Our trip to Stockport Grammar School's second MUN conference began on Friday the 14th March 2008.
It was, by anyone's standards, obscenely early in the morning when seventeen up-and-coming young delegates (and two relatively unsuspecting teachers) converged upon Belfast City Airport. We bade a fond farewell to the sixth years, bound for Edinburgh MUN, and set about catching a plane to Manchester. En route some of our group engaged in a rousing chorus of Poulenc's Gloria (having in many cases stayed up to the wee small hours the night before participating in the Easter Concert) and either amused, horrified or inflicted-a-lifelong-hatred-of-classical-music-upon our unfortunate fellow passengers.

We made it to Manchester unscathed (although I can't say the same for the rest of the plane) and caught the bus to our hotel. Dropping our luggage off, we set off again. Two walks, a train and a tram (in which we had wonderful fun commandeering an entire carriage) later, we arrived at Salford Quays, a shopping centre in the centre of Manchester. Upon arrival, Miss Roundtree and Mr Woods released us, and stood well back as we charged towards the food court. The group split up and shopped for hours, purchasing bribes, snacks and even some clothes (in particular, one intelligent and experienced delegate spent her entire food allowance for the trip on one admittedly gorgeous blue dress - she maintained through the hunger pangs that it was worth it!).

Having shopped until we dropped, we made our way back to the hotel to get ready for the conference. Stockport Grammar School, as we discovered when we arrived, was extremely impressive, and as the delegations of USA and Denmark we made our way to our committee rooms and began to lobby. When we reconvened an hour and a half later, it was to discover that a fair few of our resolutions would be debated the next day (and that most of us faced some pretty formidable opposition in the form of some excellent older delegates).

We crossed the road to a local hotel for the evening entertainment, and passed an enlightening evening watching many of said older delegates imbibe their own body mass in Guinness, Bacardi Breezers and WKD. After a curry and an hour of watching our younger male delegates engage in some 'informal lobbying' with some sixth year girls, we returned to the hotel and (some time later) got some much needed sleep.

Bright and early on Saturday morning, after a breakfast that could be considered a challenge to the term 'all you can eat', we walked to SGS (no unnecessary carbon pollution for us!) and were officially welcomed to the school in the opening ceremony by headmaster Mr Chicken (yes, really). We returned to our committees for a session of debate, and then gathered together again to receive an inspirational speech from Mr David Blunkett, the former Home Secretary, and his lovely guide dog Sadie (providing the Woof Factor for the conference).
Debate continued promptly afterwards, and before the end of the day we'd had one delegate removed from committee and handcuffed to some railings ("for her own safety"), one delegate under severe threat of lynching (for attempting to make use of her veto powers) and more than one declaration of war (and that was just the USA!) All members of both delegations did their absolute best and engaged in what was often an absolutely stunning standard of debate.

We headed back to the hotel for a rest (and, in some cases, a tournament of Spit!) before going back out for another evening's entertainment. This time it was largely provided by some members of the Manchester-based band I Am Kloot. We were, to put it politely, severely under-whelmed by their musical talent and positive attitude (or significant lack thereof). However, thanks in part due to the un-discovered break dancing talents of one of our male delegates, we still managed a fairly enjoyable night and headed back to our hotel to rest up before our final day of debate.

On Sunday morning after breakfast we walked to SGS again and - after emergency debates in committee - made our way to General Assembly. The majority of the USA delegation then spent a very enjoyable hour sending notes, exchanging email and in a few cases yelling a lot about the situation in Kosovo and Serbia. We then moved into the awards ceremony (during which Mr Woods led the chanting of, "USA! USA!") and members of both delegations received recognition - For Denmark, Philip Chen (Political committee) was commended.

In the USA delegation, Siobhán Austin (Counter-Terrorism), Yixi Bi (Environment) and Peter Erskine (Disarmament) were commended. Joe Doyle (Education), Rachael McKinney (Human Rights), Victoria Ward (Health and Youth) and Ruth Stone (Middle East) were named Best Juniors in their respective committees, and Charlotte Higgins (Security Council) and Edward Nickell (Future Security Council) were highly commended. The USA also received the award for commended delegation.

All of us were delighted, and headed home having thoroughly enjoyed the conference.

By Charlotte Higgins