M.U.N. REFLECTION

Although I feel that my second year brought me much more experience to use during debate, I still feel limited by the obscurity of the countries we are assigned. I would have loved to have been able to strike deals with major countries, and to an extent I did this year much more than last year. I would have like to make more deals, but Macedonia's position on Darfur was very very limited. I was forced to remain neutral on certain key points that I personally felt strongly either for or against. 

     The largest thing that this year's M.U.N. has opened my eyes to is how politics actually works, granted though that I am running under the assumption that American politics works roughly in the same way as the U.N. minus foreign presences. All of the speeches given were largely ignored and mostly a waste of time. All real decision making was made during unmoderated caucuses. Also, much as I'm sure real politics works, no one had any idea what they were talking about. 5 minutes of research could have yielded more information than what certain delegates seemed to know. Certain delegates seemed to have a hard time separating personal beliefs and that which is best for one's own country. That seems to be a theme amongst people involved in politics.

M.U.N. 3/17 - 3/20

     3/17
Opening committee session began very slowly as decorum seemed difficult to establish. Once the first unmoderated caucus began, Liz and I immediately began searching for our potential allies in order to get Topic B (Eastern European development) to be the topic of choice.  A few delegates seemed not to have done their research because a number of Eastern european countries voted against their own development. topic A was chosen as a result and Macedonia's involvement was slightly limited.

     3/18
Committee opened today and discussion immediately began regarding how best to approach peacekeeping efforts in Darfur. Macedonia has little involvement in Darfur, minus the fact that the one point Macedonia does feel strong on (ICC's decision to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for war crimes) is supported by few other countries, so allies were hard to make. We did, however, sign a draft paper with India because it seemed to be the most comprehensive.

     3/19
Draft resolutions came out this morning, only to discover that all contained motions to remove the warrant for President al-Bashir's arrest. This was Macedonia's only strongly felt point, After passing a lot of notes, Liz and I managed to strike a deal with Germany, to ensure that the country would use its pull to make sure an amendment was created to remove the clause. We debated with Mexico because yesterday they had said that no provisions would be made as to the removal of the clause, but when the draft resolutions came out, a clause was added. Liz and I decided that Macedonia was forced to remove its name for the list of sponsors.

     3/20
Closing committee session was fairly uneventful, seeing as Macedonia was forced to vote against almost every resolution from SPECPOL. In terms of ECOFIN and DISEC, Macedonia seemed to do very well despite not having a lot of resources or diplomatic weight.

M.U.N. 3/10

Today was our second MUN debate. The topic at hand was "Should child soldiers be tried as criminals?". I took the side that child soldiers should not be tried as criminals. I tried to cite some studies that I had read regarding whether or not children at that age could be considered accountable for their actions, along with modern Western laws regarding children and criminal charges. I also tried to tie it in to accounts of child soldiers that we had read in English class. Stories said that all the kids were given drugs, which i feel makes them even less accountable. Nathan and I tried the debate tactic of having the opposing side define the difference between right and wrong. Overall I thing the debate went very well, but we should have focused more on the procedures and actual steps used in MUN debates.

Guitar Practice - 12/17

I had slightly changed my goals this week because instead of going over music theory, I wanted to get some tips for playing by ear. My goal was to play with Alexander in a few weeks time, but because Alexander is quite the accomplished musician, I'd have to find out what I'm supposed to do. I soon discovered that I have no business holding a musical instrument. I can not tell the difference between two notes, almost entirely. I thought maybe I could work on this by either practicing or maybe there were some exercises I could do to train my ear. So far, it doesn't seem to be working.

Guitar 3/4

Today I continued my efforts to try to learn "Wherefore Art Thou, Elvis?" by The Gaslight Anthem. The bridge of the song contains alternating major and minor chords. I have absolutely no idea how music theory works so I had to completely learn how to tell the difference between the two types of chords. A major chord is root, 4th, 5th; and a minor is root, 3rd, 5th. The song used nothing but D, E, and F# chords over and over again, but the spacing on the fingers was the hardest part. I'm sure if I had more time to spend on seriously studying music theory it would make more sense to me, as a half hour a week is simply not enough. I will try to spend more time practicing, but it's very hard to fit in a schedule.

M.U.N. 3/3

Today we held our first mock debate. The topic at hand was "Whether or not the United States was justified in its invasion of Iraq". I was assigned to the pro-war side, which served as a struggle for me seeing as I am neither pro-war, nor pro-American. I had to struggle to come up with reasons to support the current war effort. The best I could come up with was "Saddam was a threat to national security and had already amassed certain parts capable of nuclear weaponry." The realization that there are few to no good, rational arguments to support the war has really reaffirmed my opinion that the chief exports of the United States are missiles and lies. It was good practice for my debating skills to argue something that I oppose in real life. The next debate should involve the switching of sides in order to be fully prepared for M.U.N.

