last minute orders coming in on time, the high school students being prepared, and the members of the IRC ready to roll on the best UMLMUN in history!

Happy Saint Patty's day from Greece

Top of the Morn to you all. It is St Pattys day and I am currently in Greece. If you are wondering if they celebrate it, no they do not as a country. But we were able to find an Irish pub and have a pint of guinness. We did have an action packed day today. We visited the Acropolis and the sites around that. Let's just say the view from the top of that is amazing and that isn't describing it enough. There are so many people here that are from the States and Canada. It was fun interacting with other fluent English speakers as we made our way through the site.

We also went to the Acropolis museum before we visited the Acropolis. This gave us some insight and let us watch a video which helped explain the building and such. It is amazing the amount of things they could recover. Even though a lot of the things were broken or missing, it is amazing to see the ancient history.

Again we are hounded by "teachers and tour guides" that want absurd amounts of money. One lady started at 100 euro or 140 us and talked down to 70 euro but we still said no. Another aproached us and said 30 for the group, we thought about it for about 10 seconds and said no again. I swear these people are relentless in asking, they just want to get the yes no matter how cheap they have to go.

I am heading back to Istanbul tonight around 7 and then home early Saturday morning. It has been a fun trip even with its ups and downs. I learned a lot and lived a lot. There is a lot I can take from this trip and I will to make sure that I don't repeat the same mistakes. The people I have met over this short amount of time will change the future for me. They have each taught me important lessons about life and I will take those and apply them to my everyday life. Well I shall blog later, one last time in the Istanbul Airport if I can. If not it will be the first post back in the USA late at night.

Little bit of Athens in my life

So the trip through the Greek islands was scrapped. But we still made it to Athens. Athens is simply amazing and breathtaking. I don't want to leave but I find myself burning through cash like no tomorrow. I have to start eating really cheap and watch the unneeded spending (gelato). We were suppose to go back to Istanbul early on Friday but we decided to spend more time in Athens as Istanbul wasn't much fun for all of us. We are now heading back to Istanbul at 7 and landing at 9. With out flight being at 5 am we will most likely stay in the airport and find things to keep ourselves busy.

Today in Athens we did took pictures of the Acropolis and the surrounding areas. We still have a lot to see in Athens and have 1 full day and 1 half day to do so. I also had a little adventure separate from the group. I forgot my backpack on the bus from the airport but luckily remembered pretty quickly. I sprinted back to the station and informed the dispatcher and he got a hold of the driver. The driver had my bag and would return it when he came back around. At 4 I went back as told and picked up my backpack in 1 piece with nothing missing! What a relief to have it back, I know it's just a laptop but I have so many files and documents saved on it.

The people so far in Greece have been fantastic. We had a late lunch and the restaurant gave us our first drink free and a free dessert. They tend to do this with larger groups to get them to commit but it was a great deal and the food was amazing. Dinner was also good and decently priced at 13 euro. I just need to stop using money on little things and unneeded food such as the gelato which is oh so good.

Tomorrow is another filled day of fun. As much as I am loving Athens now, I want to go back home. I miss lunch with the family on Sunday and waking up in a familiar area. Two weeks is a long time and now I realize how much time it really is. But Saturday will bring and end to it and I will be back in the states. Hopefully I can find time tomorrow to blog but for now sleep is calling.

Oops forgot I had a blog

Well the last couple days have been hectic to say the least. I haven't been blogging because of it. We finished with the conference and went to our next destination. This happen to be Fethyie where we were suppose to catch a ferry to Rhodes and start out Greek adventure. Well that didn't happen because the fly which says "every Monday and Wednesday" was incorrect. So we ended up staying in Fethyie for an extra day and bought flights to Athens. This let us have a full day in Istanbul which was okay. Istanbul was busy and very dirty. The smog was the hardest to handle and this also made by eyes very very very dry and irritated. But in the end we ended up in Greece. Which is where I currently am. But that will be another blog later on today. For now I must run off to dinner and eat a real gyro!

