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!)
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