New Faces & New Places: COY8 Day 1

It all started around 4am this morning. In Doha, it is November 23. I woke up around 4am Arabic Standard Time, otherwise known as 7pm Central Standard Time. I’ve heard it was because of this weird thing “Jet Lag” that people keep mentioning. Hm.

Anyway- after a lovely productive morning of blogging and stuffing my face for three hours, I was able to successfully start the day! Myself and the four others here for COY from my delegation started heading out to find A. Phones B. the COY venue.

We started to walk down our busy street, stopped by a marketplace to get a bottle of water (I know, SEAKers, I know), and continued on our ventured past the numerous furniture stores to find a main street to hail a taxi.

As luck would have it, as we approached the main road, we saw signs for the COP18 bus loading stop. We might as well just check it out and make sure that we know where we’re going, right? So, we headed over the bus and saw a a large group of youth and asked where the bus was headed. The Qatar National Convention Center (QNCC)? PERFECT! We hopped on. We didn’t know whether or not we were supposed to be on it, but after a go-around numbering off we felt pretty at home on our bus. It turns out that we ended up on the same bus as Arabic Youth Climate Movement (AYCM).

We ended up getting to the QNCC and being told that our bus would not take us to the COY venue which was not taking place at the same location as the negotiations. We, all twenty-something of us, ended up crossing crazy Qatar traffic and walking through two construction zones only to cram into a smaller bus (imagine a VW Bus from the 60s) with twenty of us, zooming through the campus of the Qatar Foundation’s Education City to our final destination: the Student Center.

Having planned on eating when we purchased our phones, with our stomachs rumbling, we realized that there was not anywhere to eat around the Student Center nor transportation that could be easily hailed. So, what did we do? We explored the building. We found wonderful water fill stations and steadily growing thirstiest from our treck to the Student Center it was a welcome discovery.

The architecture in the building is GORGEOUS! The walls are made of polished stone. There is a central elevated floor couch square (great for conversing in a relaxed setting). My favorite part of the Student Center is the sculpture garden.

After two hours of wandering around, checking e-mails, working on blogs (cough, cough), and making new friends (from the UK) it was time to register! COY8 had officially begun. Our first order of business was getting to know each other. With 100+  youth from over 30 different countries, we started to mill around in a circle and when the music stopped we introduced ourselves. What was the song they played, you ask? A song that anyone with internet would know…

Next on the agenda? An anti-oppression(AO) training. For most of the youth in the room, this was their first experience with AO and people seemed to feel empowered once they realized that we share identities that help us to relate to one another that are not easily visible. Following AO was a presentation from the Arabic Youth Climate Movement. They only started 11 weeks ago and already have participation in 22 out of 24 Arab countries.

Following the AYCM, two lovely ladies from the Netherlands presented their initiative. Their idea? Make negotiators accountable through the frame of “being the solution”. Some negotiators will be put on the list of polluters, while others will be put on the list of the “soluters”.

After a few more presentations we had a “Keynote” from Bill McKibbon. He sent us a pre-recorded message telling us about his “Do the Math” tour and inviting us to join him at the Global Power Shift that will be in Istanbul next June.

That was the end of COY day 1. Day 2- coming soon!

More adventures to come. For now, Aloha from Doha.