"On Tuesday we arrived in Vancouver and today we started the tournament after training all day  yesterday. Everything in the tournament is very moving, what with students from other countries, winning, losing, going into a case after case, etc. But what happened yesterday made worth not only the trip but also the process that started in December, with training and the preparation of cases. This is true, although this is the most "intense"/demanding part. Yesterday they told us to define in a word what we felt up to now and I said "surprise". Because even if I had expectations, they weren't as high as everything turned out until this moment. One tends to have a bigger impact and feel more moved the "first time" of everything, but this time it was very different. I feel that Vancouver was much more of an impact, "new" or enriching that Los Angeles (even if that was great as well). Maybe it is the dynamics of the team (we are 23 this time) or that in debate I see some things more clearly connected to what I expect of a good speech. Going to something more concrete, we arrived well to a very nice city (although we'll tour around after the tournament), between mountains and water. The tournament lasts six days. The first two days are dedicated to the classifying rounds of Spanish and French. The next two, the classifying rounds of English and the last two, to the quarter finals, semifinals and finals of the three sections. Alejo debates bilingual (Spanish and English), Mercedes in English and me, in Spanish. Today  was out first day and my team made up of Ezequiel (Colegio del Carmen, San Rafael), Juan Ignacio (Southern International School,  Quilmes) and me won the first debate against Mexico over the prepared motion of "This House supports bilingual education in countries with a significant minority linguistic group" (we were opposition). The second round we didn't debate because of something I don't understand about being odd numbers (apparently there will be a round to compensate). The third round we lost against Perú being proposition over the motion "This House sustains that overseas territories should integrate as regions of the countries they depend of". In the first case we got three points because there was only one judge and so it was "unanimous" ,and in the case of the overseas territories we got a point because it was a split decision between the three judges. So, in total we have four points. Tomorrow we debate three more times and when we finish the sixth round we will know  if we classify to the quarter finals. Today we had dinner at the Museum of Anthropology in the University of British Columbia campus and there was a show of a native tribe's music. It was interesting. Having said that, this has just started and there are many things still to happen." Lucas Reynoso, S6H