Guitar 2/25

Instead of continuing on my quest to learn to read music, i took a break to try to learn "Wherefore Art Thou, Elvis?" by The Gaslight Anthem. The song has a really strange rhythm to it, not unlike the first part of the Fibonacci sequence. It sounds simple enough when it was explained to me, but I had to struggle with it to even get kinda close to sounding normal. Luckily the fingering pattern was relatively simple. Combining them proved to be a bit of a struggle though primarily because my ring finger is kinda fat and gets stuck behind my middle finger. Instead of going on a finger diet, I'm trying to hold my guitar in a different way that allows for more room for fingers, but it's rather uncomfortable.

Lithuanian Folk Dancing 2/28

Tonight was the first time anyone had danced since before Christmas. We had to basically relearn two dances. We went through the dance about 3 or 4 times and I was completely exhausted. I had no substitutes this dance though so I had to struggle through it. We managed to move onto a brand new dance that a lot of really fast steps, very quickly. We ended up barely making it through the dance. I was told to go home early though, because of there being a third dance and there were too many boys. The dancers have willfully elected to have an extra practice in order to make sure that we don't mess up at NEFFA.

LCR 2/25

Liz and I have decided to plan a lasagna spaghetti dinner to raise money for either the kids themselves or for something big, like a TB machine. The function will be at Liz's church and I'll probably end up cooking obscene amount of pasta. We were thinking of holding a raffle in order to get more money, but the raffle has a few conditions attached to it and I am unsure as to if we should do it. We would have to sell 900 tickets at ten dollars each, and as much as I would love to sell that, I don't know if we know that may people. The spaghetti dinner is scheduled to be on the 27th of March, and if we can get some more people to help out, it wont be so much work in terms of cooking all the pasta.

Chili Day 11/21

Chili day began with Liz and I arriving at Mr. Hyer's house at mid-morning. I came fully prepared in my apron. I had never made chili before, but had a basic idea of what ingredients needed to go into it. There were quite a few other kids there, which made the amount of work we had to do slightly less difficult. I began to chop garlic. I knew that to open the garlic you had to hit it with the edge of the knife, but had never tried it, little did I know it was much more difficult than it seemed. After about 3 cloves, I got the handle of it and it became relatively easy. After that Nathan and I went outside in order to handle the steaks. The steaks only needed to be seared because they cook within the chili later. Nathan and I ended up grilling roughly 26 pounds of steak. We had to develop a system in order to keep the grill from getting too over crowded. We formed an assembly line of sorts, and in the end it worked beautifully. We brought the last of the steak inside where it was chopped up. After beans and tomato sauce were added to onions, garlic, and bacon; the ingredients needed to be brought to a simmer. I had to stir on of the pots in the back only because my arms were long enough to reach. The heat from the stove soon became unbearable. I stuck with the stirring though because I knew that not only did it have to be done, but if I didn't the pot would boil over and there would be bigger problems, such as there being nothing to sell for the Prom fund raiser. We took a break to go with Mrs. Hyer to get apples from a little farm stand not that far away. We got the apples, not to mention a history lesson about cranberry bogs on Cape Cod. I had no idea that so much equipment was needed to pick a berry out of a puddle. I carried the apples back and we stopped to have lunch of smoked chicken. The chicken had been in the smoker since we arrived in the morning. It came out incredibly tender and moist. The steak was then added to the pots, which had to simmer for a couple hours. We then went tromping about the woods, following a few paths. The paths led us to old colonial houses that no longer stood. It was incredibly interesting to know that just the location of lilacs was enough to extrapolate as to the location of the house. We went back to the house and began to pack the chili into containers. The chili containers were then loaded into a few car trunks, while Nathan, Liz and I helped clean up. Liz and I then went along to return the pans to a local restaurant and thank the owners for donating not only the pots but some of the meat as well. The entire chili making process taught me that something that takes relatively little effort, can have a much larger impact later on.

Lithuanian Folk Dancing - 12/6

This quite possibly was the easiest practice I have ever been to. Tomo brother Tadas was there and kinda just sat around. I was called in to be a substitute dancer today and I'm pretty sure he completely forgot about me because I was sitting for about an hour and a half. for the entire three hour practice, I maybe danced for about 20 minutes. All in all, not a bad night.

Samburis wont be meeting again until mid-late January.

Lithuanian Folk Dancing - 11/22

This week was a normal practice. We actually managed to get about 6 couples together, which is more than we've had before. We went over the first dance, and it went pretty well. We introduced a new dance which did not go over so well. The new steps of the dance are somewhere in between a skip and a run, which is absolutely the most awkward thing in the world to try. We were all falling and tripping over ourselves, but after about an hour, we had it down. The only problem is that we still don't have enough couples for NEFFA.

Lithuanian Folk Dancing - 11/8

I did not go to this week's practice due to my visiting of Saulius and Tauras over the weekend.