Lasts

I keep experiencing "lasts" of things, so I thought I'd take a moment to document some of them. Here are some things that I have done for the last time so far:

• Renewed my monthly bus pass
• Bought a month's worth of data on my phone
• Paid rent for my flat
• Taken notes in our weekly staff meeting
• Welcomed new interns

That's all for now--I'm exhausted today, so I think it's time for a nap.

Things that are making me happy:

• Daydreaming about California
• Re-watching an old TV show I used to love
• Catching up with friends and family
• Walking

Final Weeks

July is almost over, which means I have just over 2 weeks left in Geneva. Wow!

Since Jeff left on Monday, I'm counting down even more than usual. Here are a few things I'm really looking forward to about being back in the States:

• Almost never having to breathe cigarette smoke (especially in outdoor restaurant seating)
• Cooking for more than one person, and having someone else to help clean as we go
• Having enough time after work to actually decompress and take care of things around the house
• Having Jeff around all the time. (this one counts way more than the others)
• Having my whole wardrobe at my disposal (sounds shallow, but if you haven't worn the same 7 outfits over and over for 6 months, you probably don't know how tiresome it gets)
• Free laundry!
• Cheap food!
• Cheap restaurants!
• Not having to deal with other people on my commute to work

Of course, there are also a ton of things that I'll miss about being here in Geneva, but I'll get to those in a later post.

Jeff's visit was so nice! If you've seen either of our Facebook albums, you'll know how lovely it was already. His first night in Geneva, we went to the Old Town for dinner, to the same fondue place I went with friends several months ago. We got fondue and white wine and a tomato and mozzarella salad with flan for dessert. On Saturday we went to the market in my neighborhood, took a nice walk by the lake, and went to a "generic European party," as Jeff dubbed it (affectionately); eating bread and cheese and drinking wine by the river.

We went to the mountains and to Montreux, which is a lovely town.

We cooked and worked and walked and cuddled. We went to Prague and met up with our family friend, Michael, who has spent a lot of time there and knew all the great places to show us. We were reminded how much we enjoy spending hours on end together, rather than just 15-30 minutes per day on a video call. His last night here, we went to a restaurant called Wine and Beef, which is just what it sounds like, and had fantastic steak and even better conversation, and then had a romantic walk back by the lake, which was reflecting lights from the city...so lovely.

And then he left, and I went back to work, and I'm still generally happy, but I'm REALLY looking forward to going to California to see Jeff and my parents and my kitty. I have to remind myself that the days are long, but the weeks are short...

Things that are making me happy:

• Coffee breaks with friends after lunch
• Chatting with my department director, who is back from vacation
• Learning through my work
• Cooking successful recipes (this week was a farro salad with prosciutto and cauliflower)
• Reading (21 books down now!)

Counting Down

It's been a while since I posted last, and somehow I'm down to 5 weeks left in Geneva. My life has become somewhat consumed by acroyoga, hanging out by lakes, and eating bread and cheese. Jeff will arrive on Friday (it seems so crazy that he'll be here, I have trouble even imagining what it will be like, but I can't wait to show him Geneva!!), and he'll leave the 25th of July. When he leaves, I'll only have 3 weeks left, and then I'll join him in California, where I'll get to hang out with my family and friends and cat there. Then I'll fly back to Michigan with Jeff and our kitty and get to work at the Evaluation Center at my university and work on my dissertation.

In the meantime, I've gained confidence with my spoken French, gotten closer to people both at/through work and outside of it. The weather is beautiful and summery, and I am generally very happy. If circumstances allow for it in the near future, I would love to come back here to live with Jeff for a while.

At the same time, I'm getting increasingly excited about going back. I miss my U.S. friends and routines, I miss feeling like I'm in control of my life, I miss cuddling and playing with my cat, I miss knowing where to get any ingredients I need for cooking/baking and being able to get them any time of day...