First day of Fun

Working to catch up on blogs, I will talk a little bit about Saturday. It was our first day of fun, we could kinda sleep in (up by 9 instead of 8) and we had a tour already planned. But nothing goes as planned when you are a member of the IRC. We had no rooms for the night even though we paid for them. The hotel thought we were checking out with everyone else. We had to wait about 40 minutes in the lobby to get this cleared up. This meant that we lost almost an hour of our tour. Once the mess was cleared up, we were on our way to Perge or the old city.

Perge had a bunch of Greek and Roman ruins. It was amazing and a lot of good photos were taken. The view of the area was breath taking. Our tour guide was great, he spoke broken English but it was enough for us to understand. He explained each part of Perge well and made sure we understood the history. Being the tourist we are, we just wandered and took pictures. He gave us some free time after to take pictures which worked out because this allowed us to walk up a hill and get amazing photos of Perge.

After Perge we visited a park with some waterfalls. It wasn't anything really special because it seemed to be more of a tourist attraction than something natural. It was still nice to take pictures and have fun as group. The best part was that there were camels and some of us rode them. I unfortunately didn't get to ride the camel but it was fun watching everyone else.

Our last stop was the Bazaar in Antayla. It was packed and loud. Every vendor tried to pull us into the shop even the food vendors were trying so hard to get us to go in and buy food. It was a fun experience and something that should be experienced.

And the Winner is.....

The last of conference! So much to be glad about and so much to worry about at the same time. This is the day everyone who wants an award makes a strong push to obtain it. I woke up off my game after a long night of talking to people back home on FB chat and Skype. Going into committee it felt as if I was doing this for the first time again and didn't know how to handle the other people pushing. I proposed the topic of  peaceful use of outer space. Of course the entire committee knowing that I was ahead in winning the award, promptly sided with the delegate of the USA who was playing catch up after I began to check out after day 4. I saw this as an attack and began to harshly question and pick up my speeches.

We ended up coming to a final conclusion about our last topic. I even went along with another do nothing say nothing act like it never happen. With me checking out and strictly looking for debate from the room, I fell out of my role of task master and into the role of social Joe. I spent the last day talking to my chair and co-chair as the rest of the committee continued to work. Was this the American cockiness kicking in or Joe simply not being able to close out deals ala Lebron James.

Our chair was in his last MUN and we decided as a group to get him a cake. It was nice and a good way to end a stressful week. He appreciated it greatly and we all became a pseudo-family. We broke for lunch and prepared for closing ceremonies. Another LONG and boring ceremony was on hand, but on the plus side awards were being given out.

Down the list they went, UML picking up 5 awards thus far only 1 school ahead of us and 3 awards remained. The school ahead of us was Lahor University of Management Science, a school known for winning MUNs in the area. They were at 7 awards, but these last 3 committees we had confidence we could win awards in. First of the last awards were called off UML wins outstanding, while another school not Lahor wins best delegate. The tally is now 6 to 7. The second award came and we were shocked, one of our best delegates doesn't win an award. Lahor ended up picking another award putting them at 8 with only 1 left. It was impossible for us to catch up on awards as a delegation but I still had my chance at winning an award. My chair approached the stage and gave his speech. He mentions the three countries in the running for the award; USA, Uganda, South Korea. The other two were Lahor students, but to make matters worse and more nerve racking, those two happen to be their best delegate. USA is considered a rock star in the MUN community, having won awards at some of the top conferences. Uganda was high regarded as well and then there was this unknown UML kid playing the role of South Korea. He continued on and then the announcement came..."And the Best Delegate of the Future Security Council is...The Delegate Representing the Republic of Korea". I had my head down and heard the announcement, I began to Tiger Woods fist pump and sigh with relief. I did it, I won a very competitive award vs two of the most known and respected MUNers at this conference. As I made my way up the stage, I made sure to shake hands and hug the other two delegates. Anyone of us could have won that award and I wanted to show that respect for them. I was happy nonetheless and as I was on the stage I looked over at my team and pointed at them.

