If we Could Turn Back Time... WE WOULD

So, day two-we once again show up at 9:00 am only to find the door locked again, so we sat down in the hallway to wait for somebody to arrive and open the door. Eventually the woman from Kenya came (at 9:35). We went in and read some documents we'd been given on Kenya (our "project" for the week was to report on the UPR of Kenya) and waited for our second class to begin. This time along with Adrian came Elise and Olga from the study group. We all had to sit again and listen to the official version of The UN for dummies. We had a meeting with a delegate from Argentina essentially trying to lobby him to raise "our issues" at the Kenya UPR. The two women (our boss and the lady from Kenya) went through their whole spiel for him to say at the end that he really already knows what he's going to say. After that we attended part of the UPR on Lesotho. We headed back to the office, where our boss eventually showed up at 5:58 to have an hour long meeting with us. Allowing us to get off at 7 instead of 6 like we were supposed to. However one of the most beneficial things that happened was that she told us we should come in at 9 or 9:30 but not 9 and then gave us a key for when we get stuck outside. That night after dinner we did some homework-I had a presentation on Wednesday so I worked mostly on that.




Inside the UPR Meeting Room (UPR Kenya)



Wednesday morning we didn't arrive until 9:30 and it was glorious. Today we had a "side event" on Kenya, these are supposed to be informative meetings between actually sessions of the UN to learn more about topics being discussed and are usually hosted by NGOs in some capacity. This one brought in 4 people from Kenya to discuss the human rights issues. After that we attended more UPR sessions and then at 4 we had a meeting with a delegate from Korea. While this meeting went slightly better than our meeting with Argentina the results were more or less the same. After work we had class with Professor Kott and I gave my presentation. You could really tell she wanted to be there even less than we did and was quickly frustrated by our lack of focus. But we got through it and finally finished our day at 9:30.

Thursday was the big day we'd been waiting for! Kenya was up for their UPR. We were there at 9 to take notes and spent the next 3 hours typing furiously trying to keep up with the two minute speeches. The goal was to find out which countries raised which issues-especially the ones we lobbied. After the UPR we had lunch and headed back to the office. Our boss had gone to Paris and the Kenyan woman had some follow up meetings so we were able to squeeze in some homework before the Kenyan woman got there and told us the three of us needed to consolidate our reports on the Kenya UPR, we worked on this for a while but then decided to finish it the next day as it went very slowly (and our boss said she didn't need it until Monday morning). After dinner I did some more homework!

Friday, as our boss had told us we no longer needed to attend the training sessions with Adrian we avoided them by coming to the UN to do work. There is a nice bar/cafe that we are able to work in. So we finished our consolidation report-emailed it off and I used the opportunity to actually have access to the library to print some research for my papers (the UN library is only open during normal business hours when we now all have to work making it difficult to ever go). Since our boss was away and we'd finished our work for the week it was a pleasant opportunity to get some homework done. We had a meeting scheduled with professor Shain for that night to check in on the internships etc. When he finally raised the issue of how manageable our work load seemed I told him (as most people were awkwardly nodding) that nobody wanted to seem whiny and we understood what we were all committed to do but that the work load seemed really really heavy this got into a fairly emotionally heated discussion in which he told us things like his group in 2008 had a lot of work and in fact they all stayed in the cite in their pajamas doing work for 2 weeks straight to which our response was WE'D LOVE TO HAVE THAT TIME!!! But the discussion ended unfortunately-and even some of the students were unsympathetic (why I don't understand as lightening the work load would hurt nobody), after the meeting with Shain eventually ended we spent some time venting to each other which ended in a dance party outside on the roof of the cite which we can access through some of our windows.

Saturday was an early morning to start the mountain of paper writing we all have to do. We went to Starbucks and worked for a couple hours, than we went to Manor (our favorite grocery store and recommended restaurant) for lunch. I had an appointment at Apple as my computer is once again not fully functioning-this time the front load optical drive is broken-luckily it's a one day repair so I should be able to drop it off on a work day and pick it up that evening. I headed back to Starbucks for a little bit more work and then we did our grocery shopping (The grocery stores also maintain regular business hours and are closed Sundays so Saturday is the only day we can shop). That night I just ate dinner and hung out for a bit in the cite before bed.

Sunday morning I went to church (en francais) and then went to support Melissa in her first HALF MARATHON!! Her goal was to finish in under 2 hours. We cheered for her as she ran by us the first time and then while she was off running we went to Starbucks for some HOMEWORK!! We went back to catch Melissa as she finished her race in about 1 hour and 47 minutes!! We went to a cafe for lunch (just some hummus and coffee as we'd been planning to go out to dinner) and did a little more work. I was exhausted so decided to go home and sleep for a half an hour and then do some more work but I slept through my alarm by 2 hours... whoops! So I only woke up in time to take a shower before dinner. Melissa, Zu, Grace and I then went to Chez ma Cuisine (another recommended restaurant) which has a very simple menu, I had chicken, potatoes, and a salad with an upside down apple pie thing for dessert it was delicious! By the time we got home and I fixed my lunch and dinner for the next couple days there was really only time to go to bed.

All the homework in case you were wondering:

20-25 page paper on Ethnic Cleansing in Yugoslavia

4,000 words on: Democracy in Russia

15-20 page: final for Shain

8 hour final exam for Krause: TBD

The Catch: Doing all of this while leaving for work at 8:30 am, returning at 7 pm (if we get out on time), night class 2 nights/week, no library/printer access...