Day 10: Culture, with a K!

Today was leadership day. That basically meant that we did a whole lot of work discussing our personal interests and politics with one another and had a lot of fun.

Our first stop for the day was the American Centre. This is an interesting place which was built to share USA culture and interests with the people of Prague. It is not part of the Embassy, although exists nearby. The building itself is quite old and is full of old board games and technology as examples of American innovation to share with the world. Fur us, it was an opportunity to meet with diplomats from America as well as listen to a panel of speakers from the participants about issues important to them, We heard from Kanela, who is an aspiring Hawaiian politician, about grass roots movements and how he activated the population of Hawaii to become their representative. We also had a deep discussion about education across the world, which was a great opportunity to compare Australian education, with that of African and European countries. I believe that everyone learnt a lot about other nations and also their own country as a result of the panel discussion.

Listening to the discussions by our peers

Afterwards, we went across to the Radison Blue hotel for a reception with Diplomats and Partners of the IYLC. By then most of the girls had pretty sore feet from all the walking so we were pretty disappointed at the lack of seating. It was nice to have an opportunity to just chat with our peers, as well as meet a few diplomats from other countries. One woman I spoke with was very impressed with my passion for engineering and my desire to work for Engineers Without Boarders or the Red Cross when I graduate. Overall, it was a fun time and the place was very, very fancy.

That evening was culture night. It was an awesome evening, where the USA participants taught us the Electric Slide, the Indian participants taught us their traditional dance and I wrangled all of the participants to do the Stockyards. Jose from Peru taught us some Spanish (although it was all inappropriate) and the Spanish girls drove all the boys wild with their dancing. It's these sorts of evenings that disappoint us Westerners at our countries' lack of culture, there's not huge difference between USA, UK and Australia cultural items (mostly because we don't know enough about our local indigenous culture to share any of that.) One of the highlights of the night was the Australian Trivia run by the other Australian participants. They got volunteers to try Vegemite, Macadamia Cookies and Tim Tams (the Vegemite reactions were hilarious) and asked people to define what a Bogan was, which they themselves couldn't answer.

All dressed up with one of the South African Participants for Culture Night

It was a late evening and a full day. I am so glad to get back into my bed tonight. Tomorrow we run our International Criminal Court Simulation, where I will be a defence witness and begin preparation for the European Parliament. It's hard to believe we are already halfway through the program.