Going to London ended up being a really amazing experience. I was talking to one of the guys at the conference, Clint (from Mesa, AZ), and he was saying that London was never really on his list of places to go, but he was really glad he went. I feel the same way. I mean, I guess I've always wanted to at least see London, but it's never been all that high on my list. Then I got an email about this Globalization and Justice Conference put on by Americans for Informed Democracy, and thought it sounded interesting, so I signed up and headed over the channel with my friend Margot to Londontown. One airport fiasco, a train ride, some claustrophobia at Liverpool Street station, and wandering nonsensically up and down Holborn Road, we arrived at the Faraday House, where the conference was being held, just in time to miss introductions but still able to eat pizza.
The conference was a REALLY good thing for me. I have always been a relatively engaged and I've gotten used to working with campus groups like CAER or doing other organizing (or just sitting outside Napoleon's apartment drinking wine and talking local and national politics), and those are all things that have been missing in my life being here, although I have tried to stay apprised of what's going on in the student movement lately and went to an Assemblée Générale last week just to see what it would be like. That isn't the point right now, though. The point is, I needed this weekend as a reminder of what it's like to spend time with other engaged people and discuss important issues and come up with ways to be active and organize and all that jazz. I think that, most of all, I am glad I went because I was able to connect and interact with people at the conference on levels that I haven't experienced in a while. With the other American students here, it's all traveling and what we did over the weekend and "I miss home", etc. and I'm not really to a point with most of the french students I know to sit and discuss global issues and have fun at the same time. Not that any of that is bad, it's just different from what I am used to.
Basically, the conference was made up of american college students, both in the states and students studying abroad, and a number of british students as well (although none from London, which could have been helpful at certain moments when we were wandering around in the middle of the night not entirely sure where we were). There were people there who had done a bit of organizing/activism type stuff, as well as people who had never done any of it, and mostly just came to see London. And we all got together and heard speakers talk about globalization and justice and discussed the issues that were important to us individually, and got into small groups to work on either creating an issue-based campaign or writing a policy proposal. With my group, we wrote a proposal to propose a resolution to the UN calling for member states to give power to indigenous peoples in the creation of environmental policy. Which we might even work more on, which would be pretty cool. That was an interesting exercise, actually. At conferences in the past, the focus has either been on speakers and discussions rather than projects, or on more specific mock-situation exercises. This, on the other hand, was very open: pick an issue and create a campaign or write a policy proposal. You have about 5 hours. Go! It obviously didn't come without a certain amount of frustration, compromise, and letting go, but I was amazed at what we came up with in the end.
Aside from the conference itself, though, the whole trip was just amazing and SO good for me. I met this great group of people, who I will hopefully stay in touch with, and wandered around and went out and had an all around good time. It's really good to break up the monotony of life sometimes, and if you are going to do it, you might as well do it right, and really make the most of it.
I didn't have a whole lot of time for touristy stuff, because we were doing the conference for the majority of daylight hours (which there weren't all that many of), and then going pubhopping and then sleeping and doing it again. We did do a group tour, which was a "ghost tour," where we wandered around and our guide told us about the various ghosts haunting different buildings and the really quite gruesome past of London. It was a strange but fun experience. On Sunday, we had the afternoon to ourselves, and went shopping on Oxford Street, and then walked along the Thames and saw Big Ben and the Eye and pretty much everything that is along the Thames from the Eye to the Tate Modern, which was SUCH an amazing museum.
Finally, I spent the night in the Stansted airport outside of London, which was awful because it was FREEZING and there were people ever and I was trying very unsuccessfully to sleep on the cold hard linoleum floor, and then when I was finally able to go through security and found a seat at my gate, I started to doze off and almost missed my plane, but I made it home in one piece. I spent most of yesterday in bed and slept a lot because I hardly slept most of the weekend, especially the last night in the airport, and I was mentally exhausted from the whole thing, so I took a personal day.
And now I'm back to life as usual. It kind of feels like London was this little blip in life that is fully separated from everything else because it was kind of in this little universe apart from everything. Everyone spoke English and there were people from the states and I met all these cool new people and there was cream cheese and then I came back and everything was more or less the same. And no one spoke English (ok, that's an exaggeration) and it was all people I knew and there was no cream cheese (pretty much there was no food at all in my fridge). That makes it sound like I was disappointed to come back to Lyon, but I wasn't. I wish the whole thing had been a little longer because I feel like I was just getting used to it when everyone had to leave. Which is what happens at stuff like that. I know that. And I am happy to be back in Lyon to a place I know my way around and I don't feel like I have to be constantly on the move to see the most stuff possible in like 60 hours. London was fun to visit, but it's definitely NOT a place I would ever want to live.
Anyway...it's way too late for me to be awake (my sleep schedule is all kinds of off...plus I had coffee at 7 to make it through one of my classes tonight....not such a brilliant idea.
So, goodnight!
Bisous.
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