Differences may occur in our team and between people but when it comes down to it, they are a second family to me. We bicker, argue, and fight like a family but in the end we make up and get along like a family. The dynamics of this group compared to last year is almost night and day. While we didn't win the best delegation award or the number of individual awards we expected, We can as a family now walk away with our heads held high. We went into an area where 90% of the delegates spoke Turkish and broken English. Overcame the typical stereotype of being loud and stupid Americans, being made fun of, and generally disrespected to a team that is now known in the International MUN community as a strong and talented University. I am proud of everyone in our delegation. We worked, cried, and fought together til the bitter end. We won a handful of awards but in the end we won the respect of the MUNTR staff and the respect of a lot of schools around the world. With all that being said, UML MUN team of 2011, let's keep our heads up and walk like proud Americans throughout the rest of this trip. Go back home and be proud to know that you did one of the best jobs ever done in an international MUN for our school. And remember we are a family, we will always have each others back when it comes down to it. To quote one of my favorite movies, "Stand tall, Fly straight, USA UML all the way"

Late Night Lobbying

Since I am behind on days because of the crappy slow internet, I am going to keep the recap of the 4th day very short. We were in crisis mode for the entire day. They made China attack Taiwan killing thousands of people, but everyone seemed to be cool with that since Taiwan took down a Chinese space shuttle. Again we couldn't come to an agreement during the allotted time for committee. This lead to a late night "informal" session. It proved to be helpful but as South Korea I plainly objected to any ideas that came about from it. It was a soft do nothing resolution that only dealt with 1 part of the problem and did nothing for the rest of China. In the spirit of catching up I will end here and post a day 5 recap soon.

and Veto was the days name-o

Finally I can blog! Yesterday it took forever to get into the blogger website. We have been through 3 days of MUNTR with 2 days remaining. We have sent out 3 press releases to the international community to inform them about the different problems that have happen. This led us to a crisis situation, where a hacking group began to leak what they claim to be as true information. We confirmed that the information was false and determined that they only sent the information out to split our committee. We tried to pass a resolution to the crisis but it the clause that would have taken action to catch them was vetoed down by Russia. Russia had reasons why they had vetoed it down but this just lead to a bigger crisis. If Russia had never vetoed then we wouldn't be in the problem we are now.

This leads the committee to another important moment. Certain countries have gained valuable information on catching the terrorist team. They refuse to share the information with the entire council as it was required by the past resolutions. This again led to a split but only a minor one. I refused to agree to any resolution made by the committee but had to sway at least one other country such as France or China to veto the resolution. I gave many impassioned speeches and finally during voting got France to jump ship and veto the resolution. This left the committee angry and disappointed that we couldn't come to a conclusion.

While France had no real reason to want to veto the conclusion, this shows the power of good public speaking and negotiation skills. Like in the last post South Korea is TINY and doesn't yield that much power. But through good public speaking, I am able to make myself seem like I am more powerful than my country actually is.

Today was also the Hiphop dance club night thingy. It was crap! I spent like 15 USD to go to a "hip hop" club. Which was just some techno music with splattering of old crappy rap songs. It was fist pump central. I did dance for a little and try to enjoy the atmosphere but I ended up going to Starbucks with a friend I made at the conference for little bit. Overall this trip thus far has been about the conference and minor social time fun which has been good for me because I don't have time to lose focus on the important things. Everyone in the group has started to hit the wall in terms of concentration but I feel today I gained my second wind and I'm stronger than I was the past days.

Next Super Power = South Korea?

Well today was day 2 of MUNTR. It was the first full day of conference. Which means we had 5 full committee sessions. Each session is only a hour and half which goes by so quickly. With that being said my committee was very productive today. We passed the first resolution of the conference. It was a nerve racking moment because we didn't know how China and Russia would vote. These two countries hold veto power so they must abstain or agree to vote for the resolution. Luckily for us they abstained from voting and the resolution was allowed to pass.

Something that is very strange in my committee is how much power and sway I yield as South Korea. It is easily the smallest country in the committee but whenever the committee needs ideas I am the first person they turn to answer the questions.

