posted by Strothi on English, MUN, Uni

Hello again,

guess what, I just checked all my ToDo items for today and since I haven’t had the chance to do that this early for a couple of weeks now, I’m pretty happy about it 😎 Now I got some time to write this entry and tell you guys a bit what’s keeping my life (stressful) interesting…

First off the new year started quite well. I really enjoyed the time back home at my family’s place and found some time to rest. No big party, no big crowd, just me and my family in our little village – perfect to relax! 😀 Well, relax is always relative and thus I had to work on a couple of things…

First week back in Berlin became one of the most stressful and challenging weeks of the last couple of month. While the two presentations I had to do @ university went pretty well, they needed to be prepared in advance. Moreover I had to prepare a Position Paper for the ModelG8, as the Preparation Workshop for the real event in March in Milan was scheduled for the weekend and the papers had to be done sometime before. Writing & editing that paper became a more time consuming process as I had thought so I ended up working until early in the morning. Sleeping less the 5 hours per day became the standard and if you know me well, you know that I really really need more sleeping time! 😎

Anyway, I survived and so I can tell you about the awesome weekend I had. Thursday morning started out quite stressful as I had to clean up my apartment and reduce the chaos in my room, as my „Climate Expert“ would stay with me for the upcoming days. Thursday’s the only day in the week when I’ve two classes so I spent quite some time at the university (trying not to fall asleep). After class had finished by 6pm, I got back down town to meet my fellow delegates and the organisation team of the ModelG8 Workshop in the „Ständige Vertretung“ (a quite famous restaurant around politicians here in Berlin). One of the owners had invited the whole crew (18 people) and thus I did not only get the chance to meet and chat with them but enjoyed meanwhile a delicious meal for free 😀 Afterwards we went to some bar close by and then I went back home with Stefan (my CC expert 😉 ) in order to get some sleep before the Workshop would start the next day – at 8 o’clock in the morning 😯

Don’t ask me how, but after less than 4 hours of sleep we managed to get up and slip into our suits to get ready for the day. Friday was a tough working day. We had a presentation about the G8 in general and went then over to the ministry of economics in order to meet up with Dr. Köhler, a fantastic guy that told us lots of interesting stuff. Later on we split up in smaller groups to meet some guys in „our“ ministry. As I’m the minister of environment, I went together with Stefan to the minstry of environment and we had a quite helpful and informative talk with the guy responsible for international affairs. Later in the „cabinet“ we found out that the others didn’t have had that much luck with their conversational partners as they either got no real answers or talked against the wall… 🙁 After having a short round about the day, we finished up with a nice reception of the association that is organizing everything 😀 We had a chance to meet up with some members of the jury that selected us and other interesting people and spent a nice evening.

Saturday was meant to be the „internal working day“. In short: Having lots of topics on the agenda and sometimes quite opposing views on the variety of issues, it turned out to be a quite discussion-intense but as well productive day and we managed to get some sort of a governmental position on each topic. In this regard it is really really interesting to see that working in a cabinet and thus as a minister is quite different to the „normal“ MUN experience, where I make up my mind and then go ahead. Here, I first have to argue with my collegues in the cabinet, try to find a common position and then go into the debate on the international scale. That’s really really cool but challenging as well 😉 During the day we got rhetorical training that will hopefully help us in Milan 😎 After work had been done we went to a nice pizza place and afterwards to a bar where we could play „Kicker“ and table tennis. Guess what, as table tennis is the only sport I can do (even though running around the table became a bit strenuous), I managed to win once – job’s done

Sunday, the last day of the workshop, started with a nice brunch where we had some guys from three NGOs at the table that told us a little bit about their thoughts towards the G8 and what they would like to see them doing. While the workshop ended at three, a couple of the delegates and me went to a nice cafe to have a coffee/tea and enjoyed some time together.

Having now met my colleges, I’m even more looking forward to Milan than before. Not only will that gonna be a hell lot of fun but as well successful, as without doubt I can say that we’re not only really really good prepared but are all real experts on our topics!!! Its just amazing to see us working and I really enjoyed discussions on this level!

Ok, what shall I say, starting by Saturday I had slept about 4h each night for eight days straight so I was somehow a sleeping-man-walking on Sunday 😉 Now I’m still fucking busy but took myself some time to rest 😎

Ok, next time I’m going to tell you why I won’t be in Germany for a couple of weeks starting in February so stay with me 😉

Have a nice weekend, Philip

Tags: ModelG8, Simulation