Another AFS Camp, this time in my house and we went tubing (sliding down a hill covered in snow on a round wheel thingy) in the morning and dancing in the night!
It was a FUN weekend and certainly the one I had been looking forward to.
Quite a few things happened in January. Things that are, "yeah...whatever" ; "Wow...this is cool!" and things that are "@!#$%^&*()"
Well, you get the idea...
I've been pretty busy, and didn't get the chance to really write here.
But anyway, to make a long story short, let's just get to the point.
> The first week of the month, my Model UN (Model United Nations) friends and I went to a city in New York called, Syracuse to attend an annual Model UN Conference at Syracuse University. Quite a lot of schools in New York joined this conference. Like any other "western" type university, I fell in love at once. Its old buildings and comfy learning environment made me want to study there. Anyway, we stayed for 2 days and 1 night at the Sheraton Hotel near the campus (by the way, I LOVE the hotel). We were mostly inside the campus, attending our conference.
Umm...for those of you who want to know what Model UN is, it's actually a type of debating thing. We learn how the people who are involved in the United Nations really work to make this world a better place. We learn how the meeting is arranged and how the resolutions are made. Every participants are a delegate for a certain country in a certain committee. I was a delegate representing Turkey and was in the UNDP committee. Before the conference took place, I had to do a research about the Turkey's UNDP. The topic of the discussions were water sanitation and debt relief.
To be honest, I was amazed at how informed the students in my committee were. They debated using advanced English and were very well informed about the countries that they were representing.
Syracuse is a pretty big city, which means it is more diverse than the town I'm living in. I felt so great that I could meet a lot of foreigners in this committee, especially when I hear them speaking great English like that! There were a lot of Chinese, Indian, Middle-East and other Asian countries. They were mostly born here, though.
> Then, I did another presentation. (I just LOVE doing it). This time in a Global Study class. So far, I have done about 5 presentations. It feels so great to be able to talk to people in front of the class, and they ask funny questions and they were in awe, seeing the differences between my country and theirs. I was asked a LOT of questions, especially about my religion. From, "Do you go tanning in your country?" until "How can you get married if you don't date?"
I was enjoying myself giving all the answer I knew (and hopefully is right. LOL). Even though I still need to learn a lot about my religion, but sharing a few facts that I know won't hurt right?
> Two days ago, the exchange students were invited by the Rotary Club to celebrate the Chinese New Year in the Asian Buffet (one of my favorite restaurants here). Around 100 people attended the event. It was a formal dinner between the exchange/foreign students (High School and University students) in the Canton area as the "ambassador" and the rotary club members (adults. I really don't know the age range and to be honest I don't really know what the rotary club does, I just know that they are quite active in holding such events in the area) as the "host".
I was assigned to be seated with a Chinese college guy and four adults in my table. One of the goal for this event is for them to learn more about other countries and also eat other country's food, food they never had before.
When I introduce myself to my table, I suddenly thought about the AFS event quite a couple of months ago where we had to greet the US embassy people and mingle with the others. Let me tell you that it is a SKILL. It's not always easy to be able to talk to people you don't know. But at that moment, I wasn't nervous at all because I have faced the same kind of situation before. My table quickly shared stories about the US,China and Indonesia. From the education systems to the political events.It's the year of the Ox which means the year of change. Change, the slogan of Obama's!
:)
It was really interesting and I totally had FUN! I was well fed too, because it was a 14 course dinner!!
By the way, I didn't get to see Obama's inauguration at school because I was sick. But my English teacher have talked a lot about it and even made us do essays about Obama's speech, the girl's poem (can't remember her name) and also the prayer of Reverend Lowery. So I guess, I've had enough Obamas in my mind!!
