Sandwichgasm

Our first session was only 2 hours long, but it was the longest 2 hours of my life. And although roll call was horribly tedious, I welcomed countries long, expressive ways of simply saying “here” because that meant it would take up more time—something that I wasn’t going to argue with. Immediately following roll call, the floor was opened up for motions. Having virtually no idea of the structure of the meeting, I didn’t get my placard up in the first 5 milliseconds and felt it would be useless to put it up in the ocean of raised placards. Some proposed the opening of the speakers list (which we were quite far down on), others proposed the order of issues, others moved to open informal caucusing session. I sat there fumbling around to check the proper phrasing on making motions but by then it was already too late. I was struck with the realization that the preparation that I received in the class I took for this conference was focused too greatly upon the 2 minute impromptu speeches and the position papers—the two least relevant factors of the conference, it seemed. I was never so relieved to see 10pm than I was that night. But it probably wasn’t until several hours later that I got to sleep for 100’s of various reasons.

The next day we went to the United Nations Foundation. And having been sleep deprived and woken up feeling like my cold (or really bad seasonal allergies?) had gotten 100% worse, sitting in a big comfy office chair wasn’t helpful as I tried to listen to the director of the foundation. I kept lightly wanting to nod off, but would catch myself (and others would catch me…). After continuing on this half awake, half asleep routine for 10 or so minutes, I started to feel nauseous. Embarrassed and queasy I walked to the bathroom to splash water on my face, hoping this discussion would be over soon. It’s not that it was boring or terrible to listen to, it just wasn’t the kind of thing that would perk a person up at 10am and being that it was a broad discussion anyway, I didn’t feel bad missing out on 5 minutes to keep myself from passing out on the table or barfing on it.

Our 1^st session of the day started in the afternoon, but we did have some time to grab a bite to eat before our committee meetings. I stopped at one of the 1000s of delis that are all over New York. The guy working was some variation of East Asian (you know, I can tell the difference between their languages, but I still have no idea how to ethnically categorize them. Not in a racist way, but just as a thing to know—I’m sure Japanese people don’t like being mistaken for Chinese people). He had very little functioning knowledge on how to speak English (but then again, my Chinese/Korean/Japanese/Vietnamese/Cambodian are pretty bad, too). I thought this was strange considering his deli was ¼ of a block out of Times Square, which is generally jam packed with tourists. After a controversy over honey mustard and whether or not I wanted it in my sandwich (no, I did not) I got my perfect wrap.

I fully intend to tell you about New York delis. They are incredible. For one, they are usually manned by people from different countries, so you can practice your language skills or just appreciate the fact that no matter who you are, a turkey sandwich is just good. For two, they generally all serve (what is to my knowledge) the BEST brand of turkey, which is Boar’s Head. And it’s not that pre-sliced (how long ago did they slice that!?), questionable looking or hammy turkey (cheap turkey tastes hammy). It actually tastes like real turkey breast. And they don’t pull that Subway “only 3 slices of meat and if you want more it’s $1.50” bullshit, either. They load that sandwich in a way that Mitch Hedberg explained as “having a whole [turkey] with 2 crackers on either side”. Avocadoes in a sandwich are also done right. They have real avocado that they slice right there instead of that prepackaged diarrhea mash that they try to sell as “avocado spread”. No. And they don’t make you pay $1.50 extra for it. New York is expensive, but they’re not gonna screw you on legitimate sandwich necessities. But to top off my lunch, my sandwich had apple slices in it, which is something I love to throw in a sandwich when I make them at home (much to the confusion of everybody else, but the next time you make a sandwich, I dare you to put some apple in and just try it). As a girl who gets a turkey sandwich at least once no matter where I go, I’m going to give the gold, silver and bronze to New York City. Every deli is a sandwichgasm inducing experience (in case you’re curious, Hong Kong comes in dead last with worst attempt at a turkey sandwich ever, with France as an honorable mention for their chicken sandwiches. Europe doesn’t actually have turkey, really…). In addition to sandwiches, most of them have pizza, hot lunch bars, lots of delicious snacks and drinks, pastries/desserts, produce and salads. They’re essentially mini grocery stores. And you could probably eat at a different deli every day of your life and never have to eat at the same one twice…

I was hoping my sandwich high would carry me through my committee meeting, but I was sorely mistaken. All the apples and avocadoes in the world couldn’t have saved me. We were beginning into the first stages of writing working papers, which eventually would become draft resolutions. There were people there who had probably written 100 draft resolutions before and I had maybe kind of written 1ish. It’s not necessarily that they’re hard to do, but they require a lot of thought because the way they’re written is very specific not only in the template and formatting that you use, but the wording/phrasing. Further, because the topics we were writing about were somewhat broad and not able to be solved in a mere 1-2 page document, it was hard to ensure that we were specific enough without getting too specific. It’s the most imprecise precise science I’ve ever seen.

Representing Ghana, we were out in the hall with other African states working out what we wanted to see come from this committee. And in a tragic yet fortunate way, generally all the Africa people were very type-A, wanted to be the best and had already set their agenda for this exact moment probably 6 months ago. Thus it was tragic, because that meant my stress level reached a record high, in addition to the fact that I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. But it was fortunate because for the first time ever, I didn’t have to do everything whilst working with a group. So wherever an explosion of cortisol meets a burst of dopamine is exactly where I was. I didn’t sit back and do nothing, but I just stopped and listened and let them run over each other.

After about 20 minutes, sitting in on Africa felt like sitting in on a Young Republicans meeting, so I started meandering around to get a feel for what other people were doing. Some groups were kind of focusing on the same things as us, others were coming up with novel ideas. Everybody was fluttering away at work. And somehow an hour of informal session passed and brought us back into formal session which is for speeches. The speeches are a 2 minute max, meaning you can get enough detail to maybe peak someone’s interest, but not actually discuss anything terribly specific. Some people had prewritten melodramas that they read aloud, while others fumbled and bumbled around spending half their time saying thanks and listing every country they were working with as though people were going to jot them all down. The melodrama speeches were almost worse, though; mostly because these speeches are not used to build compassion over a topic like world peace or AIDS…I mean, we’re all here trying to solve the same issues, so you don’t have to convince us that they are issues…we know…and we agree with you that they need to be solved…Is it almost dinner yet?