Jeff and I had originally planned for him to visit in April as well as summer, but I think I'm glad now that he's not coming until so late. I feel good that we've made it so long (it'll be about 5 months when he arrives) doing long-distance, and our relationship is that much stronger for it. From my experience of having my family visit when I lived in Senegal for 6 months, I anticipate that any loneliness or annoyances that I experience now will feel multiplied when Jeff leaves. I think it's a really nice thing that my time after that will be so short, so no matter how frustrated, lonely, or sad I get about being apart again will be very short-lived.

In my work life, things are going well. My work is better defined and I have more confidence in my understanding of the workings of the ILO than I expected to develop. Before I came to the ILO, I worked on a project for the Evaluation Office where I'm working now that allowed me to get well-acquainted with the type of work they produce. Now that I've spent 4.5 months working in the Evaluation Office, I better understand why the work looks the way it does and what challenges the Office faces in making any changes to the processes or rules governing these products. I feel really good about what I've learned and how it will help me later in my career.

A few random highlights since I posted last (about a month ago):

• Attended International Day of Yoga at the UN with friends and got a free yoga mat out of it

• 
  
• Went on a longer-than-intended but very lovely walk down the river to Jonction, where the two Geneva rivers (the Rhone and the Arve) meet
  
  
   Some guy hangs out on weekend mornings making huge bubbles for the children
  
   Check out the brown water and the blue water mixing
  

A dam in the river

• Got a cold, which gave me occasion to discover the huge variety of Ricola flavors offered at the ILO store

Discovered "Mexican Mix" in a can. The Swiss have an odd interpretation of Mexican food (please note, those are kidney beans, not black beans)

Had an incredible weekend acroyoga retreat with friends in the mountains

Watched many sunsets over the lake

Things that are making me happy:

• Reading good books (18 down!)
• Meeting and spending time with good people
• Beautiful (if hot) weather
• Living in a city where a lake is the central feature
• Living a 5-minute walk from said lake
• Eagerly anticipating Jeff's visit

Everyday Life in Geneva

I've been thinking a lot about my everyday life here. A big part of the reason is that I'm trying hard not to take things for granted. I live in a beautiful place, I cross a river with mountains in the background every day on my way to work, I get to cook for myself and treat myself occasionally to delicious pastries...Life is good. I wanted to give you readers a sense of what that looks like.

Most photos that I'm posting here are from my own neighborhood, Eaux-Vives (pronounced Oh-Veev). This is from the park a few blocks away from me, Parc de la Grange, which is huge! I walked for about an hour and don't think I saw everything.

This is my view from my bus stop. This is pretty typical architecture around the city.

This is a street in my neighborhood, nearer to the lake. The buildings are extravagant and amazing right by the water, and get more boring as you move inland.

The infamous Jet d'Eau is about a 5-minute walk from my house.

Which is to say, I can walk down to the lake anytime I want.

Even just to watch the sun set and walk back home.

The impressive Parc de la Grange features lots of open grassy areas, which I didn't take pictures of because it's not that interesting, plus wooded areas...

...A pond

...An old building of some kind whose purpose I could not determine

...and wildflowers, in addition to much more.

Every day, I wake up and work out for about a half hour. I shower, dress, get my breakfast and lunch together, and head out the door. It's about a two-minute walk to my bus stop. On my morning commute, which takes about a half hour, I either read or listen to podcasts. I get to work, take the stairs 12 flights if I feel ambitious, water my office plants, wait for the computer to boot up (takes forever) and then get to work. I usually take a coffee break either around 10 or around 3. On Wednesdays, the intern group does "Coffee and Cake", where volunteers buy loaf cakes and make coffee and we have a little coffee break all together for only 1 franc.

Thursday evenings there is a market near the central train station, which mainly sells wine and cheese and bread. Everything is designed to allow patrons to sit on the sidewalks in groups enjoying their treats: the wine sellers will open your bottle and give you glasses for a 2 franc deposit; the cheese vendors will give you a selection of cheese on a platter all cut into bite-sized pieces; the bread vendors will cut your bread into slices or even smaller if you prefer. It's a great atmosphere.

...I started this post on Monday, and I'm just coming back to it now because I've been busy. So, rather than fussing over whether I've said everything I meant to, I'm just going to post it and then go to sleep.

