Liz is in grad school application hell at the moment. She's also having an excellent time studying for her GRE next week. Check back after December 1 - maybe she'll have a life again at that point.

Ain't nothing but a Montreal thang

On Friday I went to a function at the Canadian Embassy for Canadian interns in Geneva. It was supposed to give us advice on getting a job afterwards, but I personally found it a little lacking on that front. I did, however, meet some great people from Quebec, and we partied it up Canadian style afterwards.

During the beer and pizza schmoozing (how Canadian!), I learned that Canada has 12 representatives to the UN and a whole separate mission to the WTO, with its own embassador and everything. I also learned that even though it's almost impossible to get a permananent job at the UN as a Canadian since they have a quota system & are always chock-full of Canucks, my nationality won't hurt me if I want to work with NGOs. Oh yes, and I taught some of our hosts at the Embassy that recycling is good (I mean really, I was not going to sit idly by while beer cans and wine bottles were being tossed willy-nilly into the garbage).

All in all, I think it was a very educational evening.

MTV makes a hip-hop video about global warming?

Kids these days and their newfangled music. This has gotta be the most hilarious message about saving the world that I've ever seen.....complete with Steve Erkel look-alike. Yay!

I'm feeling a bit lazy today, so I think I'm just going to share an update I wrote for my internship program's listserv:

Hello everyone!

As we head into the middle of November, Geneva is getting colder, but I think I’ll like the winter here. Not as cold as Montreal & not as rainy as Vancouver – I can handle this! I can still bike to work every day, so I’m happy.

I’ve recently started taking French classes. There’s a great system of schools here that Fernando introduced me to called les Universités Populaires, where all the classes are taught by volunteers and held in classrooms donated by the Canton of Geneva, so they’re really affordable. I figure that since I’ve gotten tasked with translating technical documents from English to French, I’d better brush up on my grammar!

At work, things have been quite busy lately. Even though I wasn’t able to attend the Kyoto meetings in Nairobi, I’ve had to prepare several presentations and reports for my supervisor. I seem to be falling into a communications role here – most of my jobs these days involve writing, editing, translating, website editing, or graphic design. I’m enjoying the work, although I’d still love to have a project that I could do independently to free myself from the mercy of waiting for my supervisor’s day-to-day delegations.

I’m starting to think about what I want to do after the end of February. Since the UNITAR climate change programme is moving to Dakar, Senegal sometime in the spring, I don’t think there’s a possibility for me to renew my contract here. I’d like to stay in Geneva for a bit longer, though – 6 months just doesn’t feel like enough time to get to know a city.

Last weekend, Béatrice and I went to see an 11^th century castle right on the edge of Lac Leman. We tried to go hiking, but got laughed out of the idea by two policemen who told us it would take 6 hours to get to where we wanted to go, and that it was far too snowy for us and our (apparently) inadequate apparel. So, like the intrepid and flexible travelers we are, we quickly moved on to Plan B – Château de Chillon.

It was very educational, although I have to say we had a hard time following many of medieval-era words in the guidebook. [Side note: if anyone knows what a machicolation/mâchicoulis is, we’d be happy to be enlightened]. I had no idea there were so many ways to torture people or that one building would require such a vast number of prisons.

It was great to see real mountains. You have to get about an hour away from Geneva before you can see the true Alps, like these:

Aside from this, I've been exploring Geneva a bit more - learning where the semi-legal but very enjoyable squat bars are, and of course learning yet again how difficult it is to find a cab in the middle of the night & how much of my hard earned savings I have to part with to take said cab home.


I hope you're all having a good week - I'm out!

Moving forward on the Kyoto Protocol?

This week, UN Climate Change meetings in Nairobi are wrapping up. Although there's been progress on some issues, like funding for projects to help developing countries adapt to climate change, things aren't moving along as quickly as many people had hoped. It seems like many countries are sticking to their "party lines" rather than focusing on the Convention's overall goal: stopping the threat of dangerous climate change.


In our own back yard, the Canadian government's performance at these important meetings is absolutely embarassing. Canadian delegates have blocked motions to transfer cleaner technology to developing countries, refused to meet Kyoto targets, withdrawn funding for sustainable development projects, and supported proposals that they knew absolutely nothing about. Considering that more Canadians rank the environment as their number one concern than anything else (yes, even more than health care!), this abysmal performance definitely isn't in Canadians' best interests. I mean, even the majority of Albertans would be open to a carbon tax!

Kofi Annan opened high-level discussions today with a great speech, drawing strong links between vulnerability to climate change, poverty and sustainable development. He reminded government ministers and negotiators that this is not just an environmental issue - a changing global climate affects many other important areas, like human health, water and agriculture. As he so aptly remarked, “Global climate change must take its place alongside the threats of conflict, poverty and the proliferation of deadly weapons that have traditionally monopolized first-order political attention.”

As this year's round of talks draws to a close I, along with thousands of others worldwide, hope that countries will be able to set aside their differences at these negotiations and focus on the common end goal: creating a future that we'll all want to take part in.

Halloween and hibernation

Okay, I know I've been a bit of an absentee blogger lately, and I apologize. It got cold here, and I went into hibernation mode, and found it hard to get motivated to do anything except snuggle in bed with a mug of tea and a good book. And then I remembered that people don't get to hibernate, and now here I am again! So, here's Liz's past week in a nutshell:

Halloween!

The Europeans don't really celebrate Halloween, but my roomate Beatrice & I still managed to celebrate in expat style. Keeping with our greeny enviro-roots, here's us all dressed up in our Halloween finest for a party:

And here's my costume at the end of the night, stuffed into my bag. I really don't have a lot of patience for wires that poke or things that restrict movement in any way. Handy how it all folds in there, n'est-ce pas?

Work

After that, I had a busy week at work, helping my supervisor get ready to go to Nairobi for the convention of the parties to the Kyoto Protocol, which started today. So keep your fingers crossed everyone that there'll be some concrete outcomes to this meeting, like a work plan for developing emissions reductions commitments after 2012, when Kyoto commitments end! (Yes, I am a climate nerd, and I don't care. So there.) Unfourtunately, due to funding something-or-others I wasn't able to go to Nairobi too, but I'm trying not to focus on that : )

Instead, I'm thinking about the amazing young Canadians who are in Nairobi now as part of a 20+ strong youth delegation, and who will undoubtedly inject much needed passion, energy & dedication to these important meetings. Yay!

And going to France...

This past weekend brought me to Freiburg, Germany again but unfourtunately I have no exciting pictures or anecdotes to share with you so as I pretty much hibernated there so I'll skip over that, which bring us to Monday, which is today. On Mondays I go to France to teach piano lessons and I have to say, I still love how casually I can say that on Mondays I "go to France". I don't think I'll ever be cool enough not to be excited by this.

And that's the scoop coming to you live from Geneva. I hope you're all well! Is it cold in Canada? Rainy in Vancouver? Awww... rainy Vancouver. Much love from the land of yodels and Rolex!