Motion to extend the trip
SMCHS juniors travel to New York and Yale University to discuss pressing world issues as well as explore the busy streets of the concrete jungle.
My parents dropped me off at LAX at 8:30 p.m. on Jan. 16. I soon met the 16 other MUN kids holding their 40 pound suitcases. After a long five hour red-eye, we landed in Newark and started one of the most unforgettable trips of my life.
Day 1
Columbia University
Just walking on Columbia’s campus made me feel smarter. Every student that passed I kept thinking in my head “Go you, good job for getting in here, you must have cured cancer or something”. The campus was beautiful and for a brief moment I felt the need to go there myself. As we passed Low Memorial Library, the MUN group posed for a picture and we moved on to our next destination.
Natural History Museum
Before we had gone on the trip one of my friends had told me the museum had just created a new exhibition in their fossil hall. It was a new dinosaur called the Titanosauras which stretched 40 feet. Once we got to the museum I needed to see it. Most of our time, however, was spent in the ocean exhibit laying on the floor gazing up at a life size figure of a 94-foot-long blue whale. Hours passed by and we had our check in. The friends I was with began to panic because we hadn’t seen the Titanosauras. Long story short we ended up sprinting through the museum to see it so we could make it back to the group within 10 minutes. The dinosaur’s body was so long its head had to come out of the door way to fit in the museum. So in the end it all worked out, and let me just say, being completely winded after frantically sprinting through the museum was so worth it.
Times Square
We ended our day in Times Square, in awe of all the vibrant colored billboards. We split up into groups to grab dinner and first checked to see if we could get seats at John’s Pizzeria on West 44th St., the wait was a hour. So we turned to our navigator, Connor Riley. He said there was a five star pizza place a few blocks down. We walked up to the place thinking it was going to be nice sit down only to realize it had a maximum of four window seats in the whole restaurant, but we took advantage of being able to have more time to walk and eat. After eating the first slice of cheese pizza, I was in heaven. I don’t know what the chef had up his sleeve, but it was the second best pizza I’ve ever had (behind Lombardi’s on 32 Spring St.).
Day 2
9/11 Museum
I had been to the 9/11 memorial in eighth grade, but never the museum. We were given about four hours to see it, and even that wasn’t enough. The two ends of the museum were for the North and South Tower. When everyone first walked in, they had saw a steel bar from the North Tower that was entirely bent and deformed . All I heard was someone say, “That used to be a building”, and chills went up my spine.
Another interactive part of the museum was a room dedicated to each and every person who died that day. I walked past photos and upon seeing a picture of a 2 year old girl I began thinking, she would have been our age by now. Another little boy who looked about 6 was touring the museum with his parents and struggled to understand what 9/11 was. He asked his mother, “Did they fly just themselves into the building?” and she replied, “No, they took over a plane like the one we flew here in.” The little boy proceeded to ask, “I don’t get it, why would they hurt all those people”. Amazing, a 6 year-old has better perception of human kindness than middle-aged men. The Museum did a beautiful job portraying Sept. 11, and giving tribute to those lost. I went on the rest of the day thinking about what that little boy had said.
Rockefeller
On a brighter note, we went ice skating at Rockefeller Center. I was skeptical about my ice skating skills since I hadn’t been since I was in sixth grade, but I was still really excited even if it meant repeatedly falling on my butt. Surprisingly I only wiped out four times, one of which was due to me racing Connor Riley (bad idea). Once everyone was skated out we went to the top of Rockefeller. From there you could see all of Manhattan. On one side was Times Square and the Empire State Building and on the other Central Park and the Plaza Hotel.
Day 3
United Nations
I think the security to get into the UN was almost harder than going through TSA at the airport. On our tour we passed by conference rooms while General Assembly summits were taking place. One of the conference rooms we went into was in the movie The Interpreter and I was fangirling a little bit. Our tour guide was telling us how difficult interpreting languages was because, unlike translating, they have to be able to explain concepts that might change across culture’s in an instant. She told us once an interpreter told the audience, “Please laugh as the ambassador has told a joke that will be impossible to explain,” and the whole assembly began to do so.
Day 4
Central Park
As I walked through Central Park I kept having movie scene flashes: Bethesda Terrace and Home Alone, Wollman rink and Serendipity, and the boat house with 27 Dresses. Isobel Hume, Sonja Kobayashi, Connor Riley and I had lunch at “Le Pain Quotidien”. Connor Riley began to tell us that Strawberry Fields, a memorial for John Lennon, was not too far. We started walking only to realize Connor Riley was very wrong and we had gone to the other side of where we were meeting with only eight minutes to get back. We paid two guys to drive us in their passenger bike carts to the other side of the park. Thankfully, they took their sweet time and raised our rates making our end payment 50 dollars.
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
I almost didn’t notice Starry Night. They had placed it in the middle of the gallery, but they didn’t make a huge deal about it. The Contemporary Art was my favorite of all. There was a huge room filled with a screen you could play a video game on and another that had a ginormous wall of radiating light so bright you almost had no shadow. Even the gift shop was wonderful. We saw art by Picasso, Pollock, and Van Gogh. Sadly, I did not make it to Monet, but I guess I’ll just have to go back!
Day 5-9
NBC Studios
Being a fan of Saturday Night Live, Friends, The Office, Parks and Recreation, Saved by the Bell, and more I was in television heaven. We saw the studio for SNL and to also make up a broadcast for our own late night talk show, which was a bit of a mess. Check out our talk show here: http://onair.thetouratnbcstudios.com/2FFEE08B
Yale
We arrived at the Omni Hotel at around 2 p.m. Everyone was given their room keys and we rushed up to hopefully get a nap in before having to debate with hundreds of other kids on things like the integration of Turkey and xenophobia. My roommate, Christiana Tarazi, and I opened the door to our room to realize we had been given a corner room that had almost double the space of the other rooms. The conference began that night and by the end of the week we had spent roughly 12 hours in committee.
The next day we toured Yale’s campus which made me feel as though I was at Hogwarts. Even the housing was like the sorting hat ceremony. Each student is placed into a different house they live in through their time at Yale, and normally competition between houses is common.
The whole week our parent’s had been wondering if we would get snowed in because there was a huge snow storm moving towards the east coast. Eventually our flight was cancelled and moved to the following day. Upon hearing about Snowzilla, the name given to this monstrous snow storm, Christiana Tarazi and I decided we wanted to keep our windows open to see the snow fall. I had a really scary dream that the snow never came (pretty frightening I know), but when I woke up that morning I was greeted by nothing but the opposite. Committee was cancelled after the first session and the MUN squad spent the day snuggled up, playing card games and making friends with other kids in the hotel from the east coast. Our group ended our time at Yale with a nice competitive snowball fight: girls versus boys. Considering there were two boys out of the 16 SMCHS students on the trip it was a pretty fair fight.
To my lovely Yalies
I made so many new friends on the tip I might not have if I never came on it. If you guys are reading this I love you all and thanks for making YMUN2016 so amazing.
P.S. I still want my apple juice, Sara.
