Hiii everyone!

I'm having the most amazing time here. My LGM (Leadership Group Meeting; our group of about 25 people from all over the world (mainly Australian though, but we also have people from Ecuador, Nicaragua, the Bahamas, India etc) is the by far the best one of all. Since the food is really bad we ordered 13 pizzas together and ate them in our LGM-room. Afterwords we turned down the lights and turned up the music. We made a big circle and started dancing.

During the day we do much more serious stuff though. The three main topics we discuss are:
- Leadership
- Global Issues, and comparing issues in our own countries,
- International Relations, from the viewpoint of Russia.

These all come into practice when we have our simulations. Yesterday we had a "Peace and Security"-simulation. All LGM-groups were split up into smaller groups and then we had discussions with the other countries. This was a simulation of how the UN-security council would solve an issue, which was about Cyprus. Every group came up with a very good solution, but obviously the US had to use its veto-power every time to ruin everything. Haha.

Today we are having a casual day in Washington DC,

lots of love,

Alex (my name here)

The First Experiences

Right now its 19:35 and I've just finished dinner. After two days of starvation due to the lack of anything not made up out of fat for 95% there have been some serious improvements! The Europeans and Australians were all complaining about the lack of bread and vegetables (yes really!) so this morning they served bagels ánd French toast :) This evening taco's and wraps and pasta and rice were on the menu, so enough to chose from!

The schedule has been very tight. The most important lesson here was:
"If you're five minutes early; you're on time.
If you're on time; you're late.
And late is something that doesn't exist here."

This morning our first meeting started at 08:05! Luckily I'm not very jetlagged, for everyone else there is a Starbucks in our hotel to make sure we keep awake :)
So far we've had three different speakers. The first was about cross-cultural communication. The professor gave some interesting metaphors about how cultures can be like icebergs. Only a small tip of it can be seen, but the majority is under the water and that could cause some serious collusion. He also talked about how Americans are generally speaking "to-do" people, while Africans are more "to-be" people. He illustrated this with some very funny anecdotes.
The second speaker was a 25-year old woman who had survived genocide in Rwanda. The third speaker was "on location". This morning we went to the World Bank where one of there representatives talked about the goals and aims of the organisation.

More interesting are the discussions that have been going on in our group. I don't know if I've mentioned it before; but I'm representing Russia. We've been discussing Russia's iceberg (so cultural identity), but have also discussed many different things like leadership qualities. A very interesting discussion was going on this afternoon when we were discussing several statements. One was whether the Chinese censorship of sites like youtube and facebook is a good thing. Surprisingly the two Chinese people in our group were the only two in favour. They thought it was necessary, because the vast majority of the Chinese people wasn't educated well enough to understand the information on the internet and would interpretate these wrongly.
I was very much surprised by this.

The best thing about GYLC so far has been meeting all these different people. From Australia to Nicaragua, from India to the USA and... of course from Holland to Ghana.

ps purchased; sandals and a blazer! :)

The Best Feeling in the World...

Sunday morning, quiet on the roads, clear blue skies, a bright sun, nice taxi-driver, best friend in the seat next to you (no parents/teachers!)...

The big highway road starts to go down hill, and then all of a sudden it goes up...

You first only see the top of the empire state building but then...
BAMN: 

WE MADE IT!

Well, our parents were quite nervous when we immediately walked the wrong way at Schiphol airport, but we made it!!! According to Elle today was my lucky day and that is definitely true! The day started of quite stressful, with very greedy people who wouldn't want to trade their seat for my beautiful window seat and half an hour delay. The plane landed safely though and as soon as Kelly and I had found each other again we started running for a next flight. This spontaneous work-out turned out to be unnecessary :)

Our luck started when we got a free upgrade to Economy Comfort and turned out to be in the first row, providing  an enormous amount of leg space. After watching three movies we arrived safely in the US, being one of the first to arrive at the customs, saving us literally hours of time. Outside we wisely ignored all the non-yellow cabs like everyone advised us and within five minutes we arrived at our hotel!

The room is perfect for our purpose, we're super excited and started jumping on the beds as soon as we arrived. Right now pizza is on it's way: well that's real New York Pizza! (free delivery yaaj). Internetjunkies as we are we are now extensively facebooking and blogging with the suiting music saying: "New York; concrete jungle where dreams are made of, there's nothing you can't do!"

Pictures:
- Sweet Goodbyes to my dearest friend MC
- Getting cosy in the plane
- Airfood: paella with chicken
- The big trip

we

The Lovely People who enabled my trip

Special Thanks to:

Mom & Dad (obviously)
Oma Maat
Opa en Oma Groot
Koos en Monique van Leeuwen
Esther en Pieter Weeber
Lex en Anneke Maat
Patrick en Karin Maat
Geke en Onno Kuijper
Frank en Alice Heine
Willem en Rieneke van Brussel
Co en Ria Putters
Rijk en Sylvia van Selm
Marie-Louise Hehenkamp
for offering (financial) support

Mr Kamphorst
for the nomination

Kelly van Heyningen
Marie-Christine van Stolk
Daniëlle Ploemacher
for wardrobe-support

The Clothing Requirements

So much to plan and so much to arrange when going on a trip like this one! Obviously I've started with the most important task of all: the wardrobe. (Okay okay, most important after the financial concerns and practical things such as a plane ticket...) 

According to the informative booklet that was send to us we have seven days which require Professional/Smart clothing. If I may quote: "During a period of Professional/Smart dress, women must wear blouses (no tank tops) and skirts (no denim) or dresses. Shoulders must be covered at all times. Pants are appropriate only when part of a professional business suit." 

Well, I'm a progressive feminist and feel a strong need to wear pants after a description like this one. (Yes that is indeed contradicting with my casual closet, red.) But still, I don't really own "smart" clothes. That leaves only one option; the magical verb of shopping! The pictures show some of my purchased outfits, but if they don't live up to the standards enough I've got a special weapon with me: fake glasses! So far I've spend over four months of my clothing money, but it will

be worth it! 

ps We also have two dressy evenings; one attending a Broadway show and of course the final dinner cruise. Surprisingly I have already bought at least five different options for that, just to be sure :) 

 

"Heels are not recommended"