Personal Narrative: My Simulation Of The UNHCR

Put the gun down! Put the gun down! Pow Pow Pow. The gun shots cracked into the air as loud as thunder. One after another. We live day by day not knowing our end. In the blink of an eye our lives can be changed forever. Its life, yet even in knowing this we never expect tragedy to find us. We never expect it to affect our lives and the people we know and love. I’m going to share with you the day tragedy found my life.

If I were to meet a Syrian refugee, I would simply ask “Why?”. The reason I would say this is because they fled their country during a civil war. So I would ask “Why run?”, “Why leave?”, and “Why did you?”. They would probably respond with something like “I was scared.”, “I could have died.”, “We wanted to live.”. I would tell them about the time we had a civil war. The time we wanted to break away from our superiors. Yes, we were scared. Yes, we didn’t want to die, but we stayed and fought for our rights. We stayed, joined the fight, and we got our freedom. So I ask “Why didn’t you”. They might say “We had very little weapons.”, “We didn’t have the supplies.”, and again with “I wanted to live.”. During the revolutionary war, we fought against

you shoveled it in, and you shoveled it out. You spread it with your fork, and you'd go up this and back this. Up that, and back this and up that, and back this until you get the ground covered. Now, they take a tractor with four or five plows on the back, and plowed it ten miles an hour. At that time, you would have one plow to lay the ground over and plow it. It took three horses. You'd make two rounds and then the rest the horses for five minutes. Then you'd make two more rounds. That would only move you over about ten inches each round. Now, they do 20 acres a day, easy. It's a different world.

I have lived in only one location my entire life: Edwardsville, Illinois. A peripheral suburb of St. Louis, it stands as the rare oasis of people in a desert of corn, pinned in its own personal bubble. Due to this blend of time and isolation, I developed a natural familiarity with my hometown. But, throughout my childhood, I longed to break free from the confines of the bubble and venture outward. However, this changed last summer, as I walked through Richards Brickyard, our family heirloom, that my great-grandfather, Benjamin Richards, founded over 120 years ago. I felt these childlike sentiments slip away. The bubble that had surrounded me for so long began to vanish, and the picture that it had been obscuring was slowly revealed.

As we close out the 43rd game of the season, the Phillies drop to 15-28. As the pitching woes continue, it's tough to look on the bright side. It's understandable for the fans to be anxious, but it's all apart of the rebuild. I'm here to tell you to R-E-L-A-X. The team is still incredibly young and in the process of getting back to October. Maikel Franco is struggling a bit at the plate. Picking up the slack in the lineup is Tommy Joseph, who has been on absolute tear through the month of May. Cesar Hernandez has cooled off a bit but still playing some good ball. What can't I say about Aaron Altherr? He's everything you can ask for right now and then some. One thing you can look forward to is one of the most exciting

It was record breaking temperatures on this July 4th day. Red, white, and blue filling up the stands. Fans and umbrellas protecting spectators from the heat of the sun. It was about game time and I was getting ready to take the field for the last home game. Butterflies in my stomach, but I had to tell myself “it’s just another game”. Even though in my heart I knew it was not just another game.

One day i was simply raking leaves in my yard and tired as i was i leaned on a tree. Then i felt something moving i turned around and it was nothing. I continued to lean and felt it again and again, the moving went faster and and always stopped when i turned. I ignored it and then continued until suddenly…i fell into a pit. There was a statue with a pamphlet in the pedestal that opened up saying that every 613 years a child of prophecy will be born and carry on the will of Hades. I was horrified. It said that you have 2 hours to steal souls and drain the life out of every human with a transformation formula on them. I thought what a transformation formula but i had no idea. I looked at the statue and kicked it several times, but then another pamphlet appeared showing

The phone was ringing as I stepped into my house. My mother picked up the phone without realizing she would shortly be sent to her knees. She yelled for me to get into the car and we rushed into the hospital. As hectic as the situation felt, time seemed to pass by very slow in that car. We finally arrived to the hospital to find my father nervously talking to the doctor. I learned that my brother had been brutally beaten up by a couple of teenagers on his way home from school and, as a result, had lost most of his teeth.

Like everyone else, I was very nervous for my first simulation experience mostly because I wasn’t sure what to expect. Before the simulation started my partner agreed he would focus on administering medications and that I would focus on doing the assessment and helping with whatever else the patient needed at that time. After talking to the patient for a little, we discovered that he was having difficulty breathing. What we did first was elevated the head of the bed. He said he was still having trouble, so I ensured his nasal cannula was working properly and asked him to do some deep breathing exercises with me. That still wasn’t helping so I knew that albuterol, a fast-acting bronchodilator, would need to be administered before any other med.

My older brother used to tell me about all the fun simulations that he got to do when he was in challenge. I was very envious because I had never done a simulation. So, when my 3rd grade teacher announced that our class was going to take part in a simulation, I was very excited. We had started learning about how in the olden days, native Americans didn’t use dollar bills to pay for things. They traded things like food, weapons, and clothing for things they needed.

I’m sorry that I haven't blogged regularly but as you can imagine I am still trying to get comfortable with my new life. Now that I’m here I’m really starting to realize that Haiti has no structure, my mom would have a fit! (Love you mom!) Work day hours vary constantly, you can start work pretty much at 7:30AM and then declare at 3PM that you are going home. With my line of work we are constantly depending on the wifi, which as you can imagine is not the greatest in a third world country, but we manage to get as much done as we can. I can honestly say that every day is different, there is never really a schedule or a plan as to how one should go about doing things. You simply just do them. Transition from the U.S. has

You seemed as if you left out of your 4th block Spanish from those rusty gray doors on the side of our school building.

My role in the simulation activity was a homeless male with a 8 year old son. I felt overwhelmed being homeless. I had nothing to work with no money, no bus passes. I ended up asking others around me for help. Thankfully, I found a retired gentle man who gave me his last $10, which I was able to use to purchase bus passes. The good thing was my child could go to school, eat breakfast, and lunch. I learned that others are why more resourceful than I am. Others were stealing and they were able to get ahead. I tried to do things the “right” way and I was still in the same place when the stimulation ended.

I represented Nouri Al-Maliki the prime minister of Iraq. The prime minister in Iraq makes the executive decisions. Over the course of this this simulation thankfully I gained a lot of knowledge of how crazy it can be on the political side of things. Not only did I learn about Iraq but also I learned many new things about other countries and the way their governments run things. In the next year or so I will graduate as a High school social studies teacher and after doing this simulation I learned how valuable it can be to allow students to be apart of a simulation. The simulation helped me catch up with a lot of important political issues of current and past times.

POLI 283: Model United Nations was the most fulfilling Odyssey project that I have experienced during my time at Hendrix, on both a personal and academic basis. Preparing for the AMUN conference using a semester’s worth of simulations and research has facilitated growth in multiple areas of my life, and the experiential component in Chicago was highly rewarding in its own right. Serving as a representative from the Republic of Indonesia to the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific vastly improved my ability to work with a partner and to organize large groups of people. This Odyssey experience also increased my confidence as a public speaker, broadened my area of study within the International Relations department, and has introduced me into a close-knit group of teammates who share my interests and passions.