THIMUN - Qatar

Just wrapped up a great week in Doha, Qatar at the THI-Model United Nations conference.

A fellow teacher and I brought 13 high school kids to the conference and it was awesome. Getting everything set up was a big of a pain but totally worth it in the end. There were 1200 delegates and a total of 1400 students running the event. Our students represented Belgium and Trinidad and Tobago. Each assembly/group was made up of 70+ students in about a dozen different groups ranging from the International Court of Justice, Security council and 6 general assemblies.
Even with the huge number, many of our students got to make their opening speeches and contribute to different resolutions. One student was a main sponsor and successfully helped add and reject amendments to her resolution. Some thing that makes us MUN directors very happy to see.

I didn't get a chance to see much of the student's work though. The conference had some great resources for directors. Kevin from bestdelegate.com gave a day long workshop on how to be an MUN director - how to write resolutions, policy speeches, introducing MUN to new students and how to structure research. My fellow director and I had learned a lot from our own students about how MUN works, but after one day with Kevin we are fully informed and ready to kick it up a notch at our Saturday meetings.
The day after Kevin hosted a mini-session with all of the directors so that we could get a chance to be MUN delegates.

I now better understand the draw that MUN has for students. We had a lot of fun representing our countries and supporting view points that weren't our own.
The national conference center was out of this world, huge and beautiful. A great place to host the event.

 

 Doha was a trip. It feels like the south-west US, four lane high ways with strip malls in beige on either side. There were massive buildings spread out across the rest of the city that were insanely impressive. The mall we went to - Velagio - felt like the casinos in Vegas. I don't know if I met a single Qatari, but I talked to plenty of Filipinos, Indonesians, Pakistanis and Indians.
The Suuk - market that we went to was , as my co-director pointed out, like a transplanted Disney-themed Mini-Arabia kind of place, fun but built for tourists.
Bunnies in dresses, tons of birds and puppies, a toucan and huge tortoises filled up one aisle. Iranian tea from the Iranian restaurant we went to at the Suuk. It is tea with a big of something in it... not anything different so I think it must be the sweet mini-cup that makes it Iranian.

Met a bunch of very nice teachers from all over the Middle East, but it would take a major opportunity for me to move to the ME, even with all of the luxury and convenience of the area.

The group is going to Dubai in 6 weeks, but I'm headed to Turkey with grade 7 and won't get to go. Rather than being glad that the whole thing is over, I'm a bit sad that I'll miss the next event.

Longer Time Lapse

784 pictures is where it stopped today.  Buffer error something something couldn't write to file... oh well.  I filled up the SD card and need to learn to redirect my outputs to the USB drive ... more Python to read about.
8 second delays on pictures
1 minute at each degree.
784*8 = 6272 seconds running
6272/60 = 104.5 minutes running and degrees turned.

Here is our yard this morning.

(done on Aug 4.  Remembered to hit publish in late Sept.)

Wagah

Season 3 Ep 1 of Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown... if you haven't seen it, you are missing some of the best TV.  I'm a huge fan of Bourdain, and also awesome video editors who can mold together conversation, sounds and street noise into music.  Truly some of the best produced TV I've seen.


The reason I bring this up is
1. Watch more TV.
2. Bourdain and his Indian friend/guide stood across the boarder, about 7 km away from where I am now, pointed out the issues of the people who farm in the no-mans-land and have to cross the boarder every day. Then they joke that people want to come from Pakistan into India, but "no one is foolish enough to go the other way."




They are theoretically in the background of this photo (~minus the time differential)

That is Janet with our lovely elementary principal Sue Boyer, standing in front of the fence... I'd imagine that if we had been there a few months prior, we could have spotted Tony in the background pointing in our direction saying "Yes, no one goes that way."

There were a few tourists there.

It was hot and a Friday and not very busy on our side, there were plenty of tourists on the Indian side.  We sat down in the VIP area.  There are bleachers that you can see in the video, divided up into men's and women's areas.

It is a Cricket match, Disney, and the DMZ all in one.  Ripqa, one of our teachers who is Pakistani sweet talked her way into us getting back where we did to take pictures of all the Indian's leaving and of the border area - the 0 line as it is called.  All in all, very fun.  Also unsettling when you notice the four guys, two Pakistani, two Indian, staring each other in the face right across the line while the whole ceremony is going on.  It reminds you that it isn't the mostly friendly relationship.  After a few of these ceremonies, you'd think that they would become friends, it is all choreographed very well between the two.  Happens every night and worth the trip if you are passing through Lahore, which happens sometimes.