EYP National Session in Estonia (October 2018)
EYP National Session in Estonia (October 2018)
On Saturday, the 20th of October, the delegation from our Gymnasium met at the ungodly hour of 4:30 in the morning to catch our flight to Tallinn in Estonia. The trip there was uneventful and went smoothly, and we managed to spend the day exploring the beautiful town. Then we caught our bus to Pärnu, where we spent the night and travelled to the school where the session took place the next day.
Teambuilding
On Sunday, we started our day off with general team building outside. The fall weather was beautiful and we played games with everyone until we eventually split off into our individual committees. The plan was then to continue with committee team building, but some of the committees were so small that we had to join up with other committees for any of the teambuilding games to work.
Committee work
On Monday we had more team building in our committees, and on Tuesday we started with committee work. This was where we took time familiarizing ourselves with our topic by researching and taking notes, and then sharing what we knew in our committees. Most committees finished writing out the problems that the committee is focused on solving. On Wednesday, we took time to write out the solutions to those problems, and we also divided up who would do speeches and who would take over open debate rounds in the general assembly.
General Assembly
On Thursday, we all woke up very early to transfer to the location of the General Assembly where each committee took turns to present their resolutions and debate with the assembly. The resolutions were either passed or rejected, but even if they were rejected, it was fun to come up with creative solutions anyway. The only sad part was saying goodbye to everyone at the end of the General Assembly, since we had made such good friends from all over the world.
Socializing
While working on our resolutions, we had regular coffee breaks, where instead of drinking coffee, we all just ate special Estonian sweet treats known as Sir Arthur’s Balls, which everyone was addicted to by the end of the session. We slept on the floor in the school, separated into our committees so we could bond even outside of committee work. In the evenings we had a different program every day. We first had an opening ceremony party evening where we all went to dance and eat and get to know each other. One night, we had a “f**k up” evening, where people told funny or inspirational stories about how they failed. We also had a committee dinner where we went out in town to go eat with our committee and we had a closing ceremony which was a lot of fun.
Sad parts, lovely people and good bye
On Thursday after the General Assembly, our delegation travelled back to Tallinn and spent the night there. In the morning we went to Klooga and visited the Holocaust memorial at the site of the former concentration camp there. We met the nicest lady in the world who walked us there all the way from the train station. She even came back to bring us an umbrella when it started raining, as well as candles and hand picked apples. It was an emotional day trip. Afterwards, we travelled back to Tallinn where we packed our bags and headed to the airport. We made it back to Basel safe and sound with so many wonderful memories to take home with us.
Thanks!
Visiting Estonia and taking part in the National Session there was a once in a lifetime experience and we would like to thank Ms. Spasojevic for introducing us to EYP and Ms. Jovanovic for planning everything and accompanying us on this trip. Thank you for putting up with us and making everything run smoothly. We had a wonderful time all thanks to you.
Julia Pressner, 4A
