Sleep? What's that!

So just in case you think that this NY trip is all just a lot of fun and sightseeing, I'll give you the schedule of my day today.

7:00 am - wake up after going to bed at 3:00 am. Ok the 1 - 3 was fun stuff but I really did work until 1

7:30 - 8:30 - breakfast and drinking as much coffee as possible in anticipation for the long day

8:30 - 12:30 - go to UN head quarters to be a part of a celebration conference on Central America's 20 years of peace. It was kind of cool to see Ban Ki-moon (Secretary-General of the UN) with my own eyes. He just stayed for the opening remarks of the conference but it was great to hear him speak in person. And it was his birthday today so I like to think that I went to Ban Ki-moon's birthday party. Then the current president of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias and a firey former President of Guatemala, Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo speak. It was really interesting to hear where Central America is heading and some of the issues they are still battling. It was also just really cool to sit in the UN audience and wear the cool ear peace that you hear the translator through.

12:30 - 2:00 - head back to the campus and eat lunch

2:00 - 3:45 - Learn about the cheery topic of human trifficking

3:45 - 4:00 - more coffee to keep the afternoon sleepies away - why did I stay up until 3 last night?

4:00 - 5:00 - a quick talk from Dr. Cahill about maintaining good health while on the field. Dr. Cahill is the founder of this course and a very well known man in the humanitarian world. Check him out - he's also written lots of books that I should be reading at some point.

5:00 - 6:00 - a nice surprise of learning how to do community health education in South Sudan. It was a nice switch because we usually get really depressing topics like Bio-Terrorism or Child Soldiers, so this was a nice break

6:00 - 7:15 - meet with my group to work on our presentation for Friday. This week we have to answer the question of "When do we as International Humanitarian Organizations, decide that a crisis no longer requires our assistance?"

7:15 - 7:45 - Eat Supper here on campus. They prepare meals for us everyday which is great because we don't have to waste time going out or making something

7:45 - 10:30 - Back meeting with my group and trying to get 8 people to agree on the approach to our answer and how we should present it. Trust me, it's more difficult than it sounds.

10:30 - 12:30 - Head off in smaller groups to do our assigned portion. I get to do a case study on Angola which is actually really interesting.

Currently - well now it's 1:00 am and I still have some reading to do before I can sleep and once again my day tomorrow starts at 7:00 am. But tomorrow I get to learn about International Humanitarian Law, Human Rights Law, and Refugee Law. Wow, I think I'm going to have to drink a lot more coffee tomorrow.