Merry Thanksgiving

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Over Thanksgiving Break I had the opportunity to travel to beautiful and freezing Slovenia. The trip was organized by IDAS or the International Debate Academy in Slovenia. After the pleasure of an everlasting flight from Denver to Toronto to Frankfurt to Ljubljana and a two hour bus ride from the Ljubljana Airport in Slovenia to a beautiful alpine resort called the hotel Spik located in the shadows of the Julian Alps. The Hotel Spik is located in a small town called Kranjska-Gora which is about 20 minutes from the border between Austria, Italy, and Slovenia. We spent most of our time in the hotel due to the in-climate weather and our tight training schedule. Once we arrived at this overly priced hotel we went to a meeting that kicked off the eight day journey which was IDAS.

Being new to the British Parliamentary Debate Forum I enjoyed a practice debate between some of the best BP debaters to walk the earth including the English as a second language debate champions and the United Kingdom debate champions. I learned that this style Differed from American Parliamentary Debate since there were four teams with two members. Two of the teams make up the upper house, the teams opening the debate, and the other two teams make up the lower house, the teams closing and summarizing the debate.

After this lovely opening debate, I reluctantly forced my sleep deprived body to a social event to meet many of the other debaters. We used this social time to discuss the intricacies of this style, and world politics. These discussions were fantastic!

The next morning was awful, I could hardly wake up for the first day of training. Much of what we did on a day to day basis is on the IDAS blog. The typical day consisted of a morning lecture, morning activity, morning debate, lunch, two afternoon electives about important world events, an afternoon debate, and then dinner. The first day was the most memorable because I was told several times that I spoke like a machine gun. I guess it was because I had done about ten American parliamentary tournaments up to that point. I gradually got better. I don't really remember anything in the schedule beginning with morning since we were so busy discussing the different electives that we have seen. I think the second night was country night, so there was a booth set up for the twenty-four different countries that were represented. I guess it was from the plethora of culture, but all I can remember from country night is the extremely strong apple juice in a makeshift bottle that one of the Lithuanians covertly pulled from their backpacks.

Again the next morning was awful, I felt like I was slapped in the face with culture from the night before. We followed much of the same format except that I was getting better at BP since I learned to slow down and began to adapt a general format for speaking. More importantly that night was Salsa night y yo pude practicar mi espanol con mis amigos de Venezuela. Me disfrute porque yo aprendi SALSA. At first it was really difficult because I hadn't really embraced the culture surrounding Salsa, but then it became much easier. Salsa actually isn't that hard especially if you have a really good partner.

It was becoming far easier to wake up in the morning especially since SALSA only lasted until about 12 PM or so. I got a lot more from anything with the dreaded adjective of morning. We learned about the Romani people in the lectures this day which was really interesting from an American Perspective. It seemed that the U.S. followed most European initiatives like Civil Rights, health care reform, etc, but in this case Europe seems to have regressed one hundred years based on their discriminatory views towards the Romani people. Especially in the case of their expulsion from model E.U. countries like France and Italy. I think the social event for this night was karaoke and stand-up comedy night. It was really late so I'll I can remember is doing the macarana with the Venezuelans.

Thanksgiving:  I didn't like the last day in Kranjska Gora partly because I was forcibly dressed like a women for what Europeans call a Kiche party and I was told Merry Thanksgiving. For these reasons lets just skip it...

Black Friday: We traveled from Kranjska Gora to the Lake Bled. It is a very popular tourist spot in the Alps with a beautiful lake containing an island with a medieval castle sitting upon it. It was very snowy when we arrived so we had to picture what it would look like without the overcast from the postcards that we found.We went to an excellent pizza joint where we all ordered over sized pizzas filled with an assortment of delicious European cheeses. After a little site seeing we left Bled and traveled to the Youth Hostels at the University of Ljublana. The rooms at the dorm were not as luxurious as those at the Hotel Spik, but they were still nice for Eastern Europe. 

Black Friday continued: The tournament was held at the administrative faculty of the University of Ljubljana, this was one of many different subject centers dispersed throughout the city. I think Admin included social sciences as well. My partner Dave and I did well we received a 2 and a 1. These rankings are out of four so we were pretty happy with our performance. That night we toured the city from the Ljubljana castle which rose in the middle of the city. We also went to an English Pub called the Cutty Shark, or something like this, where I had a delicious hot chocolate. 

Tournament Day 2: Dave and I did well throughout the tournament acquiring eleven points. It wasn't clear whether 11 points was enough to break, but we were to find out at 1030 at the break party at an underground club called the Companero. After a great dinner at a Slovenian named place we went across the street to the club where it was announced that we were 12th out of the 16th teams that would advanced. Dave and I were really happy because there were sixty teams. I was less happy since we had to leave what was essentially the last party to get some sleep.

Tournament Day 3: We won our Quarterfinal Round, I think the topic was about the Middle East issuing an oil embargo on France until they removed the Burka Ban. In the Semi-Final round we were going up against one very good team, the ESL champions and a team I think everyone voted for by default so we did not advance to the finals. To be fair the topic was on the European Central Band and we were the only non-European team in the round. The tournament wrapped up, and we did a-lot of sight seeing on the last night. Many photos are to come on Facebook.  

The photo below is a picture of the Julian Alps in Kranjska-Gora. This was the view from my room at the Hotel Spik.  

The Hotel Spik

This is a picture of the obilesk in downtown Ljubljana, Dave snuck into the picture 

A restaurant that we ate at, pretty good

 Some friends at the Companero discotec.

This is one of the many famous bridges in Ljubljana. The Dragon on the Dragon Bridge is actually an interesting story. The Greek mythological hero Jason stole a golden fleece from King Aetes in Greece. Jason and his fellow Argonauts crossed the Black Sea went up the rives Danube, Sava, and finally to the Ljubljana marshes where Jason killed the Ljubljana Dragon.