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EYP 2012/2

GM gewinnt im Europäischen Jugendparlament

19 Schüler-Delegationen aus der ganzen Schweiz sind vom 29. August -2. September 2012 nach Aarau gereist ,um am European Youth Parliament teilzunehmen. Dahinter steckte eine lange Vorbereitungsphase, bei der man sich für die Teilnahme bewerben und auch verschiedene Texte und Reden auf Englisch verfassen musste. Gut vorbereitet reiste auch eine Delegation von SchülerInnen aus den Klassen 4B und 4C des GM an. Am 5-tägigen Anlass wurde nicht nur heftig (auf Englisch) diskutiert und debatiert, auch soziale Aspekte wie Teambuilding waren wichtig, damit sich die Gruppen auf eine gemeinsame Resolution einigen konnten. Diese Resolution galt es in den letzten zwei Tagen der Session an der Generalversammlung zu vertreten und den anderen Delegierten schmackhaft zu machen. Während der Session hat die sechsköpfige Delegation des GM die Jury so beeindruckt, dass sie nun sogar an die internationale Session des EYP reisen darf, um dort die Schweiz zu vertreten. Die internationale Session findet dieses Jahr vom 2.-11. November in Amsterdam statt und es werden Delegationen aus über 30 Ländern erwartet.
 

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European Youth Parliament, 29th August - 2nd September 2012

by Katarina A. Samak, 4C

It all began with the awkward moment, when everyone spoke English even though we all knew Swiss German.
Why would we speak English? I heard people giggle and continue their conversations in their maternal language - whether it was Italian (Ticino), French, German or, like us, Swiss German.
‚This is not going to work’, I thought. After some waiting we walked over to the school to sign in and then back to take our bags with us to our first Teambuilding.
After the Session President Ms. Kerstin Mathias and our committee leaders, whom we called ‚Chairs’ (chairperson), welcomed us together with the journalists, we split up into our committees (I was in ITRE- the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy).
Now it was time for Teambuilding: like all the others, I first didn’t really see any sense in this. I mean, how should songs about bananas and lining up based on eye-colour help us with our topic or work?
My chair Zuzana from the Czech Republic let us go to bring our luggage to the ‚Bunker’ in which we’d live for the next five days; the rooms were mixed- every committee had his own, some rooms even had to be shared between two or three!
In the evening, every delegation had a small presentation representing the canton they were from- we made a ‚Baseldytsch’ course in which we presented some typical words from Basel to our fellow delegates.
Besides that, there was singing, dancing and fancy costumes all over the place which were at times indeed very amusing.

The next morning began at 6 am for the so-called ‚Shower Shifts’ since we did not have any showers in the bunker. And the day started off with lots of coffee and even more Teambuilding. The rainy weather and the attempts to unwind blindfoldedly a human knot did not tune everyone cheerful, but when we asked our journalist Willem from the Netherlands how this should help and that we did not like it, he answered that we’d find out later why this was a really important part of EYP. He also said, that things like Teambuilding don’t work if you do not participate one hundred percent.
By that time we already communicated automatically in English rather than switching to Swiss German in the breaks.
However, after miming Justin Bieber and his grandma going to the theatre to watch ‚Romeo and Juliet’ we went down to serious work and started to discuss our committee topic.
In the evening, there was ‚SwissVillage’, which included people from all of our delegations bringing typical food from their region for us to taste it. Since my delegation was very proud of the ‚Fussballclub Basel’, they had arranged muffins and syrup in the typical red and blue representing the FCB.

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Finally, with everyone having eaten lots of excellent food, things got freaky: as soon as the music started to play, everyone was on the dancefloor - we even cleaned the room dancing and singing!
The next day, the discussions over our topic pushed us nearer to our limit and I realised how good it was that we were a team, not just a random group of people needing to discuss a topic without even knowing each other.
The work was hard, but we made progress.
Afterward, we finally got to wear our formal clothes in the ‚Opening Ceremony’ where guest speakers such as Ms. Pascale Bruderer Wyss encouraged young people like us to continue our political career since Switzerland is a very open country when it comes to young politicians. Also the EYP president Ueli Staeger held a short speech welcoming us in the EYP family before we went back to work.
The next day, Friday, the committees were recessed in their work. It was the last day and everything had to be finished by the end of that day! Only in the evening we went together to dine in a pizzeria.
The mood was not tense, although we all knew, that the coming day we would have to attend our session and defend the resolutions we’ve worked on so hard.
After breakfast the next morning, everyone was really busy: the last preparations had to be made (some formal clothing had to be found!), but we finally made it into the parliament where the General Assembly would take place.
This was the moment, when I entirely understood the whole teambuilding-thing: so many people that are listening to you can be really scary! But I just took a deep breath before starting our discussion. Our resolution passed!
In the evening, there was a nerd-themed party, which was a success (although people not belonging to the EYP may have thought us a madhouse on hiking day).

Finally it was Sunday. The time had passed too fast! And for the first time, I thought that I’d even miss our common room where we had lived and laughed for the whole time in the EYP Aarau 2012.
The second part of the General Assembly went well: the new delegates had already learned how the whole thing worked, and there were huge discussions (especially on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality).
Next, the journalist team presented to us the third and last video clip they had made on our session, and EYP insiders (such as ‚DUCK & COVER!’) were installed, so that we listened to the closing ceremony with very mixed feelings.
As we finally sang ‚Imagine’, before all of our paths would split again, I thought to myself that I had enjoyed every minute of it- not only the pleasant things, but everything as a whole. Because EYP is, as also mentioned by Ms. Bruderer, from young people for young people and Ms. Mathias was right as well, saying that it is something special to meet other young people who not only have their own opinion, but are ready to argue over it, change it or even just listen to what the others have to say. However, as I said goodbye to my committee I also realised another thing: the banana song is the best invention since plush turtles!

 

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