After our good crepes and even better conversation, we decided to head to SoHo because the shops in the East village were still closed. SoHo is a trendy area that, like the rest of New York, is chock full of shopping, food and interesting oddities in between. The subway spit us out in the heart of a major shopping area and we stopped in a crazy European knick-knack store whose wares stole their color schemes from an extensive collection of paint chips, as nearly every color imaginable reflected back at us.
We then went into a store called Uniqlo which is sort of like Gap meets Europe meets a Delias catalogue t-shirt section. All their jeans were 33” in length for some reason and they seemed to have an obsession with Mickey Mouse and other Disney affiliates, in addition to stuffy preppy clothes. (As yet another random sidenote, what’s the deal with Mickey Mouse clothes? Generally, when you wear Mickey stuff in the U.S. you’re either 5 years old or kind of, dare I say…trashy? However, Mickey Mouse seems to be quite en vogue in foreign countries—even those that resent the invasion of the American cultural empire…)
Next we went to Zara, a store I learned about in Spanish that I believe originated in Spain. It too is like Gap meets Europe meets Ralph Lauren summer collection meets incredible shoe store. Everything in there was generally overpriced, but soooooo cute and colorful. The shoes were to die for and I know I’m probably making myself sound like somewhat of a shoe fanatic in all my entries, but these shoes were all my style. I feel confident that there are few people that can and would wear lime green leather pumps, but I could count myself amongst those people…if I had the money to buy shoes at Zara.
And speaking of shoes…we had time before our scheduled lunch to head back to the East Village to exchange my oddly sized shoes from the Tibetan store. The owner was surprised to see me again and laughed when I told him that the sizes were wrong but was happy to exchange them (and now that I have worn the pair for a day, I realize that they really stretch out so maybe I should have kept the smaller size…damn…well you can’t always win with cheap shoes).
Then we hightailed it to the Indian Restaurant on Lexington. After another leisurely ride on green line (I’m getting good at the subway) we walked up a few blocks to find the restaurant tucked away in an apartment building. The decorum was charming and the food was delicious. Other than Basmati rice, naan bread and curried chicken, I’m not really sure what all I ate, but it was great. Sometimes I think I’m more inclined to eat food if I don’t know what it is.
After the lunch at Agra, we didn’t really have adequate time before we had to meet up with the Ghanaian delegate so once again, we rushed back to the hotel and sat and waited. 5 minutes. 15 minutes. 30 minutes. No show from the Ghanaian delegation…Apparently Ghanaians are notoriously late for everything with a 30 minute delay being standard. Another 10 minutes and we called the meeting off, as our advisor never actually received a 100% confirmation anyway…
Thus ended my fun times in New York…The opening ceremony of the Model UN conference began with a bang. Just kidding. It wasn’t very exciting and the keynote speaker had a voice like Louis Armstrong which generally made him a very strange choice to deliver a speech. His career achievements are numerous and impressive. But his voice was not pleasant to listen to in a speech.
An hour later our first session began. There weren’t enough chairs by half. What a great start. People were introducing themselves and I tried to get a feel of where people were from (many from Germany and Italy), but was shocked to find that in the 20 or so minutes before the actual meeting started, people were already jumping down my throat to find out in what order we preferred the agenda to be set. So much for conversation. I started getting nervous when they handed me business cards and asked for mine in return. Not that I would have made them anyway (what college student has money for arbitrary business cards?) but my instructor never even informed us that it is typical for people to have them. Additionally, people had binders that were at least 3 inches thick with relevant documents and resolutions. I overheard intense conversations about conventions that I’d vaguely heard of before. Already I felt myself getting stressed out and frustrated. Right off the bat, we already seemed behind and it sent me back to the days of novice year debate. Great.
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