The results

The final results can now be accessed in the web at: http://www.ilsa.org/jessup/jessup06/results.shtml


The winner this year was Columbia University (USA) which defeated Universidad Catolica Andres Bello (Venezuela) in the finals. This is the first time since 1990 that a U.S. university wins the competition.

As for team Iceland, we came in 61st place in the preliminary rounds. We won 2 out af 4 rounds and accumulated 2591 raw points and 17 round points in the process for those who are familiar with the Jessup-lingo.

In the memorial part of the competition we came in 46th place with a combined score of 462 points, the applicant memorial was quite competitive with 249 points (20th place amongst the applicant memorials).

There is a separate memorial competition called the Dillard Competion where memorials from teams that did not advance to the international rounds were evaluated as well as those from the teams that made it to D.C., in that competition we were ranked #59.

The rounds that we won were against Japan and Portugal while we lost the rounds against Uzbekistan (a very close one) and Croatia.

We'll drink to that!

We finished in 61st place out of 108 teams. That's pretty good eh?!

We're finished!......damn....

It's over, we won two rounds out of four (and no Ásgeir, we don't know against whom until on Sunday!). We probably would have won three rounds out of four if Vigdís wouldn't have decided to get some bronchitis before we met Uzbekistan...to future Jessup-goers, yes these things can happen so you have to know your team-mates arguments also by heart.

Here is a picture of Þór and Vigdis after the competition against Japan.



....oh yeah, and here is another with our famous resourcer, Bjarki.













And here are Leena and JFK after the competition against Portugal...
















...And here is one of Þór and Leena with coach Rachael (or "mommy-Rachael" for that matter) - after the match against Uzbekistan where they had to wear head-pieces since the Uzbekistan team had translator but weird thing about it was that they spoke fine english after the competition....those russian countries are full of surprises.







...I think it is alright to say that the Hotel Bar has been the boys oasis since we arrived...











...And here is our team of respondent preparing for their final match against Croatia.

...And here is our team of respondents with the Croatian team of applicants with judges. Don't let the "grandpa look" of the judges fool you, they were a bunch of really tough ones...

The first moots

Two moots are now behind us, our applicant team of Vigdís and Þór competed yesterday against the University of Tokyo from Japan (obviously). Only one judge on the panel was actually active with questions and she had some rather tough ones, but she was also a nice helpful grandma-type. It then turned out that she has her own company which specializes in arms trade... isn't that nice. Our second competition was earlier today when our respondents, Jón and Leena went up against a Portuguese university from the fine city of Lisbon. Today's judging panel was alot meaner than the one we had yesterday altough they did ask easier questions. Especially tough was this German guy who took his role as the "bad cop" very seriously but as it turned out afterwards it was of course just an act and he was really a nice guy after all.

We have another moot tonight and the last one in the preliminary rounds will be tomorrow, tomorrow night we then find out how we have done so far and wether or not we'll continue.

It's the day of something alright...

Yesterday was the day that coach Ásgeir once referred to as "the day of the long queues" as it is the day when the schedules and the memorials from the teams we will meet are distributed, this indeed entails some serious waiting. As the speakers must be in their best condition on monday it is automatically up to me, Bjarki the resourcer, to do all this waiting.

It did not turn out to be a day of especially long queues, or any queue at all for that matter. At the first sight of paper the thing turned into a big disorderly pile of law students from all the corners of the World. It was kind of like being in the United Nations, only sweatier. At the beginning we only got the memorials as the schedules were still being printed due to last minute changes. It was then revealed that the memorials being distributed did not match with the schedule, so the memorials were called back in. After some waiting Michael Peil, the commander in chief of the whole thing appeared and ordered the impatient law students to "disperse" for 20 minutes while the mess was being resolved. The 20 minutes passed and then some more before Peil would appear again with the memorials and schedules finally ready to be devoured by the greedy mob after two hours of waiting. A real challenge for the resourcer's behind.

First Moot today

Jessup Team HA 2006

Our first moot will be today at 4.30pm. Our Applicants Vigdís and Þór will meet honorable Agents of the State of Rubria.

We got only to know the number of the team when we got their memorial, but Bjarki wrote all the teams and their numbers down yesterday in the orientation so if we get too curious we can see which school and from where we are mooting against.