Things that are making me happy:

• Longer days
• Days when it doesn't rain (there haven't been many lately)
• My loved ones' accomplishments (more on that later)
• Having a new office mate

Adventures, Departures, and Everyday Life

This morning I was walking to the bus this morning like I do every weekday morning, and I had this moment of pride that made me smile. Because I'm surrounded by other UN interns who have left their everyday lives to come here and do this, I usually forget that it's unusual and special. But you know what? It's really cool that I have the opportunity to work at a UN agency, that I had the guts to leave my super comfy life in the U.S. for a while, that this isn't the first time I've had the courage to leave home for an extended period of time (this is my third time living overseas for at least three months), and that I'm on track to have a career doing work I'm passionate about. Especially at age 26, I feel really proud of all that (or at least I did in that moment on the sidewalk this morning--I mostly don't think about it).

I've been on a bunch of weekend adventures since I last posted, as you may have seen from Facebook. Some highlights:

• Visiting Gruyères, the village that is famous for a certain type of Swiss cheese (you'll never guess what it's called!)

• Visiting Chamonix, the quaint French village that is famous for housing the tallest mountain in the Alpes [spelled with an "e" here because these are French Alpes, and they're snooty like that], Mont Blanc

It was really really cold at that altitude

We got to watch a guy in a wing suit jump off the highest cliff to glide down (and down and down and down...)

Going hiking in the French Alpes near a town called Passy

It seriously looked like a scene from The Sound of Music

And a fluffy French mountain kitty emerged from the wild dandelions

The views were pretty breathtaking (I'm not just talking about Elye)

• Going white water rafting and single-handedly pulling Corey (who is twice my size) into the raft after he jumped off a cliff into the river (sadly, there are no pictures of this moment)
• Going to "Caves Ouvertes", an event where all the wineries open up their tasting rooms for free (and pour tiny, tiny portions) and then hanging out by the lake in the evening and then going to a street food festival at night

So I guess you could say I've been keeping busy, but I generally feel pretty chill. I am a super huge fan of my intern friends, who are always up for new adventures and usually do all the planning for them for me (haha).

Unfortunately, every two weeks, some interns leave and others come. It's a constant rotation of meetings and departures. Last week, Corey left me (it was on my calendar as "Corey leaves FOREVER", to give a sense of how much of a loss this was for me). He had weeks of "going-away" activities, but then everyone here still seemed surprised when he left. The rafting was part of his going away tour, along with a party, a lunch with our department, some gifts, etc.

Now that he's gone, I've taken over his desk (the one good thing about having the office to myself), which has two monitors rather than my previous setup with only one. Research is now much easier, plus Corey doesn't distract me with his humming, sleeping, or thoughts about evaluation, politics, and life. Or with coffee breaks, or lunches together. :(

Apparently there will be a new intern coming soon, so we'll see how that goes!

In the meantime,

Things that are making me happy:

• Cooking and baking new things
• Having some quiet evenings at home
• Working out regularly
• Taking the stairs at work (which is actually a big deal, since it's 12 flights)

So many things...

Hello, whoever still reads this blog (most people I've chatted with lately have admitted to me that they do not...but I suppose the purpose of keeping this blog in the first place is to allow people I don't get to talk to as much to know what's going on in my life).

I have discovered, after emerging from several weeks of mild gloom, that my mood is very largely dependent on the weather. We're back to gloomy weather, but just knowing that the weather is responsible when I feel less-happy-than-usual helps (which is good, since we're about to have about 3 more weeks of rain). In the meantime, I'm starting to hit that 3-month point where, much like when I was on study abroad, I start to find my pattern and settle in more deeply to my life here.

What does that look like? you ask. Well I'm so glad you asked, because that's why I write here.

First of all, it means that I am being more proactive about engaging in activities I enjoy. Because my flatmate is living in Zurich the majority of the time (he's been coming home for weekends, but I'm on my own during the week), I don't have to feel guilty about spending lots of time in the kitchen. This means I'm cooking more complex meals, baking things (!!!!!), and generally feeling inspired again about feeding myself happily and healthily.

