Ahhh - a quick dip in the sea followed by Nostromo's step aerobics class filled to capacity with the crew and the teens.

This afternoon Carlo Boscia from the Katabasis Apnea Academy arrived from Elba via rubber dingy. He gave us an introductory lesson on apnea diving (free diving). Tomorrow, if the weather allows, everyone will have the chance to try it!

This is the emblem of Nave Italia, every Italian Navy ship has one. It represents her soul. You here can see the vessel surrounded by a helping hand that represent the mission of nave Italia and you can read her motto "Sursum Corda" that means raise your hearts...

Every morning, we join the crew to help clean the ship. Pictures of these daily festivities are posted below. Spick and span!

Jackob and George in the background

Stefano

Jacopo

Ciao a tutti ! I will begin by presenting myself, Florent, 16 years old, from the city of Cannes, in France. Today was a great day, with a lot of emotions and things learned. As every day, we started with a daily wash up of the ship, which teaches us the value of work. We have to take care of the boat because it is our second “home”. Then, because we are the “G8 Junior”, we focused on the environment, a very important subject nowadays, certainly the most important subject of our time. Actually. I am very worried by this topic, I am surrounded by this issue because it revolts me a lot. It was frustrating for me because I could not expose my point of view as I would like to do (although I had many, many things to say !), because of my deficient English. In fact, I was a bit shy. We had lunch after that, and then we went to swim in this marvellous bay situated at Elba Island. I swim often in my “normal life”, so it relaxes me a lot, and it is a great moment with the others. At about 16 o’clock, a man who practiced free diving, (diving without bottles in fact) showed us how to breath correctly, to use completely the capacity of our lungs. It was so interesting and relaxing that I fell asleep! At the end of the afternoon, we jumped from the top of the boat with Niklas and Alex, it was so fabulous this feeling of being in the air, thinking nothing. Finally, I would like to say that I really love these days passed here, with all this persons that I enjoy so much, all these games of cards, these meals, talking in an other language, these moments of detent and swimming, and I would like that it never ends.

Tonight we held the Nave Italia's Environmental Summit. It was a great success with all the delegates embracing their assigned roles with passion. There was heated discussion and it was clear that the groups had researched their positions thoroughly. Although it seemed the group could not find common ground, during the final break, the delegates clustered around tables and began passionate informal negotiations. By the end of the break they had almost reached their final positions through compromise, savvy negotiations and pure diplomacy. These behind-the-scene events mirrored real life and was something the teens put into action out of their interest in the issues - it was not scripted in our evening's summit. Below are some photos of the summit and the participating delegates. Below are posted some photos of the Nave Italia/s Environmental Summit and the participating delegates.

Ciao! My name is Amy Wipfler, I live in the Californian Silicon Valley, and have recently turned eighteen. After a morning of pastries and strong coffee, we started the day with a rigorous cleaning, which I believe will be one of many more. Having completed our chores, we held a series of meetings, both indoor and outdoors, as we continued to approach Elba Island. As we discussed issues related to diversity, I felt that we began to create closer connections, as previously we had only dealt with superficial facts such as favourite foods and our desired super hero. Because we were finally thinking about and discussing with each other the major problems surrounding discrimination, we were able to actually connect to each others backgrounds and situations at a deeper level. The next activity that defined my day involved a swimming adventure. Many of the other members of the group had been itching for the last thirty-six hours to jump from the very tip of the bow into the Adriatic Sea. However, none of these eager adventurers were able to perform this feat during this swimming session. You may think that this would be the end of all swimming for the day, as did I, and I had noticed music coming from the mid-ship deck, so I went investigate. It turned out that approximately a dozen of the ship’s crew were doing an aerobics workout to music. As I was a fan of the songs being played by the aerobics instructor, and I had little else to do, I convinced Clara to join the other crew members with me for the workout. It was extremely enjoyable, and since we had entered the workout halfway, the instructor offered to extend it for another half-hour. I found at the end of the half-hour, was that the captain had offered to allow all of our group who had performed aerobics to be able to jump off the tip of the bow. Only three of us had joined for the second half, me, Clara, and Antonio. I figured that I may never again have the chance to jump fifty feet safely from a ship ever again, and so I decided to go for it. What an exhilarating feeling! I had never before realized how easy it is for your body to change its form as you drop fifty feet with gravity tugging, and so the landing in the water was much less than perfect. While the back of my knees may sting for the next day or two, I wouldn’t have exchanged that feeling for anything. We then feasted on pasta and chicken for dinner, and it seems that the crew have a surprise for us this evening (I think I know what it might be, but no comments now). All in all a very full and fun day, sure to be followed by many others. Signing off! Amy

Hi, name is Alex, I’m 15 years old and I am from the U.S.A. For the last two days, we have been confined to the boat with the amazing crystal blue water just tantalizing us all. Today for the first time, around four o’clock - we were finally given the privilege to plunge into the crisp but refreshing water. This was a much needed break for everyone from the stuffy cabins. But don’t get the idea that this trip is a bunch of kids messing around on a boat. We have all been chosen to represent our countries and ideals through thought-provoking debates. Today was first day in which we have moved beyond getting to know and trust each other to learning about each other’s opinions and possibly challenging them. Our focus for today was discrimination around the world and how we can prevent and cure it. The way that we go about discussing these topics is not one that you would call conventional but it easily involves everyone and creates creative flow that broadens our range of thinking. Today we started our discussion by making a list of how people are discriminated against around the world and we started to create still-scenes of how we envisioned each act of discrimination. After sharing our scenes of discrimination and some critiquing, we began to make scenes of how we can abolish these atrocities and begin to embrace everyone as an equal human. Even though we did not engage in debates, this activity helped us to wrap our minds around what problems we are going to debate and solutions to those problems. After a quick break to relax the mind and body we dove into a somewhat “heated” discussion over specific scenarios and certain places of the world that are still subjected to major discrimination. Today was an especially good day for me because on top of having a great day swimming, I have a great sense of accomplishment that what we are doing during these two weeks _will_ make a difference and hopefully mark the beginning of a better & brighter world.

Giovanni age 14, Italy: This day I could express in just one word: amusing! Being with the young people gives me a joy never felt in my life! They are all nice and I would dare saying very available but also understanding just like myself! Sometimes problems come back but the solution is one only: to love each other!

This morning we began discussing the environment and global warming. We started with a scavenger hunt to build the English vocabulary of the essential terms. The teens were given a page of definitions – missing the actual term. They were divided into groups and hunted through the ship for the missing words. We watched a segment of "An Inconvenient Truth," which provided a simple yet visual summery of global warming. After that, we discussed the major entities involved in the global dialog on the environment (EU, USA G77, AOSIS, BRIC, NGOs, Business Alliance, etc.) Each group was given a fact sheet on one of the entity’s positions. Tonight we will have an Environmental Summit with the groups each presenting their position. The discussion will bring the youth to an agreement that will ultimately form the YPG8’s official position on Global Warming. This is an issue these young people are passionate about and we are all looking forward to the Nave Italia’s Mini-Summit.