Saint Iceburg --











Dear Y'all

Today started "well" with Miss pattison s
eating breakfast in the restaurant...alone. When 15 minutes before we had to leave for the tour, everyone who had had the wake up call, had fallen back to sleep inluding mr williams. ZZZZ. After then a tremendous rushing sound came from up the stairs and all 16 students, and one teacher spilt out of the lift.

We barely managed to climb on to the bus, on which we fell asleep...again (sigh). We were told, when we got there, that we were in the "picturesqe" village of Pushkin where the Summer palace was situated.

After the tour, ironically we found out that the lake at the "Summer" palace had frozen over. IIIIIIRRRRRRRROOOOONNNNNYYYYYY.

Then once again we heaved ourselves onto the bus and went to the Peter and Paul fort, "Cradle of Saint Petersburg".

We then went shopping and had some thing to eat. It was fun. Miss P. and Satria bought necklaces and Ansari bought a poster. Then we ate and came back to hotel Anderson.

WARNING: this blog contains material of a serious nature.

Well a hard fought SPIMUN Conference comes to an end. All of the AKIS students that attended should feel very proud of their input and commitment to a fascinating three days’ events. The Conference procedures were not quite the same as those experienced at Qatar Academy, and it left several ‘delegates’ feeling a little disillusioned. The lobbying and merging seemed to be restrictive, allowing only 2 resolutions per issue, or 1 in a couple of cases, to be put through the Secretariat to the Approval Panel. Each Resolution needed to be co-signed by 25(!) other candidates before it would be considered. The sense of ownership over the Conference was somewhat diminished at first with each resolution becoming stirred into a great melting pot. Of course, this is much more like the real UN where nearly all of the important decisions are made in the corridors, the debates being a mere formality (or so I was told by David Williams, the man responsible for the growth of the MUN in Europe and organiser of THIMUN in the Hague). But the fun for the students is having their own resolutions discussed, amended and voted on.

However, as I sympathised with those students who were feeling a little ostracised, something occurred to me: every time we’ve been involved in the MUN, the first day has always produced a selection of wanna-drop-outs. I searched for the other students to find out their impressions and I was right: aside from being a little mind numb they were all enjoying the tussle. Several of them had successfully pushed a lot of clauses from their resolutions onto the debate table, and a couple were the Main Submitters (they would be the delegates first responsible for arguing FOR the resolution).

The debates themselves were enjoyed by nearly everyone, creating a buzz of conversation afterwards on the bus. As Ms Pattison and I visited each Committee Room we saw our students fully engaged in the debate, raising points of order and speaking for and against resolutions. Rabeet somehow got involved in a clause from another delegate that stipulated that Pres Bush of USA should eat more Marmite; Zainab tore apart a delegate on a question of women’s rights in Islam as well as defending her own resolution with the skill of Olympian Fencer parrying thrusts; Mohammed Khan stayed steadfastly in Venezuelan character as he argued for the morality of Media broadcasts to be Governmentally controlled; Mohammed-Ali tested the logic and reason of several prposed amendments. And I know there were many many more highlights that I was not witness to. The beauty of these Conferences is that there are too many to mention. They’ll have to tell you their own stories.

The final day brought more debating in the General Assembly and the Special Committees were brought together also. It was the end of the conference that brought the feeling of achievement to a crescendo. As the days are summarised by the Student Officers, each committee gives out special mentions and awards to delegates who have contributed exceptionally well to the debates. 3 AKIS students got special mentions (Amjad, Nashir and Farhan) and another 3 received the “Best of the Best” awards! They were Zainab, Mohammed Khan and Tyler. You would all have been really proud of them, especially when you consider that the quality of students taking part from around the world was premium.

As I said at the start of this really long blog, EACH AND EVERY STUDENT THAT TOOK PART SHOULD FEEL PROUD as should everyone who loves them back in Qatar.

Attached is a photo of some Russian Policemen, as requested. Once they get the time to upload some more recent pics I’ll make sure they do it.

Mr W

waddup people... this is mk in da house :) well, it was my turn to right in this blog...so here i am this is me i come to this world soo wild and free har har har har brian adams... well today was my second mun day conference i had alot of fun...the teachers went to phartyyyyyy on there own...i heard mr will ate awsome sushi....dayme lucky will we had ...uhmmm uhmm weird un cook food...god dont ask...well lets see what else can i say...i enjoyed the ballet tonite...it was beautiful...and it was my first time...so it would stay in my mind forever....well thats all mk got to say....takcare alkhories while we enjoy "rus land" got that from a guy that lives here...n have fun in indonesia...thats all from mk<3

Sat here, ehm just got back from the balle (bale) (ballhe), it was good strange costumes thou
second day of the conference today, and yes yes our resolution got to the GA (General Assembly)
check our latest pictures
speshibo

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MORE PICS WITH MORE PEOPLE TOMORROW!!

Ok so this is going to seem a little bizzare and out of date. For some reason the blog got blocked by the spam robots, but its back now. I'm getting the kids to catch up asap. Read this for now.

Day two: another perspective (this is posted late because the internet keeps going down. Photo explanation within. I'll try and sort it asap when internet is more reliable.