I did an acro workshop last weekend with my friend Eric, and I helped demonstrate most of the moves he was teaching because his co-teacher wasn't able to come. The weather has generally not been great for acro, and we don't have a room reserved Sunday/Wednesday evenings anymore, so my acro time had been greatly diminished. Through the weekend (12 hours of acro in 2 days), I got a better idea of what I should work on to improve my handstand abilities, my acro abilities, and my overall health. I also based a guy who weighs more than 1.5 times as much as me in a thigh stand, which inspired other small girls to base him, which was really fun. Sunday morning of the workshop, we spent about 3.5 hours acro-ing outdoors in the sun by the lake:

In the second picture, you see the Jet d'Eau, which is a classic sight of Geneva. It's literally just water being shot super super high, and the wind and light catch it prettily.

Last night I went out with some of my favorite people to a fancy fondue restaurant (a trademark of Switzerland).

Here you see three flavors of fondue: going clockwise starting at the top, there is tomato, herbs, and mushroom-and-bacon

Les Armures has apparently fed at least one American president (though I don't remember which)

Us.

This weekend I am going exploring with these same lovely people; we're planning to go to Gruyères, a beautiful town that houses the famous Gruyères cheese factory. Amazing Swiss cheese. We're also planning to go to Chamonix, which is on the border of France, Switzerland, and Italy, and which is home to the stunning Mont Blanc, the tallest mountain of the Alps. We're hoping to do some hiking around there.

Corey will leave me soon to return to Michigan and work on his dissertation, so I am trying to spend as much time with him as possible before then (which is fairly easy since we share an office). I think we're going to go white water rafting the weekend after next, which is his last weekend in town, and we're cooking dinner at my place next week.

Geneva is SO BEAUTIFUL.

Things that are making me happy:

• Making delicious food
• Feeling more comfortable with all the people in my life
• Talking to family
• Drinking lots of tea
• My new pillow (bought it two weeks ago and my sleep has improved dramatically)

Month 3, let's do this

I guess a lot has happened since my last post. I've had some bouts of homesickness, but I seem to be back to my natural state for the most part.

One bout of homesickness was brought on by Jeff being sick. He got a sinus infection weeks ago and got mostly better with antibiotics, and then he got a stinging sore throat. He was feeling mostly better, though, when we chatted for the first time that week on a Thursday afternoon. We had a nice long chat, and he was energetic and sounded good; he was on his way to play soccer. Then the next afternoon, I got texts from him saying he had gotten really sick the night before, had gone to urgent care, had a 101 fever, and was diagnosed with bronchitis. And then he didn't respond to any communications from me for 6 hours. I was overwhelmed with guilt for not knowing that there had been anything wrong, and for not being there to take care of him, and I could easily imagine how crappy it would be to feel so awful and not have your partner there for comfort.

Jeff slept almost all of the next two days, and that Saturday I went up to Lausanne with two intern friends for le Rallye du Chocolat, which is like a chocolate festival/scavenger hunt/contest thing. There was free chocolate! It was delicious!

For some reason blogspot is rebelling and not letting me post photos, though.

After consuming our fair share of chocolate, we still had several hours before our train home, so we bought some hot cocoa (which came with a free truffle, of course) to brave more of the rain and find our way up to the cathedral. It was impressively old (construction began in 1170) and pretty lovely, but there wasn't much information about its life, so I can't really say much about it.

Then we went to a nearby history museum. It was pretty weird, like they got a lot of stuff and then didn't know what to do with it. There was an "Ancient Egypt" room in the basement with old-looking artifacts, but none of them were labeled and there was no information about ancient Egypt to be found. The next room was "Ancient Japan", which at least had its artifacts labeled, but no information. Then "Ancient China", which was the same. We worked our way up through the floors. The best part (in my opinion) was a giant pile of bars of soap that were stamped with the word "THREAT". I really wanted to know what it was about, so I looked around all over and finally found a tag hidden not-so-nearby in a corner. It explained that this was participatory art, in which participants going through the museum could take a bar of soap home with them and "experience washing the threat away". Cute idea, but I don't think many people had taken soap because the explanation was so hidden. Also, the bars of soap were about the size of a brick, so I joked that the real experience would be never being able to wash the threat away because it's so huge. We all took soap anyways, though.

