Five days in Lima and all I seem to be asking myself is what if? Today was the first day of the Conference Of Youth (COY), but work started on Tuesday after a massive fourteen hour sleep.

I think the first question I asked myself was, what if my brain explodes from receiving and reading too many emails? As comms manager I’ve been trying to network and build relationships for a decent amount of time now, but upon arrival it has been taken to another level. The people I have been in contact with already (prepare for name dropping) include Helen Clark, Andrew Teem Advisor to the president – Republic of Kiribati,and Joseph Robertson from the Citizens Climate Lobby. Needless to say this gets me wildly excited, watch this space for how the meetings go!

Besides communication prep, we have finalised our policy document, to be published soon, and tried to familiarise ourselves with the city. My version of this has been testing my broken Spanish on locals, walks around the beautiful Mira Flores and paragliding, that ended with an emergency landing on the beach. I’m falling in love with the relaxed Peruvian culture already.

I’m still working on the early mornings, so COY began with a skipped shower and breakfast in the taxi for me. It didn’t bother me much though because I was too excited about the unknown I was facing and the hectic taxi ride only added to the suspense.

What if COY isn’t a source of motivation for me?

There were mixed emotions from the team surrounding what they expected and how the first day measured up in reality. I often have very little expectations for life events and so found the whole thing really interesting. One thing I couldn’t believe was the lack of European delegates attending. Obviously the attendance is primarily South American, but there were people from India, Taiwan, Japan, Belgium, Finland, Australia, USA, UK, Italy, France and I’m sure many more. However I had been told European countries generally brought large delegations, but there was only one or two from each. The buzz of being in such a multicultural auditorium though was enough to tell me that I was where I’m meant to be.

What if I can’t understand anything?

One of the best parts of today for me was getting to experience a translator talking in to my ear during a speech made by Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. As fun as I found it, I’m thankful the entire day wasn’t spent in the same way. COY consists of several seminars and workshops everyday that each individual chooses to attend themself. I decided on oceans this morning, a micro hydro sustainable energy workshop and YOUNGO meeting in the afternoon.

One thing that I was a little surprised at was the disagreement amongst youth at the YOUNGO meeting in the afternoon. YOUNGO is an international youth movement with constituency status, basically the most powerful youth group at COP. Before our workshops could even begin there was a dispute between the official meeting and the working groups who are trying to pass a youth declaration to submit at COP. I’m still in two minds over whether it disappointed me or excited me. It was good to see youth speaking their minds, but at the same time sad that we were disagreeing right from the get go. I think I came with a naive preconception that youth across the world have the exact same ideals and share the same motives for fighting climate change, when in reality that isn’t the case at all.

What if we don’t all agree?

I guess from today my biggest learning curve was that we’re all here for different reasons. That was really apparent to me sitting in a seminar talking about North Atlantic Ocean currents, something I have very little interest in, as opposed to the American to the left of me who looked as if he might burst from his chair with excitement. I perhaps didn’t give enough thought to how many avenues there are to take in the Climate Change fight, however the underpinning feeling that no matter our reason, we’re all working for climate justice overcame differences at the end of the day.

That’s something I love about being young. Before we grow up and become too set or comfortable in our ways, we’re prepared to listen, adapt and consider other opinions and values and move forward together. We’re generally prepared to have our own ideas critiqued and change them based on new information or world views.

If anything, I’ve grown even more excited for COP to start. Nothing gets me going more than the thought of experiencing new things, voicing my opinion and meeting Helen Clark.