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We've noticed in recent days that there are many more teens running around Dupont Circle than you'd normally expect. Local eateries have been extra crowded, pretty much every Starbucks is a no-go zone and the usual resident-enforced rules of Metro are violated at will. What gives?
The North American Invitational Model United Nations conference kicked off yesterday at the Washington Hilton, putting District residents at the mercy of 3,000 high school students with hotel rooms, raging hormones and no parents. I've received several complaints from Dupont Circle-area workers, one of whom frantically chatted me after not being able to get lunch without waiting in foolishly long lines. "I am snippy 'cause i'm hungry...the little bastards are taking over," she relayed. A former DCist colleague cleverly noted, "Someone should introduce a resolution telling them to share the sidewalk." If you're hoping for a quiet weekend, don't -- they'll be around until Sunday.
I did Model UN in high school and college. (Mock me. But I represented Lesotho once and showed everyone that you don't f**k with tiny African kingdoms, even if their only real export is water to South Africa.) We traveled to many a city for conferences. If this is how we acted, I owe many millions of people a long overdue apology. I'm sorry.
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I feel like I should apologize too. I feel like I can now make up for my rude behavior by being a total dick to the newest generation!
I suggest we table this motion and use Greece to invade Dijbouti...
Holy Lord. Now that's an MUN joke if I've ever heard one.
Guilty as charged.
ah, i remember representing a no-longer-existent country (czechoslovakia) as part of the "emerging democracies bloc"
good times, trying to get hungary to agree to anything.
The exports of Libya are numerous in amount. One thing they export is corn, or as the Indians call it, "mase". Another famous Indian was "Crazy Horse". In conclusion, Libya is a land of contrast. Thank you.
"Order! Order! Do you kids wanna be like the real U.N., or do you just wanna squabble and waste time?"
One of the funny facts of life is that actual UN diplomats do not act much differently than these model UN kids.
Anyone want to get together in the after-hours "caucusing" room?
I didn't realize until reading this that the Model United Nations was real. I thought it was something made up on The Simpsons.
The Simpsons' writers don't have to make things up! There's already so much crazy $hit out there to mine! The hilarity is when they're making fun of obscure things that only a few of us get and we chuckle at the inside joke. Kinda like DCist.
Caucus, Bangkok, Djibouti, and a resolution about masturbation being the hands on approach to abstinence. Oh, the good ol' days of MUN.
These kids cannot go away fast enough, I am tired of them looking at me like I am an alien because I walk ten million times faster than them.
So do these kids have diplomatic immunity?
If I see one of them, I'm going to ask to see their native dance.
They call it model UN, but they don't look like models to me.
NEERRRRRRRDS!!!
(Everyone knows all the cool kids were in madrigals.)
amen!
Oh admit it...this city is FILLED with former Model UN and Harvard Model Congress kids. It's practically how all of us political dorks got our start in politics.
That being said---these kids seem far louder then I ever was. Maybe my hearing has just changed with age.
Lesotho is full of pussies. At my first national MUN we were Gambia. Our number one export was Kunta Kinte.
These hysterical Model UN jokes are making me feel like I missed out on something. All I had was lousy quiz bowl and debate teams.
I feel your pain; I would have loved to have done Model UN like so many of my college friends did if my high school hadn't had to accommodate a small but vocal contingent of religious freaks who were convinced that the UN was the Antichrist's One World Government. (They were also convinced that Yugoslavia's stability was caused by miraculous visitations from the Virgin Mary; I now feel a need to look some of them up for a brief chat.) Anyway, like you, all we had was quiz bowl and debate, although our teams were hardly lousy, at least.
Wtf is this UN program?.. One time our entire highschool class was sent to the merchant marine academy to learn about our future if we didnt go to prison.
fuck all of you. and the snow was 10 feet deep.
They decided, too, to take the Metro this morning during rush hour. Really, they couldn't wait until workers got to work to go wherever they needed to go from the Dupont Metro?
When out-of-town high schoolers are on the Metro, regular commuters are well advised to sprint around them to the fare gates and then sprint to the escalator. You'll save 10 minutes.
Yes, but when I did that this morning, they all looked bug eyed at me and then pointed and laughed- Sophomore year flashbacks... I obviously wasn't sprinting fast enough.
I use to work down at Treasury, ever April/May hundreds of HS kids would get off their tour buses and not look where they were going (or at the White House which they where there to see). Being 6'2" and a "touch" over 210 I could usually walk through them. If you are afraid they are larger than you I would suggest one of the foldable old lady grocery carts or a large cardboard box maybe?
HA HA HA. Model UN was a semester long CLASS in my high school. We made Belize (Bel-sneeze as we called it) a WORLD POWER and brought down the US and the USSR (ok, that dates me big time.)
Serious geekdom. And here I am, livin' large in DC. Imagine that.
And thanks for the explanation of why there are zits running around my neighborhood.
I don't think I really realized how awkward that stage of my life was until just now. Thanks Martin.
Soo many fun MUN memories. I remember being USSR for a New England MUN on a Space subcommittee. Others wanted to talk about geo-synchronous orbit satellite rights, but I got a resolution passed saying the Geneva Convention rules don't apply to invaders from space. Yeah, its geeky, but a ton of fun.
I do agree with the majority ofthe comments made so far. As my last NAIMUN conference, it did seemto me as if there were a ridiculous amount of peope walking slowly. In fact, I was with a group of people and I had to convince them that no, jwalking is not illegal. I found myself yelling at thissame group of people STAND ON THE RIGHT WALK ON THE LEFT! in the subway the next day. I think it is always a very annoying weekend for all washingtonians, but they are tourists and they do deserve "well, they don't know the rules." And i wouldn't get too mad at them either, the person you're yelling at might just be a Secretary of State one day
I've always felt that Model UN participants sat the highest of those on the high school dorkdom roster, above the math club, band, and quiz team. Of course, I belonged to some of these groups, but those MUN kids weren't just clueless about how dorky they seemed, they were passionate, which was unforgivable.
Papua New Guinea! Glad to see all the MUN geekery.