I am now back in London, after what can only be described as one of the best months of my life so far. Living in New York, working at the UN and meeting so many great people all combined to produce an experience I will never forget.

The last week was the least busiest, something I rather enjoyed. There were only five or six youth delegates left on Monday; that number had decreased to three on Friday, when I attended a roundtable discussion on youth and the MDGs at Columbia University. This involved giving a brief talk at the start, along with fellow youth reps from Georgia and Australia and a few other guests, before comments were invited from everyone else. The event was organised by the Earth Institute at Columbia and the UN Programme on Youth and I thought it went pretty well, with just about the right amount of people there. It was chaired by Gordon McCord, understudy to Dr. Jeffrey Sachs and a leading advisor at the UN.


Other events of the week included meeting team members of the UNDP Regional Bureau for Africa on a night out, a fascinating group of people from all over the world - including one from the area of London pretty much adjacent to where I live! - and going to a comedy show the next evening featuring five men improvising humorous sketches around random words suggested by the audience.

It was while having breakfast in the surreal surroundings of a New Jersey diner, during the small hours of Sunday morning with gospel music and a religious preacher ringing out in the background, that I realised just how fast time has flown by over the past few months. I can still remember all the summer days revising indoors, coping with boiling heat to try and learn historical happenings and political ideologies, like they were last week. And there I was, sitting on the other side of the world, none the wiser.

The time does seem to have gone incredibly quickly, but the good thing is I don't think it's been because I wasn't concentrating. Particularly during the UN main youth week, I was stressing to everyone not to lose focus: otherwise the days will be gone before you know it and you'll be going home without really having learnt anything or taken in the occasion. You can look back and think of many things you'd have done differently in retrospect. This can happen so easily when you get too caught up in something; thankfully I managed to avoid it.

I arrived back to the good news that I've been accepted to attend a youth conference in Lithuania at the end of the month. It looks like a fantastic event and I can't wait for the chance to discover another new country - I've been incredibly lucky recently with everywhere I've visited and will be sure to take a couple of days in Vilnius just to explore the town and learn about its culture.

After this will come the all-important youth delegates' evaluation meeting in Geneva. As I keep emphasising, the follow-up work we all do after leaving NYC is equally - if not more - important than everything we've done in the buildup to the UN and during it. The website idea needs to be developed and discussions are ongoing; hopefully something will be in place before the meeting. I also hope to have my documentary ready to show everyone in Switzerland; after the event at Columbia on Friday I paid a final visit to DCTV in Chinatown to pick up DVDs containing footage of the youth Roundtable and Plenary sessions from the WPAY review, which I'd had dubbed from VHS for easier editing. That was the last piece in the jigsaw as far as the documentary preparations are concerned: now I have to get down the the tricky business of writing, editing and producing the film itself.

Being back at home is anti-climactic after the hustle and bustle of living in Manhattan and everything I did there, but it had to happen eventually. Recently I was elected to the Board of the UK Youth Parliament to represent London and, no sooner had that happened, a bad financial situation came up in the region which we all have to work now to sort out. Also, I'm rather behind in hours with my job as Youth Participation Worker for Hounslow and this may take a few weeks to catch up. But I have the Lithuanian and Swiss events to look forward to and literally two minutes ago I had an email inviting me to another event in Italy happening the week after Geneva, which I will attend to represent the English Secondary Students' Association. What a day - and what a trip this will be!

After the couple of days following my return from Montréal, things are generally more quiet work-wise. The highlight of that weekend was visiting the Blue Note Jazz Club, located downtown, for the late session on Friday night. It was a great gig, with a fusion-style band fronted by piano genius Brian Haas, and there was an awesome atmosphere in the packed venue. This was actually my second time seeing live music in NY, after visiting a bar which had some rock groups before leaving for Canada. On Saturday I saw an improvised theatre show: the four actresses receive only a short paragraph before going out on stage and make up everything as they go along!

During the week there were a few more meetings, including one with the Millennium Campaign's Youth Co-ordinator. I'm impressed they have created such a post - young people are vital to the MDGs and implementation will be impossible without our involvement. I believe they are really YDGs - Youth Development Goals - and this has to be more widely acknowledged. At the moment I'm working with a small group of young people at home to plan a campaign which will hopefully raise lots of money for fighting poverty and increase awareness of the MDGs amongst youth at the same time. This coming week I'll be trying to find ways this idea can be linked with my work at the UN and productively utilise the contacts I've made recently.

