Monday, May 26, 2014

genève




caves ouvertes - a vineyard in satigny, switzerland


i am not quite sure where to begin this time because there was no real break point between exams and starting the internship of my dreams. for those of you who have heard me say this a million times, i swear this is the last time that i will repeat the refrain: my last exam was on thursday, sam's graduation was on friday, i got on the plane on saturday, landed in geneva on sunday and started work on monday. 


so now that i have had my second monday at the office i can assure you all that i feel like the luckiest person in the world. the work that we do every day is incredible. every single one of my projects will ultimately (hopefully) improve someone's life somewhere. the picture below does not do the office justice, for my desk view is an incredible picture of the lake. this time, although i do not have the same "room with a view" from my bedroom like i did in fiesole, i have it a million times over at work.




palais wilson


i will explain in a later post more of the details of the united nation's office of the high commissioner for human rights (OHCHR). i have been learning a startling amount about the UN itself every day, so it will probably be in everyone's interest if i hold off for now. 


what i can tell you about with plenty of clarity is how much fun i had on saturday. all of the interns that i have met at work have been amazingly friendly and welcoming, and this past weekend more than confirmed that for me. i had been dying to do "caves ouvertes" (or open caves) since a friend who lived in geneva had told me about it in february. the premise of the event is simple--you buy a wine glass for 5 franc, and then you go from vineyard to vineyard tasting wines. keep in mind, there were 80+ vineyards participating (!). it was a short 10 minute train to the first vineyard, and seemed like it could be a blast. so i posted in the facebook group for the OHCHR interns and mentioned it at work, but i was not sure if anyone other than my friend and roommate jessie (more on her later too) would show up to meet us at the train station. low and behold, we had a motley crew of foreigners waiting for us when we arrived, all excited and ready for action. 


i wish that the pictures could do the scenery justice, but in sum, we enjoyed a beautiful day in a stunning landscape. at one point, we hiked into the hills behind one of the vineyards. plopping down in the grass to eat our lunch, we went around in circles teaching each other new words in different languages. yet, it felt as though we still lacked the words for describing what we were experiencing. alas, life moves on, and so did we--to the next winery! haha





since the perfect day could not come to an end when the train pulled back into the station, we decided to check out the street fair that we could see from the platform. and what do you know, we stumbled into geneva's weirdest looking crowd. grunge, transvestites and families with babies were for whatever reason all mingling at this random street festival, so we hung around for a few hours, gradually accumulating more and more friends from work and visitors from other countries. fast forward a few hours, and they had finally turned off the music and packed up the speakers at the second stage before we finally managed to peel ourselves away. after our newfound friends convinced us to miss the last bus home, a few of us took the train back to another friend's apartment to sleep on the floor and pass the time in versoix. imagine my surprise to hear that we were mere minutes from a chocolate factory the next morning. if they had been giving tours, we might have had to make a detour on the way home.


i will add more pictures and posts soon. as i said in my previous blog posts though, please remember that i want to hear from you too. i miss everyone dearly already and would love to get updates whenever possible.