Euro Cup continues - First Stop Lille

Now remember how crazy my life was leading up to this point? Well, I was also planning this trip so I may have gone a bit crazy with what we could pack into a day!

We left bright and early Friday, July 1st (Canada Day for you non-Canadian readers) and headed to Lille. It was July but the weather was cool and not great for being outside. I wore a sweatshirt the entire weekend! We arrived, dropped off our stuff and then headed for a beer - I mean lunch. We had a tour departing in a couple of hours!

Proudly Canadian!

The crazy thing is on our way to catch the tour, people were already gearing up for the evening match!

Most of the tours available from Lille have to do with first World War. We picked because it included Vimy Ridge but first up was the Lens 1914-18 Great History War Centre.  The displays in the Centre cover battles that took place in the Nord-Pas-de Calais region of France. The Centre is in an area that occupied a strategic position between Ypres (Belgium) and the Somme in France. The village itself was destroyed during the 1915 Battles of Artois. Of course, it has since been rebuilt. The exhibition is pretty well done.

Next stop - Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, which is home to the largest First World War cemetery in France and the great Ring of Remembrance, an architectural oval that was inaugurated in 2014 and bears the names of 580,000 dead soldiers of all nationalities. The ground was strategically important during the First World War and was bitterly contested in a series of long and bloody engagements between the opposing French and German armies during the three battles of Artois.

The Cemetary

Ring of Remembrance

The white is all the names

Panel after panel around the ring. . .

You can see all the way to Vimy

The last stop of the tour was Vimy Ridge. It was kind of poetic to be there on Canada Day as 1) it is in honour of the Canadians who fought this battle and the fact that we won it! and 2) it is actually on Canadian land. So I was home for July 1st :) 

It's a pretty impressive memorial that given it's location and size is very moving.

sporting my Team Canada soccer jersey 

You can't walk here because it is still filled with landmines but you can still see where there were explosions

They only allow sheep to maintain the grass

And because we hadn't done enough this day, we headed back to Lille where the party had already started . . 

More layers and rain gear were required because it was pouring on our way to the first match of the trip - Belgium vs Wales. Our first of two quarter final games. We had crazy close seats, bit of a bizarre angle but at least no one sat in front of us! This game was awesome because Wales, who was expected to do nothing, beat Belgium!

Getting started

front row baby!

Ceremony starts

Game on!

Finally it was time for sleep!

The whirlwind continues

I arrived back in Paris a Tuesday night from Mexico and Wednesday morning my dad arrived for his Euro Cup adventure. We were heading out on the Friday for our first game and city. We were on the go for 10 days straight!

But before we did this, I headed to the office for a couple of days. Not much happening there for me but there was a big event - the "ALORA Cup". So while most of Europe was enthralled by the Euro Cup my organisation was all about the "ALORA Cup". This is a tournament that is hosted every year where Directorates battle each other in football matches to win the coveted men and women's trophies. I managed to squeeze in 2 games before I left (they are only 25mins!) and my team continued the winning streak so I arrived just in time for the final.

We were undefeated, no goals scored against and we managed to keep it that way!!!

I even managed to win the top scorer trophy, oh if my coaches could see me now!

My dad even came out to cheer! I think he realized his time investment over those years was well worth it given the results ;)

The rest of my time in Mexico

While there were some laughable moments (ok, most of the moments were laughable due to their complete absurdity) over the week, this will not go down as one of my better experiences. Though I will say that I was touched by all the kind words people said about me at the Committee meeting on the Friday. It was nice to know they saw the effort but also the challenges faced.

As a result of the week, I was suffering a little post-traumatic stress for the first couple of days - I woke up from nightmares where I had lost the Malaysian Minister. I never even met the Malaysian Minister and we definitely did not lose him, or did we . . .?

Anyways, the rest of my time in Mexico was very chill, pretty much spent doing this:

The horrible Moon Palace but at least I wasn't working!

Finally - freedom! And a real hotel!!!!

I think you are starting to see the theme :)

A quiet day on the beach

That's all folks!

The big day and beyond

Given the night I had, I was really in no shape to handle anything that morning. Thankfully I had some good peeps looking out for me! 

In a shocking development we started over an hour late - apparently people were confused and didn't know what was going on - weird. I got a lovely phone call from the main hall saying the MC wanted to quit because he wasn't a "tech" person and didn't want to include our social media elements - it's a digital event people! Somehow my "team" convinced him to stay but he forgot his glasses so she had to help him read the screen (smacks forehead). It was just good times all around!

Once the show began though, people were happy and the crazy continued but at a lower rate than it had been.

I have to admit the screen did look pretty epic

The day ended with a dinner where the grand prize winners from the hackathon received their awards. I thought I had pictures of the dinner but apparently not! Though, I do have a pic with Dr. Chung's wife - she was a legend at the event!

The second day of the Ministerial was more of the same with a notable exception - it included a closed session for Ministers. This is the reason we have these things. 

Of course nothing was set up right, I had to negotiate with people where they were sitting as result yadda yadda yadda but the icing on the cake was when the SG asked if everyone had a particular document and, of course, they did not so this resulted in me sprinting to the office. Note this is the ONLY event that did not take place inside the conference centre which wouldn't have mattered until I had to return. . .it had started monsooning outside. Biblical proportions of rain were falling, people were taking shelter and this idiot (finger points to me) goes bolting out the door and gets completely soaked in the process - ah the memories!

And so the event ended - we took the stage, took a photo and celebrated!

 - no, wait there was one more thing. . .

The Friday was our regular Committee meeting which would take place in the same room as the Ministers' closed session (see above). My colleague decided to do some decorating with the gems in the photo.

I offered to go with him to drop off the giant Ms just to make sure everything was ready for the next day. . .

I lost it laughing. I was laughing so hard I was in tears because this pretty much summed it all up! In good news we found Latvia and Mexico - so two less things to print!

And Josie is back to work while everyone else is enjoying drinks in the lobby bar (aside from a few who got suckered into going to another event). Finally, I make it to drinks and the rest of the night was, as they say, n'importe quoi!

I provide only one photo of the night . . .