I also visited the Downtown Community TV Centre to sort a few things out for the documentary and started making investigations into the services provided for young people in New York. I'm really interested to find out what's on offer, how any structures work and who runs things. The Global Youth Action Network, which is based here in NYC, has given me info so I can get in touch with their contacts at the Department of Youth and Community Development of the Mayor's Office and Global Kids, a major organisation working for youth in the city. This week I'll be making enquiries and trying to set up meetings so I can learn about the work these people do.

The website idea for youth delegates is coming on well too. We've now finalised a co-ordination group, which will be organising the new site - working on design, content, features and any other ideas which come out. The importance of follow-up work happening after the youth segment of the UNGA60 is huge: we can't just all go back to our home countries and think the experience is finished!

On one free day I decided to cross the Brooklyn Bridge by foot and explore this up-and-coming area. The weather was perfect for such an excursion and I got some great photos of the Manhattan skyline from the bridge. As for Brooklyn itself, I found a great contrast. Wandering around for the best part of three hours, I noticed one side was quite busy and full of small, slightly dodgy shops, while the other was a lot more peaceful and less rundown. I think this part is called Brooklyn Heights and it must be quite a nice place to live.

Halloween fever is gripping New York. I visited one shop near Union Square entirely devoted to the occasion, with all varieties of costumes, toys and accessories to a near-ridiculous extent. In London it's not anything like such a big deal, this must be a North American thing: Montréal was going through similar preparations, with people specially decorating for the night a week in advance. I'm looking forward to the parade though, it's supposed to be a pretty spectacular event!

The clocks have just gone back and this is the time of year when I start to sense that winter is really setting in. Strangely enough though, tonight was a clear, warm evening and I took a walk along the riverside. Reflections from buildings on the shores glimmered in the water and it was almost like this was going to be a ceremonial final goodbye to pleasant weather, before the cold and windy stuff comes back.

This week is almost definitely going to be my last here, after extending the time away from home three times. New York has really started to feel like a second home during the past month and it will be sad to leave. But it's very important for me to get back, with work and responsibilities having been put off long enough! It's been the longest period of time I've ever had away - my travels over the past few months were broken up by intervals in London - and I've enjoyed every moment of it.

The train returning me to New York from Montréal arrived perfectly on time, coming into Penn Station at exactly 7.40pm - an unexpected luxury considering the excessive length of my outbound journey! It's great to be back after the charming relative peacefulness of my stay in Canada; I was feeling the vibrant buzz of the city again and the weather seems to have improved.

Thursday was pretty busy. First up was a meeting with the UN Programme on Youth to evaluate the whole experience of being a youth delegate. The few of us remaining were able to have a good, constructive discussion about what we think could be improved and we'll also be submitting written comments. These will be compiled into a document of recommendations the Youth Programme will use in a big meeting with staff from member states' Permanent Missions taking place in mid-November.

Another edition of a yoUNg view (see pic), the youth reps' newsletter, has also been produced after lots of work to get it all sorted. It features reports of events during the WPAY+10 review and information about youth delegates, among other things. The first issue was produced before the review and is online here, on the page which also has a list of national youth delegates this year. Soon issue two will be there as well so please check them out!

At 3pm the youth delegates met up again for a meeting with Turhan Saleh, an official from the UN Development Project (UNDP) responsible for day-to-day organisation of the MDGs (no small task!). It was the second time we had the chance to speak with UNDP staff - last week we met Jeffrey Avina from the Regional Bureau for Africa. Both sessions were good chances to learn more about the processes behind the MDGs, find out how these people think youth can be involved and ask any other questions we could think of.

After this meeting I returned briefly to the Youth Programme offices to pick up some paper copies of the newsletter and discuss ideas for a new website, which will be designed as a key resource for youth delegates. A major point from discussions we had both today and previously was the lack of co-ordination in our group. It's very hard to centrally organise over 50 young people, all with differing roles and responsibilities, to meet at certain times or make specific campaign plans.

