The Cherry Ontop of a Wonderful Week

Today was super laid back. Today was the end of the first week of classes and this class has been more than I could ever have hoped for. 

Today’s class was basically one large activity about examining a country that has committed many human rights abuses and looking for strategies to help stop these atrocities. 

Afterwards, since we had no homework, we just walked to Javaria’s dorm and played board games. 

Afterwards I went to dinner and met up with Javaria and we went to a little music festival like you would see in Berkeley. 

Today was pretty uneventful compared to my other days, but it was a relief because we are starting our first weekend and I get the chance to not only soak in more of Cornell, but I also get to see more of Ithaca.

I got up, had breakfast and went to class. 

In class we had an activity where we looked into the human rights violations of a fake country called Nanguo. Violations included repeated sexual violence against women, discrimination against the country’s Leng minority; women didn’t have equal access to education or healthcare and couldn’t own land. A woman named Mosti Milso had her husband arrested under faulty claims and was suspiciously killed in jailed, after these events she sought remedy from the police and the Nanguo government, but she was harassed and threatened by police.

My team's notes in the activity

When we broke up into teams my team broke up into even smaller groups so we could cover how many rights and what rights the Nanguo government violated. It was a lot. The Nanguo government signed so many treaties and convention and even incorporated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in their constitution and they followed none of the provisions laid out in those treaties and declarations. They also sent out statements saying how great they are at respecting and implementing human rights. Even though this country was fake I was mad at the pure hypocrisy. I parred with another person and listed the provisions that Nanguo broke relating to a lack of government action and remedy. Our group as a whole had a lot of provisions that Nanguo violated. The fun part was figuring out how these provisions were going to be enforced. International law doesn’t really have any enforcement mechanism and fifty different avenues one could take. You could file an individual complaint or use the international court system. I liked how man be enforced. International law doesn’t really have any enforcement mechanism and fifty different avenues one could take. You could file an individual complaint or use the international court system. I liked how many variants there were because it allows for variation and I also didn’t like how many variants there were as well because it was very hard to decide which one has its own drawbacks and positive aspects. Our group at the end of the activity my group covered the entire chalkboard.

We shared out our strategies and I found that international law is not clear cut or as “directed” as domestic law because it has no police force or legal system (like our civil and criminal law systems in America or our trial and appeals courts). It was very interesting. 

After class I had lunch with a group of friends and then we went to Javaria’s room because it started raining heavily (and I actually remembered my travel umbrella this time!) We watched “The Jungle Book” and played board games. Then we went our separate ways and I met up with Javaria at dinner. 

After dinner we accidently stumbled on a wonderful concert. The concert had an indie band called “Stone Cold Miracle” and a lot of hippies that had dyed mustaches and braided beards and that danced. They were really good dancers and they seemed very happy. This kind of concert was super cool because it looks like it could happen (and actually happens in Berkeley) 

When the concert ended we walked to our dorms and around Balch there were fireflies. They were beautiful. We got so excited that we both FaceTimed our mothers. We then finally went our separate ways because bugs were eating us alive and we wanted some good night’s sleep. After this laid back, but surprisingly active day I can’t wait to get some shut eye and much needed rest and I can't wait to explore Ithaca.