Thursday already??

So I'm just starting to get the hang of being here; ie. I know which buses and trams to take, I learned my street name, I can say both ''I am Vegetarian'' and ''Plain, Please!'', I found an awesome and incredibly cheap vegetarian cafe (try out GreenWay if you can!), and I even know my way around this huge conference center. But it's almost time to start traveling again! I find myself constantly wondering.. what's it going to be like to get jet-lag in the other direction without being over it in the first place?

Everything has been really interesting and informative thus far. I've attended lots of side events, but I find it really frustrating that you have to pick one and neglect another. And I feel rude walking out so I always stay until the whole room disbands. One thing that's really getting to me- people need to turn off their cell phones!! There are people who have actually answered phone calls in the middle of side sessions and proceeded to have normal conversations! That being said, I've got a few favorite events already, like ''Addressing Short-Lived Forecers of Arctic Warming and Melting''- which talked about 3 destructive and easily reducable short lived forcers which are causing the Arctic to warm at 2 times the rate of the rest of the globe over the past 100 years (black carbon, tropospheric ozone (o3), and methane gas (CH4)). Another favorite of mine was ''Biodiversity and REDD''- which more definitively explained the fundamental differences between natural forests and plantations. Maybe the most interesting one I've come across was the ''Mitigation Potential in Agriculture'' which raised a lot of important issues and drew many parallels between mass food production and climate control (and made me proud to be wegetarianski!).

Oh yeah, and I even bought a book by my favorite author in Polish to bring home as a souvenir. One day maybe I'll even be able to read it! (But I doubt it..)

I'm sure I forgot to mention about a zillion things, but I'll have to save that for later.

Love and Light
Alison