I had a fun week hanging with Misha around Geneva. He stayed at a Hotel in France, so we were alternating between France and Geneva all week. We toured the city, walked around to places I hadn’t even seen yet and enjoyed fall in the city. The last day he was here we celebrated his 21st birthday. Pretty Exciting!!! Went to a local Irish pub with friends where we all shouted out Happy Birthday at the strike of midnight. The next day we had dinner at an Italian restaurant down the street. Our crazy Italian waiter got everyone eating at the restaurant to sing the happy birthday song in Italian! And I thought they don’t celebrate birthdays here like they do at Red Robin or Casa Rojas!
So you may ask what I've been up to lately other than traveling around and having fun with friends.... Well I have conveniently left out details about 85 percent of what a typical week in Geneva entails. As I have mentioned earlier I have been interning at the International Union Against Cancer, the largest international cancer advocacy organization in the world. What does that mean? Well good question, if I knew all the details about what departments are working on what I would tell you... but I don't.. What I can give you is a little insight on my work experience thus far. Surprisingly I have been able to make quite an impact in my department of the organization in a short time period. I am currently in the process of recreating the UICC community web page and researching new links that will make the site more useful for our members.This entails a lot of research and a lot of work posting my research on the their website. I hope to eventually get involved in some graphic design work for the web pages and possibly creating an entirely new promotion pamphlet for my department. So that's just a quick snapshot of what I've been working on and if you want to hear more let me know.
I also am currently enrolled in a public health class, that I have to say is probably the best class I've ever taken. Every week we go on site visits to different organizations around Geneva, and then after our site visits we have discussions on specific public health issues. So far we have visited UNHCR, International Aids Society, The World Health Organization, and Handicap International. It is truly unreal to be so close to some of the top NGOs in the public health field, and hear from people who have first hand experience.
The photograph I posted is the view I have on my walk to work. The UICC office is only about a ten minute walk from my apartment.
There is one bar in Geneva that goes all out for Halloween, so that is where most of our crew ended up. After having our own celebration back at the apartment. We danced through the ages dressed as pirates, teachers, angels, peacocks and anything else you can think of. Here are some fun pictures from the night. The one up top is of the band that played us music through the ages. The photo on the left is me with my dear friend Diana, and the photo on the right is with our RA Phil.
Took a tour of CERN this weekend. My RA is working for CERN and was able to schedule us a tour. CERN for all those who don’t know, is the world's largest particle physics laboratory. The tour guide may have gotten the wrong impression about our group and thought we were all physics majors, so most of the information explained by the physicist went over my head, but the portions I actually understood were very fascinating. Maybe I should look into a career in physics… Also not only do we have an RA that works at CERN, the man that is painting is also a roomie of ours. He is an artist from Boston that is being commissioned to paint on one of the buildings.
For the next eight weeks I will be interning for the International Union Against Cancer. The largest International Cancer Advocacy group in the world. I am working for a new department that my supervisor created. It the UICC Community department where I will be researching and updating the website on new job links and creating a brand new public forum and all that entails. In other words, I have no idea exactly what I’m doing but I will let you know when I figure it out.
Took an overnight cruise from Barcelona to Sardinia. The sea was so rough that it felt like a 14-hour rollercoaster ride. So 16 Dramamine pills later… between the three of us … we made it through the night without getting sick. Craziness I tell you!
Made it to Sardinia alive!! Success. Maybe. Never been so cold in my entire life! Had to spoon the entire night for body heat to stay alive…
After 72 hours of being sea sick and frozen, we packed our stuff and backpacked across Sardinia to Olbia the land of airports that would take us away from this desolate island. Or so we thought…
We arrived in Olbia after a long bus ride, took another bus to an airport where we found out that there was absolutely no flights to Geneva until two days later. And every other flight to anywhere else was 300+ Euros. All three of us never felt so defeated in our lives.
Hopelessly we headed to the center of Olbia to find some place to stay. When we arrived at the center we found a city with a little more action than we had thought. Went and tried to bargain our way through six hotels until we arrived at a 5 star hotel in the center of the city with a roof top terrace, sauna, hot tub, Turkish bath, and flat screen TV. Since literally there was no one staying at that hotel we got the deal of a lifetime. Hands down best money I have ever spent!
We spent the next two nights lounging around, going in and out of the spa, watching RTL and eating incredible Italian pizza.A perfect ending to a great 10 days!