One potential way to combat this in future would be to create a well-maintained website where current youth reps can learn about the role and ask ex-youth reps any questions they may have. It could also serve as a useful resource for updates on progress, both during the General Assembly and, more importantly in my view, afterwards. Tomorrow I'll be visiting the office again to investigate the possibilities of this website and hopefully starting to get it organised.

Compared to last week this has been like a walk in the park! No hectic agenda, no rushing around from meeting to meeting and no planning for side events. It's a relief in one sense but also slightly anticlimactic after everything that happened last week and the resultant chaotic lifestyle. My activities haven't really merited daily updates either, so I've just summed them up with this entry...

I've been filming for a documentary I will produce on the WPAY+10 review process and the role youth delegates played in it. This has involved interviewing those of us still left in NY and getting footage of the city and the UN as well. Hopefully I'll be able to get everything together within a few weeks of returning home.

Weather-wise, things have become absolutely terrible over the last few days! It's changed so quickly from the charming sunshine of last week to vicious wind and pounding rain. Reminds me of being back at home in London! There have been a few days of non-stop downpour and it can get quite depressing at times - especially when I think about being inside all of last week and now having time to actually be out but the weather meaning I don't want to go! Right now, as I write this, I can hear rain outside at levels close to a tropical storm.

We (the youth delegates still here) have been trying to meet on a daily basis for lunch and that's a good thing. It's important to stay organised and in many ways, since there's now a smaller group, that has been easier. Unfortunately, for reasons we don't understand, the chances of meeting Kofi Annan next week have now evaporated. Pretty disappointing since we were hopeful of getting the chance to actually meet the Secretary General properly - rather than for a swift photo engagement.

There will be another issue of 'a yoUNg view', the official youth reps' newsletter which I have been organising and editing. We had a meeting this evening in the Affina 50 hotel and decided who's going to do what. Hopefully it will all be sorted out in time to be released for distribution early next week.

I've also taken the spontaneous step to extend my time away from home once again, after already staying in New York after the other two UK youth delegates departed. On Friday or Saturday I will leave for Montréal, Canada to visit a friend I met in Germany last summer. It's a great chance to see another country and one I couldn't resist!

The final day of a weird and wonderful wonderful week. What can I say? To be perfectly honest, it was a bit anti-climactic after the hectic previous days. I didn't even spend very long at the UN - had to pack everything up in the hotel and check out first.

Once that was all done I went to one of the final side events with Keeley, which was surprisingly well-attended considering the timing. It was hosted by the European Youth Forum and TakingITGlobal, an interesting combination, and went pretty well. Presentations about both organisations were followed by a short discussion in which people reflected on the week. A Secretariat employee from the Youth Programme summed everything up.

It really has been unbelievable. I never thought it would be so busy, but that was part of the experience. I've hardly had any time to myself at all. People did warn me, but it's impossible to predict anyway because you never really know until it happens.

All the people I've met are absolutely fantastic. I still struggle to comprehend that within the UN there are 191 countries and representatives from each. Hearing global perspectives from other youth delegates was one of the best things about the week.

I've learnt a great deal about how the institution functions and it's a lot more complicated than I ever thought. For example, when I'd read resolutions or other documents before I never realised how much negotiation and deliberation it takes to get things agreed. You just see it on the page and it's impossible to tell, but people have worked for hours and hours to make it happen.

The youth resolution was looking decent last time I saw. Most others I've discussed it with have said positive things and that's a good sign. Unfortunately I didn't manage to organise things for the paragraph I wanted on youth-led development, it just went too fast and a few major circumstances were beyond my control. But there's still some strong text in there on that subject, so I'm not too worried really.

I think the youth delegates achieved good things as a group. Managing to get photo opportunities with Kofi Annan and Jan Eliasson shows we were on the radar and people knew what we were doing. Statements made by youth reps were all of a very high standard as well; although I didn't see them all I'm reliably informed everyone was great!

It's sad that many of us have left now. Keeley and Kristofer went tonight but I'm sticking around for another week to try and get the film organised. I didn't manage to sort out my NGO pass today so will have to do so on Monday. There's always something interesting happening at the UN so it will be good to stay and witness some of the 'normal' non-youth business.