The Hague International Model United Nations ~ by Micole Jordan

Micole Jordan, one of our St. Elizabeth's teenage parishioners, was a delegate to the International Model United Nations held at The Hague, Netherlands last month. She gave this report to her parish family of her adventures in Europe. We are so proud of her!
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Good morning everyone,

I wanted to take this time this morning and tell you a little about my trip to Europe. I went for a conference called The Hague International Model United Nations. It was a 5-day simulation of the United Nations. We merged resolutions, which are written plans of action, and debated each resolution that was passed by the chair. There were 17 people in my group that came from all the schools in Henrico County. There were also three teachers that went with us. Five of us, including me, represented the Human Rights Watch at the conference. The twelve remaining people represented the Syrian Arab Republic. Each delegation at the conference was given a county or non-governmental organization, like Human Rights Watch, to represent. We each were in charge of knowing the issues of a particular committee. For example, I was in the Human Rights Committee and I had issues like land degradation, the dissemination of racist and xenophobic materials, and including rights to the Human Rights Charter.

The conference was located in the capital of the Netherlands, The Hague or Den Hagg. We stayed in a hotel not far from the World Forum, where the conference took place. We took the tram everywhere we went; it is such an efficient system. In the Netherlands, we visited the cities of Amsterdam and Delft. The teachers had several things planned for us to do, so we always left the hotel early to go to the conference and then stayed out until 10 or 11, visiting museums or going to souvenir shops.

I loved the museums we went to: the Van Gogh, the Anne Frank House and Rembrandt. You get a new appreciation for art seeing it up close; and the Anne Frank House was so eye opening. The "leg-breaking" stairs she had to go up every day made me feel like I was transported to that time. Some of our group came out crying, because it was so moving.

We went to Germany next. The teachers stayed in a hotel while the students stayed with German host families. It was weird thinking I was going to be staying with a complete stranger, but Miriam, my host, was so nice, I loved staying with her. Her parents didn't speak much English so I had to repeat a few things, but it was ok. The second day we were in Germany, there was a Carnival. It's similar to Mardi Gras, except they pass out candy and occasionally, offer you beer. It was fun, just very long. We were standing outside for over three hours, but there were a lot of floats and music and people in costumes. We went to Strasbourg, France the third day in Germany. There was the Strasbourg Cathedral, a huge beautiful church that we toured.

Paris was our next stop. We traveled by train and it took about 2 hours. Paris, France has some of the greatest architecture in the world, from the Eiffel Tower to the Arc de Triumphe. Our hotel was across the street from the Arc de Triumphe. We went to the Notre Dame Cathedral the first day there, and that night the Catholic people in the group and I went inside the church to receive the ashes for Ash Wednesday. It was a nice service, all in French, but I could somewhat follow along. We continued to the Eiffel Tower after the service and went all the way to the top. It was so pretty looking down at the whole city of Paris.

My favorite part of France was going to the Louvre. It's a huge museum that has artifacts, paintings and art from all around the world. The famous Mona Lisa lives there, as well as Winged Victory, Venus de Milo, etc.

The last day, we went to another church called the Sacred Heart. We had to climb mountains of stairs to get to the top, but it's worth it. The church was like a tourist spot though, because of all the people sitting on the stairs. But it has the best view of the landscape that we have seen in Paris. We watched the sunset with the Eiffel Tower placed perfectly in the background. Overall, the trip was a great learning experience. It taught me about so many other cultures from the Dutch to the German to the French; even to the many people I met at the conference from all around the world.