Thursday was hell day. An ALL DAY session from 8:30-10:30. (granted 4 of those hours were for lunch/dinner breaks—which sounds like a lot until you consider that it took probably at least 2 hours total to use the elevators to get to and from our meeting room…). The morning session started as it had left off the night before. But something felt like it was changing. Somewhere inside of me, the stressed out, cranky nikki that resented everybody in the room started fading away. I wanted to get shit done. I floated around, got input, gave input and started really collaborating on a resolution, ironically centered around cooperation and harmonization of efforts among the law enforcement sectors of society. I started coming out of my diplomatic pissy shell.
My partner, Chantel, however was a woman with a mission and she made those bitches crawl. By noon, she had the AU begging for Ghana’s opinion and was advocating for actual mechanisms of implementation within the resolutions we were working on. I worked on the creation and composition of those mechanisms with Ukraine and the Philippines (ok, I still sorta didn’t like the AU group…). The delegate from Ukraine was surprisingly kind, funny and asked for my input. He was a tall, gaunt New York native, a genius and Asian. The delegate from the Philippines was from a school in Italy, but was actually Albanian. (And as a side note, Erion (Philippines delegate) I probably would have died without your humor, humility and kindness—thanks for being awesome). (Another side note, apparently Southeastern Europe is secretly harboring some hot men).
In no time, we were already breaking for lunch and we rushed to the token deli. We sat down to eat at a different restaurant and got some dessert. God only knows how many calories I consumed, but I told myself that the black and white cookie was a very New York thing to try. And I stopped myself after eating half. Gotta love a cookie that symbolizes racial diversity in delicious flavors. It was interesting because the cookie had a very soft cake-like texture. It was an incredible cookie.
But not too long after lunch, I was approached by one of our head delegates about my apparel. Apparently they thought it was not appropriate for the conference and said that I had to change before the next session. I got pissed. Not at my head delegate, because they were just doing their job, but by the fact that a specific outline of attire wasn’t given and I thought that the clothing I wore as “pinnables” for my sorority would be acceptable. I didn’t look sloppy or slutty, I just looked cute. And cute dresses are not formal enough. I stopped being so concerned with my outfit when I went to deliver my speech, which frankly was a good speech. Yeah, maybe I was wearing a ruffly skirt/top/cardigan combo with a Barney-purple jacket, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know how to write and give a speech. And it’s for things like that that I get mad about. Sometimes I think people assume I’m an airhead because I wear bright purple overcoats to UN conferences and have long blonde hair. And then when it turns out that I actually have something worthwhile to say they’re surprised. I’m not saying I don’t have my “blonde moments”, but the assumptions get a little old
At dinner, I changed my outfit and was ready to rage if anybody commented on anything. Although I was at a point that the conference was actually becoming doable, I wasn’t too far from the edge of giving someone an explosive piece of my mind if they bothered to comment on anything. At 5’2”, I might not look like much of a fighter, but I will hack you head to toe like a machete with my words if warranted (or you just happen to come up to me at a really bad time and make a non-sequitur comment/request in relation to what I’m doing…). Being exhausted and cranky, I ate the rest of my sandwich and passed out until my next session started.
By the late evening, I was actually, dare I say…enjoying myself? People seemed a lot more relaxed and started giving up yesterday’s “I’m so smart and important” facades. I was scurrying all over our room, scouring over resolutions, trying to negotiate and think “What would Ghana do?” (which sometimes yielded unhelpful answers…). And by the time 10:30 came around, I actually felt that all day I had been working hard and getting into the conference. Go diplomacy.
Despite needing about 50 hours of sleep, I decided I should head to Walgreens because I wasn’t going to risk another clothing violation and my black tights were going on day 3 of usage, so I got some nude nylons. Which, after seeing hundreds of girls in South Korea walking around with nylons on, I actually started to like the way they made legs look so perfect. While I was waiting in the 500 person line, the guy standing behind me was deliberating (in Spanish) with his wife over which cold sore medication to purchase. He wanted to get all three, she wanted him to get just one. I laughed audibly about their argument and I think they were sad to know that their little “only we understand Spanish in this 5 foot radius” bubble had been popped, but they gave me a smile. Gotta love it. He ended up buying all 3, by the way.
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