End of COY

Hello hello!

Today was the second and last day of the COY and tomorrow the COP15 conference will officially start! WOHOO..there is a lot of excitement in the atmosphere in all of Copenhagen. One could easily notice that when one is taking the metro from the down town area towards the Bella Center! CROWDED! We also had to stand in line for around 2 hours to get our registration card; that one important card that enables us to enter the center during the conference. The security was intense, but it is highly understandable. I mean, all of the world leaders will be there in just a couple of days!

During the day, we had a similar schedule as the previous day and each of us WAGGGS delegates, as well as other youths, joined different workshops to learn more about certain issues that concerns them. I rejoined the 'Act and Action' group which yesterday performed an awesome street spectacle. Today we also did a song outside the gathering hall on the street, and although it was extremely cold outside, people still left their sandwiches and cozy chairs and went outside to watch us perform. We also 'taught them how to fly' which was a great success because most of the audience joined in with the activity and had smiles from ear to ear as our performance was over.

The most exciting part for Me during the day was the workshop that Bernadette and I ran! It talked about 'Speaking to the Media'. We had a group of around 18 of youths gathered around us listening to advice and information shared among the group. We also had some practice exercises of what to do when really encountering an anxious reporter! (This also gave me a chance to practice and re-vive my French language skills since there were two youth members from French speaking African countries who had some difficulty in catching up with all the English. They were very lovely people, by the way). We got a lot of positive feedback from the youth who attended our workshop saying that they benefited from it greatly! - woho, score!

I also need to mention that WAGGGS got the chance to chose one of our group to give a summary of the previous day to all new youth members in front of everybody in the great assembly hall. Sara (Sweden) from our group volunteered to give a speech and did an excellent work in promoting WAGGGS as well as giving the vital points of that day. Great Work!! Hands from all over the room were clapping for us.

There was also a meeting for the Regional Groups, so I teamed up with the guys from the Middle East. Happy to meet and collaborate with the Lebanese people, as well as the Egyptians, and the people from the gulf countries.
The rest of the afternoon was spent at the Bella Center, getting our cards and discovering it's many rooms and stands (huuge place!). We saw where WAGGGS and WOSM will share an exhibit area inside the center.

Well, that's all for today but I am really excited about tomorrow as it will be the beginning of something GREAT! More updates on that tomorrow evening... good night for now.