After the long day in Lausanne, I was ready to crash, but instead I went to a Passover seder at my distant cousin's house. Passover is an important Jewish holiday, and my family in California always does a big dinner the first night. This seder was very different from what I was used to, but I loved it. The prayerbooks (Haggadah) were mismatched, some of them Hebrew and English, some Hebrew and French, some Hebrew and Russian, and one that was all Hebrew. My cousin is Israeli, and her husband is Russian, and their kids speak French as a first language and English as a second. The readings from the Haggadah were thus in a wide variety of languages, some of which almost no one understood, and their eldest son added to the hilarity by reading in funny accents. The meal was fantastic--matzoh ball soup, chicken, lamb, roasted potatoes, green salad, gefilte fish (a weird Jewish specialty), and chocolate covered matzoh for dessert. I didn't get home until almost 2 am.

The previous week I didn't see much of my flatmate, but on Friday he told me that he had gotten a job in Zurich, and they had asked him to start on Monday. He's keeping the flat, so I don't have to look for a new place (thankfully), but he left on Sunday afternoon. I've been pretty much living alone since then, though he's coming back for weekends at least for the first month.

Last week I attended a conference about evaluability and the SDGs (which is very related to one of the projects I'm working on). It was co-hosted by the ILO and UNEG (United Nations Evaluation Group) at WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization). As it turns out, WIPO has gorgeous facilities, so I was envious the whole time. I went back on Thursday night with another friend for a free apero and concert in honor of World Intellectual Property Day. The concert was great, An American Symphony, and the lead-in was pretty funny, with high-up people in WIPO talking about why intellectual property law matters ("We would still have scientific and technological progress without intellectual property, but intellectual property promotes progress.").

Yesterday (Sunday) I participated in a May Day march, along with interns from the Fair Internship Initiative, formerly known as "Pay Your Interns". It was cold and rainy and windy, but I had a good time.

Today has just been cooking, baking, doing laundry, working out, and preparing for the week. I'm looking forward to next weekend, when I'm enrolled in a workshop that will be 12 hours of acroyoga in 2 days.

Things that are making me happy:

• Remembering that summer is just around the corner, despite these chilly rainy days
• Cooking and baking successful things
• Skyping/FaceTiming with people while I eat dinner (Thanks Dan!)

Almost two months in

I'm a little overdue for a blog update. In a day or two, I'll have to renew my monthly bus pass for the second time, marking two months in Geneva. My second full month of my internship won't be until a little later, though; I started March 1, so May 1 will start my third month.

In some ways, I feel like I have been here a long time. I am comfortable with my daily and weekly routines, and I hardly ever get homesick (though of course I miss people from home quite a bit). In other ways, I still feel like I just arrived. Because I spend most of every day working, I still have not explored much of Geneva or the surrounding area, I've barely traveled, and I am constantly learning things that are obvious to locals or people who have been here longer (I think it was just last week that I learned some stores are open "late" on Thursdays, rather than closing at 7 as usual).

Last weekend I finally found myself a yoga mat and a hair dryer, which are two luxuries I had been missing quite a lot. The weather was rainy and chilly on Sunday, which is usually when my intern friends do fun things (generally outdoors), and I was complaining to my flatmate that I wanted to bake cookies or something but didn't have the ingredients and all the stores were closed because it was a Sunday. He said that crappy days like this, the French generally make banana pancakes. I was sort of baffled by this until I realized that he meant crepes. But anyways, he inspired himself with this idea, which led to him putting on a Jack Johnson playlist (you know the Jack Johnson song "Banana Pancakes"?) and making us crepes. I contributed eggs to the effort, but otherwise was completely useless--our kitchen is too small for two people to be in at the same time. It was pretty delightful overall, and after it was all done and cleaned up, I went to a classical concert in a beautiful hall right next door to where acro was happening immediately afterwards.

