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

Quick update

I've been feeling bad about how behind I am on blogging, and how much has happened that I haven't had a chance to write about, and more keeps happening and then the task seems overwhelming. So I'm writing a quick update now that will feel totally insufficient but will at least keep me from feeling like I can't catch up.

Stuff's been happening. For example, I became co-president of the ILO Intern Board, which is the organized group of interns at the ILO. We organize social events (board meetings Mondays, coffee and cake breaks Wednesday afternoons, and either wine and cheese Thursday nights or apero [drinks] Fridays), negotiate for issues of interest to interns, and other fun things.

I have also become very active in the AcroYoga community here; this last week, I went to acro jams on Sunday, Wednesday, Saturday, and then again Sunday, for a grand total of 12 hours of AcroYoga. I'm a huge fan of the people in the group--not only are they great at acro, but they're incredibly friendly, funny, welcoming people.

On Sunday morning, I hiked up the Salève with a fantastic group of intern friends. The Salève is a mountain right near Geneva, but it's actually right over the border in France. It takes about 2.5 to 3 hours to hike to the top via the shortest route (out of about 8 possible routes), and it's straight up the whole way. There's a group called "Friends of the Salève" that meets up every Sunday morning at 10 AM to hike a different route up the mountain. I think I might go again next week with an acro friend! Hiking made me realize that my cardio fitness is not at its best right now; gotta work on that! I ended up walking 7 miles Sunday, including the hike, so hopefully that helps.

In less fun news...

My rent here is about $1200/month, which is a lot. When I was househunting from the U.S., it was the best I could find, especially on short notice, but I didn't know whether I would end up staying here long-term, and I didn't have to sign a contract or anything. My landlady did say that my deposit would be used as my last month's rent, so I would be expected to give a month's notice before leaving if I decided to move before the end of my internship.

My living situation wasn't bad, but it wasn't what I was hoping for, exactly. I didn't feel like I could use the common spaces because my landlady is always lying on the couch (she's unemployed, so when I say "always", I actually mean about 85% of the day), often FaceTiming with family (very loudly) or watching YouTube videos on her phone (very loudly) or watching TV/movies (very loudly). None of these are social activities, and they are usually conducted in Hebrew, so it's not like I could really just be more social and engage with her. So the whole common living space, which I technically had access to, in practice is not comfortable for me.

Then, she started to criticize me for not following house policies. Some of these things I should have done better from the start--my standard for housecleaning is somewhat less strict than hers, so by the time I would think to do things like take the trash out, it would already have been done. She is always home, while I am only home from about 7 or later at night until 8 in the morning, mostly in my room. In general, though, the things I "did wrong" were things that were not obvious, like opening or closing doors at the wrong time (I still don't understand when which doors are supposed to be propped open versus shut, and I think it's really silly) or not washing a cup that she left in the sink once.

In any case, I felt less and less comfortable in the apartment, and decided that rather than paying April's rent, I would call April my last month and find a new place to live before May 1. I told her this, but apparently I did that wrong too (I was too casual, I guess) so there's been even more tension in the house since then and several conversations where she has told me, "I've been thinking..." and explained what is wrong with me as a person (mainly, I think I'm better than everyone else).

So instead of just looking to get out by May 1, I'm really looking to move out as soon as I can. I visited an apartment last night that really suited my wishlist and my needs-list and the guy I would be living with is a nice person and doesn't own a TV! BUT there are other people also interested in the apartment, of course, so he may not choose me over them, and I'm really stressed because I haven't found anywhere else that looks nearly as promising to me.

Hopefully I'll know in the next 24-48 hours whether I get to move this weekend.

Okay, ending on a happy note...

Things that are making me happy:

• Exercising a ton
• So much AcroYoga
• Eating chocolate
• Spring flowers blooming

Easter weekend in Lyon

On Friday night, my intern friend Tiffany and I set off for Lyon, which was about two hours by bus. We got to our hotel around 8:45 and then went out and found dinner; she had a margherita pizza, and I had a caprese salad at a lovely little Italian place. Then we went back to the hotel and crashed.

The next morning we got up at 8, had breakfast at the hotel's included buffet (which was surprisingly nice!), and then set out. We wanted to go to Lyon's Old Town (Vielle Lyon). As we approached, a basilica stood beckoning to us from atop a hill, so of course our first order of business was to find it and see the incredible view from the hilltop.

Huge transit station near our hotel

Park

Park

More park

Place de Bellecoeur

Still at the Place

Same

See the basilica on the hill?

Rhone!

...and us!

Cathedral

Cathedral from farther away

And even farther

Getting pretty high

Spring flowers!

At the edge of the world

Even higher with the view

More view

But the basilica is still higher!

There it is! And it's massive!

A fisheye lens would have been really helpful here

There's the golden figure on top

Overlooking the magnificent view on the magnificent morning

Incredible details like this were EVERYWHERE

And then we went inside...

This mosaic isn't illuminated in any way, it's just shimmery in the light coming in through the stained glass windows

So that was pretty magnificent. And on our way out, we discovered that we'd taken a pretty roundabout way up to the basilica because there had been so few people around at that hour, so we took the intended path down the hill.

The path went by a garden with more spring flowers

And a fish pond

And some blooming trees and views up and down the hill

Ultimately, we made it back down to the Old Town.

We wandered for a good while and then decided to have lunch

But we were on the early side, so places were just opening up. This is where we ended up. By the time we were getting served, it was completely full.

1st course: salad with crostinis with goat cheese

2nd course: sausage, gravy, veggies, boiled potato

3rd course: crême caramel

It took forever to get out once we'd eaten, since servers don't care about you after you've been served here. We ultimately gave up on getting our bill and just went inside to pay. When other people saw us doing that, a line formed behind us. We'd already asked for our bill twice and waited 15 minutes at that point, so we felt like giving up was the best option.

More river

Fountain on the new side of town

After lunch we headed back over the river to the new side of town for some shopping. We spent all afternoon walking around different shops--the shopping area is massive--and getting lost and going in circles. Ultimately, we took the ferry down to a shopping center down by our hotel and walked back to the hotel before dinner.

For dinner, we walked through the park that we'd gone through that morning and found a place to eat right on the periphery.

Mussels in white wine sauce (with fries, not pictured)

My mussels were delicious (better than my lunch main course, I'd say). Our hotel offers two complimentary glasses of wine with your room, so we went back to the hotel and got our wine afterwards. We were feeling amazed by how tired we were, so I looked at the step tracker on my phone to see approximately how far we'd walked, it told me 14.9 miles (about 24 km). Crazy! No wonder we hurt everywhere.

This morning we grabbed breakfast at the hotel quickly before we left to catch the bus (which left at 7:30, and we had daylight savings change this morning in Europe, so we were short on sleep)...and found that the bus was not where it dropped us off. It was raining rather hard, and the transit station in Lyon is massive, and it took a lot of speed walking to figure out where we needed to be. I think we had to ask 4 or 5 different people. We made it just at the departure time; I think they'd been holding the bus for us.

Now I'm home safe and exhausted. I just did some laundry and took a shower, and I'm about to take a nap. 

Things that are making me happy:

• Good and interesting food
• Adventure!
• New friends