Hoya Saxa
Thoughts on Georgetown and the 45th annual Georgetown MUN conference
There are apparently a ton of Scientologists in DC, and there is an L.Ron Hubbard museum there. The Scientologists hang out around Dupont Circle handing out cards urging you to go. I tried to go, but I ran out of time. One of my students wanted to stand in front of the church with a sign that says "Jesus Saves" for a photo op. Funny, but I am really glad we didn't do that.
This was the second model un confernce in 3 weeks, voluntarily giving up 3 out of 4 days of my President's Day weekend. I"m retarded.
Valentines Day spend looking at nubile young women - who wore outfits like porn stars all weekend - made me feel really creepy. At first I thought that this was just me, until the Secretary General of Georgetown - a female Georgetown student - brought up the fact that dress code was meant to be enforced and she even said that women should be "Wearing knee length, not mid-thigh length skirts and revealing blouses". I found it ironic that in the hotel there were these news tickers about Clemmens and human growth hormones, and walking around me are these girls who in have been on it for years. Thank you, America's Poultry and Dairy industry. Also, I have one of my former UN'ers at Georgetown, now a sophomore. He told me that last year, one of the Georgetown kids had to physically yank a girl's head from off a guys's exposed crotch in the middle of the delegate dance. The famous line "You are done" is a running joke with the college kids. Tim said to me "I know what you must feel about this dance, I hate it too, now".
What differentiates Georgetown from the other Ivy conferences is that Georgetown has a reknowned school of Foreign Service. They bring in speakers who are usually professors or advisors for the SFS in every committee - and they are brilliant. I sat in on three lectures - The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Committee on the Special, Political and DeColonization (SPECPOL) and a committee on the Kyoto Protocol. Each speaker was outstanding, particularly SPECPOL's speaker - the embassador from East Timor or Timor Leste. Timor Leste is a newly independent country after fighting an Indonesian occupation since 1975. The country was originally a Portugese colony that was granted independence in 1975 along with Portugal's other colonies - Sao Tome & Principe, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, Mozambique and Madagascar. The Indonesians invaded East Timor 9 days after their independence, over 300 thousand people died in the conflict. Constancio Pinto was a 15 year old resistance fighter who spent 3 years in the jungle and 1 year in prison before escaping to Portugal and later the USA. He returned to East Timor to help rebuild and was very frank about the successes and failures of nation building - like the recent assasination attempt on East Timor's president and his evacuation to Darwin, Australia.
Doctor Angela Stent of the Center of EuroAsian/Russian Studies gave a great talk on the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which is basically an Asian NATO made up of Russia, China and the Central Asian Republics. A lot of natural gas, oil and raw materials have been found here, especially Kazahkstan and Turkmenistan and the Russians and Chinese have been angling in. Stent gave a really good overview on how the Russians and Chinese are taking the lion's share of the wealth, the US wants to get the Central Asian Republics to build pipelines to the West by bypassing Russia and China, but so far has only been successful in doing so with Azerbaijan, who hates Russia. There is a war for energy between the East and West - Stent made sure we understood that Central Asia is one of the prime battlegrounds.
Met with two wonderful German teachers from the German School of the Potomac, in Maryland. They are two native Germans who work in this international school, mostly teaching children of German diplomats, soldiers (Bundeswehr), German International Businessmen or German Americans. They kept asking me questions on our program and were shocked at how many conferences we attend and what I do with the kids. You must have no time for yourself, they kept saying. That balance again, I keep getting the hint I have none when it comes to my life and profession. Tim, my old student and I talked for a long while and he was asking me about my love life. I got the sense that he even understands how much of a lack of balance I have.
Saw the movie Juno with my students in the hotel, which made me feel very old. The screenplay must have been written by someone in their early thirties - there were a lot of cultural and musical references to the Seattle sound, grunge, early 90's scene. The characters talked about Sonic Youth, the Melvins, wore Soundgarden T-shirts, Alice In Chains shirts. I looked at the 6 kids in the room with me when they asked "What is Alice in Chains" and realized that these kids were babies when I was first getting into them. I am old, the world is telling me not so subtlely. I couldn't really explain how important it was when Grunge broke and the Seattle sound took over the airwaves. I will never forget first hearing Pearl Jam's "Jeremy" my senior year of high school and how happy I was. I loved the movie, though.
The thing that was wonderful about the weekend, was my students, they were really a lot of fun and were so great. I had brought 7 kids down and I think they all had a blast. We joked around a lot, but they were great in committee representing Bangladesh.
Highlights:
A sophomore named tucker, I really find this kid hillarious: Tucker is very bright and excitable and often talks while failing his hands around. At one point in the conference I ran into him in the hallway and he was very excited. "OMG, I got on the speakers list, I got a resolution passed and I am doing really well..I was just speaking about ammendments, and I had a quote" to which Tucker points to his head, and I just burst out laughing. There were more Tuckerisms - the kids were ordering a movie but the hotel had jumbled all of our names so that they had no clue who was in what room. I had to go down to the lobby with Tucker after curfew to order the movie. On the way down we passed 2 Georgetown college kids doing security who asked him, "What are you doing out after curfew" to which he replied, "Well that's my moderator, and technically, I am still in Western business attire" and pointed to the tie he wore over his t-shirt and pajama pants. Other famous Tuckerisms - "I am not going into specifics, but Jason has remarkable skill at throwing m&m's at people. Followed by, "I drank some salsa tonight" Why? "Well, because it's delicious! Of course. silly me. I was also the Bank of Tucker, since he somehow lost $60 bucks and had no cash for the rest of the conference. I bought his lunches, dinners, etc. Most of the conferences sell T-shirts to raise revenue for their programs, they let the kids wear the t-shirts with jeans on the last day. The T-shirts are cheap, it is for a good cause and I encourage my kids to buy them so they don't have to change and we cna just leave after the end. I asked Tucker if he wanted a shirt, to which he replied "Sure". "QMasterFlex, I am already in the hole, I might as well keep digging". When I told Tucker he owed me about $45 dollars, he said that he needed to get 10 dollars from everyone for the movie. I responded "Tucker, you are charging everyone who watched the movie $10 for a movie that cost $16"? He replied, "shh. You know nothing".
Quotes from the conference:
This resolution is like a castrated bull, it has a will, but not the way.
The cone of ignorance - the back corner of SPECPOL where there were kids not doing anything, coined by the chairs.
Irrigation man is Bangladesh's superhero.
Bangladesh's main export is flood plains.
Apparently I own a Pakistani Pony who is named Pervez.
Only Asians can fly (said by my Chinese student)
Towards the end of the conference, during voting proceedure when you are supposed to be quiet - the cone of ignorance started humming "Amazing Grace" and got the rest of the committe to sing along.
We piled into the van to drive home and all of the sudden the engine light came on. The van started making weird noises when we were at red lights and idle. So, once on the highway, I didn't let the speedometer go under 80. We got back to northern NJ in 3.5 hours.