Regardless of your opinion of the organization, I must say that it is an impressive landmark and, if nothing more, a great symbol of efforts to reach across national and political lines to bring a representative of every sovereign country on earth into the same room. I personally cringe at their levels of bureaucracy, the endless stream of rhetoric without action, and the general consensus that they are largely ineffective at preventing or ending wars. BUT, I am glad that somebody is at least trying. What other organization can sincerely say they hold regular meetings with people from every country in the world? And, that in those meetings, nobody gets shot? Just some food for thought.
Here I am outside the entrance with all the fun flags of Member States
These are the kids from the IRLC that Dave and I chaperoned. They were really fun and honestly behaved themselves very professionally so it was great to be part of the trip without as much stress as I had anticipated...
Yep, here's my handsome. I picked that tie.
Inside the General Assembly. 192 countries meet for GA meetings and the seats are always alphabetical. To make it fair so that the "A's" are not always in the front and the "Z's" in the back, they randomly select the first seat every year and then run the alphabetization from there. I think this year it was Rwanda or something with an R. And all countries are alphabetical according to their English name. The tour guide mentioned how, during the Cold War, the U.S. and the USSR had to sit next to each other at every meeting. While the two countries were stonewalling each other's diplomatic channels, many say that the Cold War stayed 'cold' because of the informal and forced communication held in the halls of the UN.
They had a great hallway dedicated to the Millennium Development Goals with very strong messages about each of the 8 goals being addressed. Dave liked the ones from Goal #2: Universal primary education. I liked the ones from Goal #3: Gender Equality including gender parity in literacy and education enrollment.
They also had some amazing gifts from around the world.
It was a fun trip and very informative. Fun too because we got to meet up with one of Dave's Army buddies from his time in Iraq in 2005. As much as I generally do not like New York City, this one day trip was just the ticket to get me out of school and have a field trip! Dave had a good time too and made a great impression on my supervisor. I was REALLY glad that he was able to get work off so I could snuggle next to him on the long bus rides and not have to 'hang out' with the freshman all by myself.
