It's the first day of COP15 and I am here at the Bella Center in Copenhagen, Denmark. The whole center has free wifi so I most of my entries will be posted from here. Some exciting things have already happened today. We took a train from Landskrona, Sweden (where we are staying) to Copenhagen. Their were some issues with the train we were on and we weren't sure if we were going to make it into Copenhagen, but we did. The train was packed because of the conference. Yesterday we got passes for the train and busses from Copenhagen to Landskrona so it is all free, pretty cool.
It was crazy when we got to the conference site, so many people were outside of the metro handing out flyers and talking and taking pictures. I got seeds in an envelope from a man outside, just handing them out to everyone so that we can plant trees. Today so far at the conference our delegation met up with the delegates from the Will Steger Foundation and then went with Reed, one of their delegates to a press conference called Children's Climate Forum where eight youth from developing countries talked about the struggles their countires are having with climate change, getting people to even know about it let alone do anything. Some of the youth were from Hati, South Africa, Zambia, Kenya, the Maldives and more. It was really interesting to see people my age or just a little older holding a press conference with media and people asking questions and taking notes. The forum was also getting the point across that music is a powerful tool in the climate change fight and one boy told us of how he felt very connected to nature because he was brought up by always being outside and climbing trees and he used to hear people drumming and it was special to him, but now in Kenya everything is brown and dead and there are not many trees so climb.
So far, on the first day, that has been the only meeting I have been to, but I have two more planned before we leave at five (we are leaving early to have dinner with our host families tonight). The Forum was not the only thing I participed in though, some delegates and I were in a youth flash dance. I don't know if you know what a flash dance is but it's when one person starts dancing and then everyone secretly involved gets up and dances as well. Well, that's how they are supposed to work. This one was very different. I didn't know about it until today so I obviously didn't know the dance and I very bad a picking up on things like that quickly, so this was a little hard for me. Anyway, the dance was in the large public area with a coffee shop and cafe nearby, oh and tons of people too. One guy stood up on a chair and threw off his jacket (keep in mind there are all of these camera men and people taking pictures EVERYWHERE) and he starts singing "OHHH....it's HOT in here...there must be some carbon in the atomosphere.." and there were dance moves and more chants and it was pretty cool. Not like your standard flash dance, but still cool to be a part of.
UPDATE
I went to a YOUNGO meeting at one o'clock and met some other youth here at COP. Tomorrow we are going back to that booth because the speakers from the Children's Climate Forum are going to be there and Jessica set up an interview with them so that SES can connect with these schools and we can help them set up things that we have at SES back at their schools, just build connections. That's it for the conference day one!
A little bit about last weekend...
Sunday 12/6
I slept in very late after my first night back in a bed. I got up and took a shower and got ready for the day. I ate breakfast with Kim, I just had toast with peanut butter for some protien and she had a slice of bread with cheese and citrus jelly and a slice of bread with ham, untoasted. Shje didn't use a plate for hers and I felt kinda weird asking for one for mine. They don't seem to use plates for little things like that. They didn't give me a plate last night for my sandwich and I was a little confused.
We had a meeting to meet the mayor of Landskrona at 12:30. It wasn't very far so we walked. It wasn't too cold, warmer than back home and thankfully it wasn't raining. As we were walking there my homestay, Kim, noticed that the Swedish and Finnish flag were flying, which she said was unusual. My homestay mom said it was probably because we were there. We met the mayor and he gave us Landskrona pins and books in English that he wrote in. After that we went to lunch at this resturant at the beach and I had amazing vegetarian pasta. There were about forty of us there. It was the 12 SES delegates and teachers, and then the 10 homestay Swedish students as well as their parents and a few teachers. Right next to the resturant is a castle that served more as a fort to defend, and it was also a prision. We got a tour of it and it was really cool, I mean, c'mon...it was a castle, we don't have castle in the US. It was a little scarey because it was a prision, it was full of cells and dungons and we heard a story of this lady who killed children and then hung herself in this room. Creepy.
To finish of Sunday we went back to Copenhagen to get our travel passes for the conference. We met some other youth who are staying on a youth ship docked on the coast that has a pool and a casino and other cool things, how awesome, I wanna stay there...not that my homestay is bad at all, but that would be really fun. We didn't get back until really late on Sunday and I was super tired and jet lag was kicking in. Dinner was a salad that I grabbed at the train station, it was actually pretty good.
Saturday 12/5
We got into Copenhagen around noon and had to get tickets for the train into Sweden. The train ride was about an hour long but really cool. The train first goes on a bridge and then on an island and then underwater...or something like that, maybe that's the wrong order. Anyway, all of my experiences on the train so far have been full of people. There are silent cars where you can't talk or have cell phones or ipods, things that make noise. And there are cars for if you have a dog with you. The other cars have seats like a bus or they have a pair seats facing eachother with a table inbetween. Anyway, that all took awhile because we had to take two trains to get to Landskrona and so we didn't get there until maybe six and our host families were waiting for us there at the train station. I finally got to meet Kim, which was really cool because we had been talking on facebook before I left. We had a take a bus back to her house because her mom was at home making dinner.
The bus was more of a trolley. Kim's house was only about five minutes away and it was dark outside so I couldn't see much. We got off at this stop in the middle of the city, right at the town square, walked for about a minute and then we were at her apartment, right in the middle of the town. I couldn't really tell a lot of differences between Kim's house and mine. We have very similar things only her house is small and an apartment so she has no yard. She bikes to school and walks or bikes everywhere, if she has to she takes the bus. Anyway, when I first got there there was food waiting for me in the oven. I asked what it was but I couldn't understand what they were trying to say so finally Kim's mom said that it was what Garfield eats. And it was filled with meet. Apparently they didn't know I was a vegetarian, but that's okay, we figured it out. I had a very normal dinner of cherios and a cheese sandwich. When I was making my sandwich she put jelly on the table and I asked her what it was for and she said that they put it on their sandwiches with cheese and meat and things. I kinda laughed and told her how we eat jelly. After dinner we took a walk to the grocery store and Kim showed me the American food shelf that I had things like marshmellows and peanut butter and syrup there. She got me peanut butter and marshmellow fluff and I told her she would have to try it haha.
When we got back to her house we started to watch some movie I had never heard of but I was soooo tired so I fell asleep. The bed was increable confortable.
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