Our ride to the Big Apple in the "quiet car" of the train last April was a little more relaxed than we had expected, but the excitement began once we were met by our luxury limobus at Penn Station. The driver took us over the Brooklyn Bridge to our hotel where we stored our luggage until the rooms were ready. We ducked into a Starbucks for a quick snack and headed to Battery Park by subway to catch the ferry to the Statue of Liberty and stroll around her pedestal. 
The Montessori Model United Nations Conference opened mid-month on a Wednesday evening, with a ceremony to include a Parade of Nations, for which Regina carried a fabric flag of Sweden that the AOC students had made.Eighty-three nations were represented at the conference by approximately eight hundred thirty Montessori students in fourth through ninth grades. Students not only came from schools in the contiguous U.S. and Hawaii, but also from other countries including China, Japan, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Sweden to name a few. AOC was recognized with a certificate during the Opening Ceremony for having been fully supportive of MMUN since its inception five years earlier. The students listened to talks given by real UN Ambassadors about "service to others," and the attendees were congratulated on their hard work throughout the school year, culminating in the submission of position papers to the committee presidents and preparing to debate.
We discovered that each of our student groups had opted to raise their placards during the morning session in order to be placed on their respective Speakers' Lists, and several had already introduced their ideas in this public forum. They chatted with each other throughout lunch about the students they met from other schools, the formal language that was or was not being employed correctly in the committee rooms, and the personalities of their respective committee presidents.The afternoon sessions progressed, followed by dinner discussion surrounding the working papers which were in progress by that point. It became clear as we rounded the second day of meetings that our students had been involved with formulating the ideas for the preliminary paperwork. In some cases our delegations were even listed as Signatories or Sponsors, a first for AOC!
Saturday morning, the children were excited enough about their work that they hopped out of bed early to check out of the hotel, get breakfast and proceed to the UN Headquarters for final voting. During these proceedings the delegations sat on the main floor of the GA Hall in the seats used by the UN Ambassadors. They cast their votes for or against the resolutions by pushing the electronic colored buttons in front of them which would light up the voting board and create a full count of the votes in the room. 
Most of the draft paperwork that AOC students had been involved in passed and became GA Resolutions during the voting session. They were told that their final resolutions would actually be submitted to the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon.During the closing ceremony, all participants were congratulated for their noncompetitive, collaborative efforts by the Secretariat and visiting Ambassadors.