First of all I’d like to apologise for the lack of photographs on the blog so far. Steffan and I had chosen a selection from the city tour and Hermitage visit. However, in his enthusiasm a student who would prefer to remain anonymous (but lets just say that his name is also that of a famous ex-heavyweight champion of the world) brought the laptop to my room before they had finished uploading.

After our tour of the city and the Hermitage we went back to the hotel for dinner. Just as we were about to start, the missing President Pattison and her pack (of should that be Pak?) arrived looking hung, drawn and slaughtered after a long, long journey. They visited Damman & Amsterdam before climbing aboard a Russian aeroplane that seemed to hail from the soviet era. And they made it safe and sound, though the grilling some received by the passport control officers at the St Petersburg airport caused a few (more) frayed nerves.

They managed to successfully to dump bags in rooms and come down for our buffet dinner within a few minutes of their arrival. And straight into the programme. First we were all hustled onto a bus and taken to the conference centre. This proved difficult for some - getting aboard the bus I mean – but Zainab made it eventually. Once at the centre, the informal introduction began. We were introduced to the programme of events and to the student officers. Several countries gave a quick spiel about their own MUN context: some were long; some were short; some were deafening. From there, to the first stage of informal lobbying, when the students are encouraged to develop friendships, collect contact details and charm potential allies.

I love watching the lobbying. The contrast between personalities suddenly becomes all too apparent. Some dive straight in, furiously scribbling names and email addresses, drawing crowds of eager listeners. Mohammed Khan, it has to be said, is particularly good at this. His notepad was filled within minutes. Farhan was targeted by a St Petersburger named Maria who FORCED him to talk with her for most of the evening. Bisma closely monitored the situation in a sisterly fashion. Others were not so adept and two students actually approached me at one stage for advice on how to socialise. I don’t think I was much help.

We went from there to a folkloric performance. If this did not energise us, then there was something wrong with us (we were told). And it was definitely energetic itself, though Nashir fell asleep several times. Two string instruments provided the music, one of which was a gigantic guitar pick with three strings, and an accordion. A flurry of twirling, whirling and whooping women appeared and were quickly joined by three men whose job was to flirt in an athletic manner. And play the kazoo. The highlight was a man playing the saw. He involved a stunned looking Jasmine from Zurich with his act, and I think everyone was at that point praying that he would leave them alone, especially when he got a sneaky kiss from the unsuspecting Swiss girl.

Just one final highlight for the day was the snowfall outside. Tyler was quick to start a snowball fight. Rabeet wondered if we could bring some snow back to Qatar.

Hello ya'll, this is mo ali from russia, day 2
So far the trip's been pretty nifty, and no we havent played with any snow yet.

Infact, it started snowing when we went to the museum, we spent some time playing with the snow but it all melted in a matter of seconds. The museum was pretty good, we met some people selling their paintings outside and they were collectors of "money", yes, money. So we finally came up with a use for riyals. An apparent 20$ painting turned into a 10qr one cause the guy was so generous, shall we say. (guillable in my opnion).

The museum itself had lots of classic paintings from all eras including a massive rembrandt collection. I also got a few souvineers for two people.
for Aya and *somebody*, yes u know who you are.

Finally, we went to this kick a$$ cathedral that had lots of paintings of jesus on it and we werent allowed to take pictures, but we had a good history lesson from tyler bout christianity. Oh and we're gonna add some pics of whats happenin in Russia, check em out.

Finally, it's not actually that cold here. Lots of people exaggerated about how cold it is. Well cya in 6 days or somethin
Ciao! MA - by the way, im wearing 4 layers :)

P.s. Wales beat England in the rugby! Yerrrrrrrr. Mr Will was disappointed he nearly cried - Steffan

Some observations and highlights for you all from the evening:

Almost everone who lives here looks incredibly serious. I can honestly say that I have seen only one Russian smile so far, outside of the service industry. And even then...read on.

The traffic is...vast. There seem to be many lanes because of the wide roads, plus the trams, but there are no roas markings whatsoever. If the traffic light turns red, they all stop but you obviously have to live here to know where exactly. It isn't chaotic as such, just the opposite considering. Crossing the road is something of an artform.

We went looking for somewhere to eat earlier, having been told that we just had to turn left at the end of the road and lots of restaurants would be apparent, and I'm sure that if any one of us could read the Cyrillic script they would be. I went in the end for anywhere that had a coke or pepsi sign in the window. The first one we tried turned out to be a posh Japanese place. They pretty much told us to go away. They said they couldn't cope with a table for 8 and pointed down the road. There were no place down the road. So we went to the place that had been recommended by Elana the tour guide because they served traditional pies. We discovered that they had no pies. But the food we did get was fine and everyone was happy, I think, because we had at least tried something that wasn't the hotel. For me the best thing about the place was that the waitresses were unashamedly aggravated by our presence. There was a wonderful honesty about the rude way they talked about us to each other, palming us off on a (really very nice) girl who could speak a little English. I tipped her well. If only beacuse it helped me realise that our trip had begun in earnest.

The hotel is teaming with students eager to mingle. A certain male member of our party is getting very excited by the number of pretty girls, while at the same time being amazed by their studiousness! Tomorrow brings a trip to the Hermitage museum and a folklore performance. I (or they I hope) will write more then.

By the way, in case anyone is worried, all the students are happy and safe, I will treat all of them as though they are my own (well most of them anyway!!)

Mr W