Eighteen students and three faculty advisors ventured to Dubai, a metropolis in the United Arab Emirates, to participate in the Dubai International Academy Model United Nations Conference (DIAMUN). Over the course of the trip, which took place from March 10-17, Parker’s delegates experienced Emirati culture, learned about the city, and engaged in discussion with other teenagers from around the world.

Each year, Parker sends a delegation abroad to an international symposium, in addition to its participation in a national and many local ones. Model UN faculty advisors Jeanne Barr and Kevin Conlon, as well as this year’s captains, chose DIAMUN after research, in part due to logistics, according to Conlon, but also what the location could offer students educationally.

“Dubai is a very international city,” Conlon said. “It’s been built out of the desert since the 70s. It’s a hustle-bustle kind of place, but generally, people are very courteous and friendly. It has very modern architecture and huge malls. There are a lot of mosques, and wherever you are, you hear the call to prayer a few times a day. It’s a very interesting society.”

The group spent four of the days at the conference, with the theme of “Globalization through Technological & Environmental Advancements” guiding the committee discussion. There were 17 committees, ranging from League of Arab states to World Energy Forum to Economic and Social Council.

Sophomore Carter Wagner represented Mali in the General Assembly. “The debate was really substantive,” Wagner said. “For us, the conference was a little differently formatted because it was more focused on resolutions and solutions than debating ideas. It was really interesting.”

At the conference, according to Conlon, schools attended from around the globe, including from countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and the U.S.

Senior Model UN captain Galia Newberger appreciated the international aspect of DIAMUN. “My favorite part of the conference was that, in my delegation, Nuclear Security Summit, one of my friends was this girl from a school in Saudi Arabia,” Newberger said.  “I learned that she had never talked to a boy before, besides her dad. It’s a totally different culture, and it feels so distant — but there she was, sitting in a committee doing Model UN with me.”

Beyond serving as delegates, the Parker group explored Dubai as tourists. They peered over the city from the top of the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, sampled regional cuisine like falafel and baklava on a four-hour food tour, and journeyed into the adjacent desert where they rode camels over golden dunes. They visited the downtown, which, as Wagner described, “had a  lot of lights — everything was flashy, even the palm trees.”

Newberger found it interesting to learn about life in Dubai. “We went to this tiny traditional Arabic coffee shop where they taught us about the area’s nonverbal traditions,” she said. “For example, how you drink your coffee may indicate your wanting to marry somebody.  There were just all of these intersections between tourism and culture, which you don’t really think about in Dubai since it’s so metropolitan and modern.”

Conlon acknowledged that visiting a foreign city is important to expanding your perspective. “Things are often different than what you imagine them to be,” Conlon said. “Dubai was a multifaceted, very diverse, very exciting kind of place.”