By Chloé Posthuma

As the clock ticked on indicating the closer we were to beginning the conferences, my heartbeat raced as fast as a race car. I was welled up with emotions: excited, nervous, anxious, curious and most of all, fascinated. Numerous thoughts raced through my mind: “What if I mess up?”, “What if I don’t get an award?”, “What if I provide the crowd with incorrect information and somebody corrects me, leaving me in a deep well of embarrassment?”, and the worst one yet,”what if I don’t get an award?” These reflections always come to a delegate in the initiation of the meetings. However, these actions only help you throughout the course of the trip since you grow out of them. In other words, you develop into a different person in just a couple of days causing each day, hour, minute, second causing them to be significant and that is why every day of the trip will be discussed in this article (in the eyes of a timid person).

On the first day, I glanced at the clock for the thousandth time, awaiting for the opening ceremony that never started. I spot all the new people approaching my eyesight: new delegates, experienced delegates, freshmen, senior etc. After a decade of awaiting, the most amazing, motivational speeches were given to boost confidence in each and every delegate. Afterwards, lobbying session began; not only did this period of the meeting spark new knowledge towards the topic at hand but also friendships with intriguing people from all over Brazil in schools such as Graded, Chapel, PASME, EAB, EABH, EAC, St Paul’s, EARJ and more. Furthermore, instead of just discovering your allies in the conflict, you detect allies for the entire trip and maybe in another period in life. This can be proven by the delegate Jader Barbalho who said,”I loved everyone there, especially my fellow delegates! Everyone was just so nice and caring. It was my first time and I instantly made lots of friends with the other delegates and the chairs, I think I will keep these friends for some time as I can always meet them in MUN and NR. I also really liked my chairs who were serious but also funny!” And that is how we terminated our day; a day full of acquaintances.

“Rosy- fingered dawn appeared” marking the second day; the day of debates. Just thinking about it would give me chills since it is so nerve wrecking in the start. However, I was not the only one who felt this apprehension; all of those who spoke would stutter causing a feeling of proximity with delegates I had just met. Though the monster we call fright was strongly present in the dawn of our growth, it gradually decreased throughout the course of only a couple of hours shown by the quantity of times numerous delegations who developed confidence by asking points of information and, through baby steps, going to the podium to answer the points of information. By the end of the day, every single delegation could already classify each other as allies though in the view of the modeled United Nations they were not. In other words, as the closing of the afternoon arrived and the youth of the night replaced it, everyone could consider their peers more as friends. Anyhow, not only had the members of  the American School of Brasilia gotten closer to foreign schools but also developed tight bonds with other EAB members; I met freshmen and seniors I expected I would never share a word with while I reached devoted connections with people I had previously known. Even though we arrived in the city of São Paulo as only acquaintances or friends, we definitely left as a family. In other words, the students of the American School of Brasilia flourished together.

A gloomy thought bloomed in my mind as my body awoke on day three: it was the last day. I had gone through so much with these people in such a short amount of time. Additionally, it was time to see if the hours spent working on the position papers and resolutions were worth it by receiving a prize- the award. As the delegates of our school approached their seats for the general assembly, a tension in the room was felt. Common thoughts pass through every student present, “Who will get the award?” “Will it be fair?” The first minutes were skipped on the clock…  eventually turning into hours. During those hours, one main topic was discussed in the general assembly. Numerous delegates were focused, curious, participating meanwhile others were sending notes to provoke the delegations present. These events helped swallow down the anxiety we all felt, until its conclusion; once the word “awards” was mentioned, every delegation glimpsed at one another displaying apprehension in their eyes. However this action did not stop the handing out of the awards. These prizes provoked the following events such as people crying of joy and sadness. Another event that also followed the awards was the closure of the trip. It felt like it had been a century we had remained in São Paulo, but it also felt like an hour. On the way back to Brasilia, I contemplated at how grateful I was for receiving a prodigious experience with such compelling people because these are one of the various things EAB gives their students.