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!