Showing posts with label conferences. Show all posts

two down

So I got this great idea to try container gardening (since I won't have access to a real garden this summer, which is kind of a bummer). But hey, balcony gardening is the next best thing? Although the wind levels might be too harsh this high up, so they may need to be kept inside after all. These are Burpee bush Blue Lake 274 beans. They've sprouted okay, but it remains to be seen how they'll fare.
Explored Kensington with D last week. Can you believe I'd never actually been? After being in this city for three years now... Anyway, we also wandered down some side street where they had a bunch of park exercise machine things, which were pretty cool (and of course I felt the need to try most of them - what can I say, still a kid at heart!). We also tried churros for the first time - yummy!

There was also a  lot of varied and cool street art; the undersea fisherman above is just one example of tons of really well done artwork.
^ Dessert with M & L last month. We don't get to see each other as often now that we don't live on the same floor any more, so it was nice to go for dinner (Korean food at Ka Chi) and then dessert and board games afterwards. (That was actually a super insane day - had been at a conference since early in the morning, and then after dinner, grabbed some groceries and ran into C on the way home, so she came over with me. Before she left, A came over too, and along with M, the three of us ended up chatting into the wee hours of morning.
Yeah, basically a bunch of random photos from this semester are all getting conglomerated in this post. So back in February, went to an event hosted by Faze magazine with J, where Penguin had some of their Breathless Reads tour authors signing books. We got to meet Beth Revis, and I got my copy of A Million Suns signed (and I already had a signed copy of Across the Universe), which was cool. She's very warm and super nice! (I look a little sloppy/over-excited in the photo, but oh well.)
All of the colourful sticky notes! Prolonged agony for almost two more weeks, but we're getting there. So. Many. More. Readings. Sadly.

Lull Before London

In the period between getting back from Maastricht & Aachen and going to London, UK, there was a lull of sorts where I stayed in town for two consecutive weekends. Work was fairly busy, but the weekends were fairly relaxed and consisted of just chilling with E & M, C & J, and a bunch of other UN interns. Snapped a couple of photos during those two weeks, so I'll let those do most of the talking instead:
Grabbed dinner with E & M one night at Madame Negla - as promised by E, these sandwiches were super good! You can't really tell from the photo, but there were green peas in it as well.  
The decor of the place was a little...disturbing though. It was really pink and sort of decorated like the inside of a little girl's bedroom or something. We also got eis and hot chocolate afterwards (not at the same time, of course) and they got much amusement of teaching me "Das ist das Haus vom Nikolaus."  
Watched the Germany vs. Greece match of the Euro Cup with C & J. Everyone looks calmly seated here ^, but whenever Germany scored, and especially when Germany won, there was lots of rambunctious celebrating. It was especially intense after the game - we're talking people climbing on traffic lights, traffic jams, honking horns, car rocking... Definitely awesome to experience being a part of the crowd.

Met a bunch of other UN interns at an international event, and as it turned out, a bunch of them were also going to the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum. It was certainly an impressive conference. I think the final stats had something like over 2,000 attendees from over 100 countries.  
Lots of interesting sessions on a plethora of topics ranging from media to education to fashion to tourism and beyond. Speakers were impressive and quite varied as well - for example, there was the CEO of Frankfurt book fair, the deputy editor-in-chief for ELLE Vietnam, a past Indonesian president... 

One of the sessions I sat in on, "Fair Trade Fashion: Education for Sustainable Consumption," featured TUDO BOM, a fair trade fashion line made in Brasil and Paris - and a month later, I walked by a TUDO BOM store by chance in Paris. Crazy stuff! 

One of the other girls attending that session was also tweeting it (since it is a media conference and all), and I thought her name sounded familiar - as it turns out, it was because we'd corresponded by e-mail in the lead up to NAMUN. Small world, right? 
While the days were packed with plenary sessions, the evenings were a lot more lax. Day 1 was a boat trip, day 2 was a reception at the Bundeskuntshalle (which I'd been to previously), and day 3 was a reception at Deustche Welle. Hey, as an intern/student, not going to turn down free (good!) food ;) 
Apparently the party doesn't stop at college-level conferences - it was kind of cool to see all these journalists and activists rocking out on the boat to live music. (The cover artists were all really good too!) 
Next stop: London!

& so the madness begins

It hasn't quite sunk in yet that it's finally here: reading week. But more importantly: NAMUN XXVII (the 27th annual North American Model UN conference). We've essentially been planning this since May of last year, so there's definitely a lot of emotions associated with seeing the project come to fruition. It's going to be 5 amazing days of insanity, that's for sure!

Alas, didn't get done quite as much as I'd hoped to this long weekend - at least, not in the way of school work. Saw a lot of M over the past few days, seeing as how she crashed here Thursday and lifechats with S Saturday. It was nice catching up though.

Annnnd let's face it - procrastinating sleeping here. Should probably head to bed soon; crazy week coming up. Full steam ahead! :)

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