We began to talk about cyber-terrorism towards the end of my committee today. As we began to talk about it, a bomb was dropped on us. The resolution that was passed is being rejected by one of the states. This means that we must make a press release to the world on our stance. We cannot rewrite the resolution or amend it in anyway. Hopefully this will be quick and easy to do. Well until next time I hope everyone back home is safe and enjoying the weather they are having.

MUNTR - Day 1

Yesterday (Monday for those reading it now in the US) marked the opening of the conference. It was your typical first day of a MUN. Opening ceremonies and basic house keeping rules for each committee. All in all the conference is going pretty smoothly. There were little delays but that is any first day when you dealing with over 300 people.

Opening Ceremony was decent. They played some epic music that belonged in the Highlander. It seemed they had pre-written opening statements for each the speeches because they were the same for every single person. So by the third speaker you could mouth the words along with him as he or she said it. I personally began to doze off during the keynote speaker but snapped out of it when he took a minor shot at the US. It was nothing compared to last year in London when we were pointed out and booed at by the crowd.

Committee this year seems to be easy. There are a lot of new people (noobs haha) in my committee which is strange because there was an application process. We set the agenda and are now talking about the conflict in Karabahk which is located in Azerbaijan. I personally wanted to talk about cyber-terrorism and thought I gave a passionate speech to sway the votes that way but in the end this was the topic that prevailed. With so many new people I think I can do well in this committee but I have to be careful of not burning myself out as this is a 5 day conference. Well its 8 am here in Turkey, committees start in a hour and a half. Time to get dressed, listen to some music and get in the zone for day 2. I will try and post later tonight pending how tired I am but if I don't tonight I will be posting every morning before the start of the first committee.

Stop = Dur!?

Finally made it to Turkey! After 16 hours on a plane/mini bus we arrived at our hotel. A little mishap with some the luggage occurred. We had two different flights from Istanbul to Antayla, we checked in as a group but the lack of English led to all the bags arriving with the later flight rather than half and half. Other than that small mishap, we all arrived safe and sound which is always a plus.

The country looks beautiful from what I have seen. I feel asleep on the flight, it was pitch black when I knocked out and when I woke up it was sunny and the fields were green with a scattering of snow covered mountains. A few hours later we began to get closer to Istanbul and the view from the airplane was breathtaking! The contrast between the mountains vs the suburban area was stunning.

Now getting to the resort we are staying at. It is AMAZING to say the least. We walk in and right away there is free lemonade on the desk facing the doorway. After checking in, we go to our rooms. I am in a triple with two other people. These aren't your normal triple hotel bedrooms. There is only 1 visible bed when you walk into the room. The other two beds are up in a loft kinda area with another bathroom. The view is spectacular as every room has a balcony. The only set back is the internet is really slow and crappy! It took me forever to upload the pictures and post this blog. Hopefully they will sort this problem out. Well it has been a long day and I have a busy day tomorrow. But it does help to know that I will be waking up to this view every morning.

So until the next post I hope everyone a good day and safe week.

About to experience some Greecey Turkey

Well I'm leaving for Turkey/Greece in about 15 hours or so. This is a much needed vacation and break from school and Mass. While being gone for two weeks is a long time, this trip is once in a lifetime. I will be blogging and posting pictures each day while I am gone.

Antalya, Turkey is the exact location I will be in during the conference. It is a tourist city along the Mediterranean Sea.  The hotel resort we are staying at looks amazing. It has a beach in the front of the resort and mountains in the back. On the website it says in March you can ski in the morning then make your way to swimming in the late afternoon. I wish I could experience that but I will be in conference during most of the day. But I will have some time to explore Antalya as well as Istanbul when I return from Greece.

Speaking of Greece, it is confirmed that I will be going. I have already bought my return ticket from Athens to Istanbul. I am going with a group from school, there is 9 of us in total. The plan is to island hop and then end up in Athens. First stop in Greece will the Rhodes followed by San Torini and finally Athens. This trip will be a bit pricey but it's a rare chance to go. All in all I hope know I will have a good time. There will be a lot of pictures and a select few shall be posted here. The next post will be done from Turkey until everyone be safe and stay warm ( I will be on a beach).