Spent our days visiting Gaudi's cathedrals, dancing at Spanish concerts, drinking box wine, and playing gin rummy with our hostel mates from the UK. What more can I say? Everything that makes a trip to Barca perfect!
We flew into Nice at 10pm on Thursday evening after one of the worst days of both mine and Nicki's life. Turns out we brought bed bugs back from Amsterdam so we had to wash our entire closet in 90 degree Celsius water... and we had to get our room ready to be fumigated while finishing up two exams and packing for a ten day trip. Somehow after all that we made it on our flight and got to our hostel safe and sound, even though it was in the red light district of Nice. Friday morning we all woke up very well rested and walked outside to get breakfast to find perfect 80 degree weather! We couldn't have been any happier! The Next couple days in Nice were incredible. We also caught a train to Monaco one where we got to witness a women gambling thousands of euro bills at the black jack table. I almost took my wallet out to challenge her but refrained after she lost, ans noticed the buy in price... We spent three days in Nice and then it was off to Barcelona!
Sorry its taken me so long to update my blog but it has been a hectic couple weeks to say the least! Before I took off on my ten day vacation I was able to catch a conference at the UN. Mikhail Gorbachev was talking about Nuclear Disarmament and the discussion got a bit heated when the diplomat from Iran stood up and opened his mouth trying to defend his countries position on the whole issue. Quite the experience!
Took an exhausting flight back to Geneva on Sunday morning at 6 am. Made a vow with the roommate never to schedule morning flights again! Since actually getting to Amsterdam was quite the struggle... After arriving back to the city I got directly on a train and headed to Basel to see the Pop! Together we drove to Thon a city right near Interlacken, with a beautiful lake and mountains surrounding us. Had lunch by a gorgeous castle next to the lake. Thon is apparently where all the Swiss military men go to train for battles that they will never fight...
Took a weekend trip to Amsterdam with my roomie, Nicki. It had been several years since I had been there, so it was nice to have a weekend to catch back up on my Dutch and see the city! Saturday we took a very long bike ride through the city, and saw all of the city's famous sights. Including a beautiful park where we stopped to have lunch with random people dressed up in red suits performing strange alternative dances and a man dressed up in a pirate costume picking up sticks. Quite entertaining to say the least. Amsterdam has to be the perfect city for people watching.We ended every night back at our hotel, which not only had bugs, but also mice... Yep, won't being going anywhere near that place again! Pretty disgusting!
I apologize for not having written in a while. My classes are very accelerated, so this week it caught up to me when I had to prepare a case study on the principle of non-intervention in domestic affairs of States in the Case Concerning Military and Paramilitary Activities in and Against Nicaragua.
So basically all my roommate and I did this weekend was stay in Geneva and write our papers, which probably should have only taken us eight hours, but instead took us two full days… Although we still had some fun going out to the only Mexican restaurant in Geneva, Cactus Club, for our guacamole and margarita fix.
We promised each other that this next weekend will be a lot more fun! Dublin, Amsterdam, or Munich perhaps???
I have officially registered as a student at the University of Geneva today. Classes are in session for the Swiss students, so there has already been a lot of action on campus. Hope to play some Swiss basketball and also do some Swiss yoga in the upcoming weeks. Yoga taught in French… that should be interesting. I am taking both my French class and international law class at the university. The photograph is our first visit to the university.
We woke up the next morning TOO EARLY… To go hiking. Much of the group did the extreme sports, Interlaken is known for its skydiving, cannoning, bungee jumping and ice climbing, but my group took the cheaper option of just a hike through the mountains. Someday I’ll try those, but most likely when I can actually afford a 400 dollar jump out of an airplane. We went on two separate hikes one to a castle ruin that to our surprise ended up being a bunch of little red rocks trapped in cages. This is not a joke.
The second hike we went on we took a train to Lauterbrunnen, a beautiful small village up in the mountains. There, we hiked to a waterfall that ended up costing 11 francs to see, so after about an hour of walking to find the waterfall, we turned around and hiked back without seeing the expensive waterfall. I honestly do not understand how they are able to charge us for seeing a natural piece of our earth, but the Swiss found a way…
We got back to the Hostel after a long day of hiking completely exhausted. So instead of staying another night on flimsy cots with 9 other people in the room, Nicki , Michael and I took a train back to Geneva, for a more restful night of sleep!
The photographs are of our hike, the group shot is at the castle ruins… Also the house is my other house in Switzerland it is in Lauterbrunnen. I will try to post a video clip of the cows and the sounds of their bells. Sorry about the quality of the video, I promise I will get better.