Since last Thursday, I have (temporarily) been the sole president of the Intern Board, which is more work that I would have expected and more than I would really like at the moment. Since we have consultant #2 in town this week, my time to deal with intern things is somewhat limited and also segmented into little pieces since I accompany the consultant to meetings occasionally throughout the day.

On Tuesday evening, I went to an Intern Congress thing hosted by the Geneva Interns Association. There were about 20-25 people there representing interns from different organizations. We shared information about how our intern boards/associations operate and I learned that I'm quite lucky to have inherited an intern board that is so well supported by its HR department and that has been so well organized in the past. The structures are all in place, and my co-president and other officers and I just have to keep it going in order for it to be successful. Other groups battle their HR departments just to find out when new interns are coming and who they are.

I've still been going to AcroYoga every Sunday and Wednesday, and it's generally a highlight of my week. Tonight it was outdoors, and there was only a small group of people, but it was nice to move around and be outside and I learned a new sequence that I really like.

Jeff's birthday was last weekend, and some awesome friends in Kalamazoo helped me plan and execute a birthday party/surprise for him. We had decided before I came here that it would be nice for him to have an engagement ring as well as me (after all, we're both engaged, not just me), but we ran out of time to find one. My friends invited Jeff and some of our other friends out for a birthday dinner and drinks, and I got an engagement ring shipped to their house so they could give it to him at dinner. While he was opening it, they video called me so I could be "there" when he opened it. He loves the ring, and it was a nice surprise.

It's just about bedtime for me, and I think those are all the interesting things I have done recently, so I'll wrap this up.

Things that are making me happy:

• Having responsibilities and being able to take care of them
• Small luxuries
• Living with someone I enjoy spending time with (even if I'm still hardly ever home)

Life improvements!

Okay, in our last episode, I was seriously struggling with my housing situation, even while everything else was going pretty well. I am SO FREAKING INCREDIBLY HAPPY to report that I have since moved to a new and awesome living situation!

Rather than living with a 57-year-old unemployed woman with a volatile personality (and who, by the way, openly talks about hating Arabs and black people), I am now living with a mid-30s guy who generally shares my world views and interests and enjoys both conversation and companionable silence. And as if that wasn't enough, my rent is $350/month less than it was, my room is more comfortable, he actually cleared out space for me in the kitchen and bathroom, and he cooked me a "welcome to your new apartment" dinner on my first night here. So, YAY, no more home life misery.

In work news, we had a consultant arrive today to begin work on the "evaluation and SDGs" project that is my main focus while I'm here. He'll be conducting interviews to see where people from different ILO departments see their work as contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals so we have a better idea of what an evaluation strategy for the SDGs should look like. He'll be here all this week, then we have another consultant for another project I'm working on coming all next week, then the following week is the UN Evaluation Group Annual Meeting (with workshops and meetings and events and receptions)...and then it will be May, and I will have completed two months here.

Today I finished another book. This was The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and despite the very odd name, I really loved it. I highly recommend it. Before this one, I read Out of Sorts (it was free on Kindle Unlimited, but absolutely abysmal. Don't waste your time), The Book Thief (loved it), and before that was The Girl on the Train (which I didn't like as much as I expected to), and before that was Eat, Pray, Love (pretty good). Plus Jeff and I read The New I Do together. So, that makes 6 books since I arrived 7 weeks ago. Not too bad.

In "recreational activities other than reading news" (haha), I am continuing to do AcroYoga whenever I can, but I skipped last night because I was exhausted from hiking 8.5 miles through gorgeous terraced vineyards overlooking Lake Léman and the Swiss Alps. It's a tough life.

Here are a few pics in case you somehow missed them on Facebook:

Things that are making me happy:

• OMG new housing
• Everything is blooming! It's spring!
• Sometimes the sun shines!
• Living in my favorite neighborhood in the city, even though I haven't had time to really enjoy it yet