Well, this is it, I’m almost packed, and in a couple of hours I’ll be driving up to Tallinn. Its somewhere around 2000 km, and it will be a great trip, I hope.
As you can see, my website changed a bit, because of the blog on the first page. As I mentioned before, I will blog via email on my phone, and this is sadly not possible yet on this blog, so I use blogger.com to blog and show this blog on my website.
I will try to blog as often as possible, you will get the motion at least after each round and the breaks for all the breaking rounds.
Come to my site, www.debate-motions.info and read all the news, and if you do not have any teams from your Institution or country, I always need cheerleaders, so cheer for me and my debatie.
I will blog more on the EUDC when I come back, in 10 days.

Well, I’m really looking forward to enjoy 10 days of travel and debate.
We are traveling to EUDC with a van, so it means we will be on the road for three days. 8 people, one night on the road, one night in Kaunas and something like 4000 km. That’s what I call a road trip.
We will be there already on Sunday, so I believe we will be able to get some of the Vana Tallinn in advance.
As noted before I’ll be blogging from the EUDC live, just come to my website, the blog will be on the first page. It won’t be this one giving you all the live information, because I have some technical problems. I will blog via my mobile phone, so I need the other blog. But whenever possible, I’ll update this blog too, so you will get all the info, if you are subscribed to this blog.
I will also bring my camera, so I can record debates, and post them on the Internet for you, so if your not going to be there, just check out my webpage and you will get all the EUDC 2008 info

It is all set. Laura already came to Slovenia and is probably enjoying our hospitality in Brdo pri Kranju (just a fancy place where all the “important” guests sleep). She will be walking around Slovenia to see all the places that she missed at her first visit to Slovenia, and more.
On Tuesday she will come to the national museum, where she will attend a debate. As far as I heard the debate is going to take place right next to one of the first printing mashines used in Slovenia to print something in Slovenian, so really a great place to support the debate as a whole.
Four great debaters and two more as floor speakers all from high school, and around 20 primary school debaters in audience and the wife of Slovenian president ms. Türk. And me YEY
I arranged that we will be able to make a recording of the first 10 or something minutes of the debate, so you will be able to see the whole thing, sadly they want to close the debate down for public later, that also means that we won’t be allowed to film anything else.
The debaters will debate on the topic how voluntary community service should be obligatory for high school graduation. The US Embassy and White house, with whom I exchanged probably 100 emails in the last week, wanted to see the arguments up front and we have a rehearsal tomorrow, where they expect the debaters to make their speeches. They are worried, that we do not destroy the friendliness with our freedom of speech.
They probably remember all the hard questions that we asked the US ambassador in Slovenia when he (actually both of them, the current and the previous) visited University students at the IDAS, and they do not want us to do the same thing to ms. Bush. Well, this is why the University students are not invited. Shame, I know.
Well, I’ll let you know how it goes.

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When I wrote the article “How far did debate come in your country” I wrote, how the status of debate in Slovenia is great, but I had no idea.
As you probably know, we have the presidency of the EU for a while now, and this also means, that all the big meetings are held in Slovenia. We are going to host the US president and his wife next week.
Why is this connected to debate? Well the US Embassy in Slovenia, that is preparing the program of the visit asked us, if we would like/could make a debate for Laura Bush. That means, that the Slovenian Worlds team for Washington and a couple other debaters will make a public debate (that will be closed for public ) for Laura.
They will debate on the motion “This house supports that voluntary community service becomes obligatory for higschool graduation.”, 2 vs. 2 with short two minute speeches and then we will also let a couple of debaters from the audience make a floor speech, and then we will invite the G. W. Bush’s wife to speak about the debate.
I’m sure it will be a great event. I will try to, at least, take a couple of pictures, and if possible make a video of it and post it here.
And I will of course write a follow up on this blog, so RSS it, and read about how the debate will go.