Jón and Leena will have their first moot tomorrow at 12.30am and Vigdís and Þór follow with their second moot at 7pm.

Until then we have very little else in the program than to read their memorials and prepare ourselves for a battle.

WISH US LUCK :)

More pictures!

Those three look familiar...

At the Orientation today

Us of course.

Pictures!

We went to a cocktail yesterday at the residence of the Icelandic Ambassador, Mr. Helgi Ágústsson and his wife Mrs. Hervör Jónasdóttir.

We were welcomed with nice beverages and little treats and got a tour around the house, which is amazing, and the collection of art they have there - wow!

Helgi also showed us through the living room window where Ted Kennedy and Donald Rumsfeld live...but we made no attempt on knocking on Rumsfeld's door and insisting our F-15's back...we probably wouldn't even have made it to the front door...I am sure he has some special agents hiding in the bushes...

Helgi told us a fantastic joke about the Bush-administration, which goes like this:

President Bush was visiting a school one day and when he had finished his speech he opened for questions among the students.

A young man raised his hand and Mr. Bush asked him his name. "My name is Kenneth Mr. President, and I have three questions for you. My first questions is: Why haven't we found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? My second questions is: Why did you lower taxes for the rich instead of the poor? And my third question is: Did you really steal votes in order to win in the presidential elections?"

Suddenly the bell rings before Mr. President could answer.

After the break, Mr. Bush says: "Oh where were we again?"

A young man raises his hand and Mr. Bush asks him his name. "My name is Larry Mr. President, and I have five questions for you". "Go ahead young man" says the Mr. Bush. "My first questions is: Why haven't we found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?, my second question is: Why did you lower taxes for the rich instead of the poor?, my third question is: Did you really steal votes in order to win in the presidential elections?, my fourth question is: Why did the bell ring 20 minutes earlier than usually? and my final question: Where is Kenneth?!"

ok..now it's real.
We just came from the orientation where we got some stuff relating to the competition and all the teams were introduced. Some teams were introduced as national champions....some not. As an Islandsmeistari in málflutningi I think we would have deserved to be introduced as such :)
Tonight at 8pm we will get the memorials from our opponents and know who we are upp against.
This year there is 100 teams from all over the place...even from universitu of Helsinki. I hope we meet them and win :)

Teams from Iraq and Afganistan got the best applause and it was quite clear were this small society of law students stand towards the wars.

It appeared not to be a man-flu after all, since Vigdís has been coughing her lungs out since we got here. She also had nice 39°c on our way here. But she is tough as a.. as a... well, like Vigdís is.

The news of the day is nevertheless that Jón Fannar has a birthday today!!!!! WWWEEEEEEIIIII!!!!
He will be 25 years of age....again :)
Rachael will arrive tonight and maybe we do something for the birthday-boy.

I hope everything is fine at home and guys; tomorrow we could really use some positive thoughts from you :)

It's getting closer....1 day to first moot

Jessup Team HA 2006

The orientation will start in 30 minutes or so and we have already registered, so there's no turning back.

It looks like it wasn't the man-flu after all, since Vigdís has been coughing her lungs out since we got here.
It looks like that Þór will be the only viking in this group not getting the flu.
It has been good thing though since we hadn't have any energy to faff or even look into the directin of the basic materials. So we will be relaxed and well slept tomorrow.


The News of the day is nevertheless that John Snow alias Jón Fannar has a birthday today......25 years old ....again :)

Rachael will arrive tonight and maybe we figure something nice out to celebrate a little.

OK, best to start to get ready...hop in a suite and put on some high heels...hope I won't fall in them... ;)

....And we're off...

We arrived here in Washington last night. With us on the plane was another Jessup team, who spent their whole flight reading the basic material packages over and over again.

But we spent our time on the plane on different things than studying - Vigdis slept through the whole flight, Jón Fannar read a car-magazine, Þór was of course reading another science-fiction/conspiracy theory book, Leena just sat there and ate candy and Bjarki just coughed and listened to golden oldies songs provided by Icelandair.

Then we had to share a shuttle with the other extremely cheerful team who were giggling and talking about facts which are totally irrelevant to the case probably just to put us off since we just sat there in the car and didn't say a word. We must have looked intimidating to them or just plain weird...

Now we have to get ready for the cocktail at the icelandic embassy and perhaps make an honest effort to get the F-15's back.