UPEACE

As some of you already knew, I was going to volunteer at the opening of UPEACE in the Peace Palace on the 20^th of September. I was extremely excited, and it was truly an amazing experience!
On Wednesday evening, we had a meeting with the group and someone from the Peace Palace to instruct us and explain what our tasks would be during the day. 

On Thursday we had to wake up very early, and left for the Peace Palace at 8 am. When we arrived there, we got our badges and they showed us around. The first guests arrived at 9, and I was standing at the registration desk to ask everyone for their last name and give them the right badge. This was a lot more difficult than it sounds, because there were people from all over the world and most of the last names were completely incomprehensible for me. Which resulted in us asking how to spell it before we could look for the badge. Luckily we got that all figured out, but then I got called away to the wardrobes because they needed more people. There were no plastic cards with numbers to give out, so we had to write all the last names down with the number. I got so caught up in doing that, that I accidentally asked one of the former prime ministers of The Netherlands for his name! I soon realized that he looked very familiar and everyone started laughing. (I was 1 year old when he was in function so I don’t think anyone blamed me, they were all old men in suits and thus looked very similar…) 

At 10.10, everyone was pushed inside of the conference room, because the prince was going to arrive and nobody was allowed to walk around at that time. (But I was because I was staff, so cool!)
The conference itself was really interesting. A couple of people gave speeches on the topic of global peace and the programmes of UPEACE (which stands for the University for Peace, the first center was opened 30 years ago in Costa Rica and now there’s one in The Hague as well!). One of the speakers was the main judge of the International Criminal Court, which is also in The Hague. 

After a delicious lunch, it was time to go home, because I had my first exam that afternoon and I had to look at the last things. Luckily it went really well and I got a 7.5!