The First Week Begins

Actual life at the John Knox Centre has now started, meaning that I have had three of my four classes and have begun my internship. I think the classes will be worthwhile and very interesting, especially because of the faculty. Last night's class was taught by the Chief Economist of the WTO (and yes, of course I picture a feather headdress when I hear that name, not to diminish at all the esteem of the position). All the topics discussed so far (European Politics, European Economic Systems, and International Trade) are ones I am very interested in, so I will have to remember that I am also supposed to be traveling on the weekends and not get caught up in the homework grind! Tomorrow night I have International Business, which is not really my greatest interest but is probably a very important class for me to take.

My schedule will take a bit of getting used to, since it is one Monday afternoon class and then three night classes, from 7 to 9:45, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. I work at ICTSD on Monday mornings for 4 hours, then on Tuesday and Wednesday for 8 hours each day, from 8:30 until 5 with half an hour for lunch. I have been assigned to work mainly on ICTSD's Bridges Trade News Weekly Digest (latest issue here), writing articles, editing, compiling event listings, and whatever else they need, I suppose. The deadline for publication is Wednesday night, which is the reason for my heavy schedule at the beginning of the week. This afternoon after my orientation meeting I wrote one brief article for tomorrow's deadline, about the World Bank's 2010 report on the Logistics Performance Index ranking 155 countries on ease of shipping and trade there; it was released last Friday.

The ICTSD seems like it will be an ideal place to work. Lots of people from so many different countries and at so many different ages, and on the top floor of a beautiful building with floor-to-ceiling windows so we have a view of the ALPS to the east and the Jura to the west. I am also so relieved that I won't have to work on Fridays, so it won't cut into my travel plans at all. It will, I suppose, be exhausting, though. They use their interns well at ICTSD. There are two other students from the KSU program who are interning there this semester, Mattew Jordan and Jacob Chodash, along with me.

Since I have had a request for nature info, I will write what I have learned so far. Many of the old buildings built in Geneva are made of sandstone. The Alps are heavily limestone. Lake Geneva (or Lac Léman) was carved by a glacier, which I infer traveled in a curve west and then south, because Geneva is built on a moraine, and pebbles from the moraine were used to pave the floor of the hôtel de ville. The streets where I am are paved with asphalt, but it the older parts of the city they used flat grey paving stones, very fine-grained and so maybe those are also sandstone? Those I am unsure of; I will have to take a picture and let the geologists in my family fight it out. And in an interesting twist of fate, there are two palm trees outside the John Knox Centre, and several stands of bamboo just down the street. Not at all what I was expecting, especially since it still seems quite cold here!

Also, I saw a mountain goat on Saturday! Three other girls--Hannah, Clara, Tiara--and I took the train back to La Givrine for cross-country skiing. None of them had gone before, but I tried my best to teach them and I think they did pretty well. I refuse to teach anyone to downhill ski, but cross-country seemed doable. We all fell at one point or another, but it was a very wonderful trip and unquestionably worth it. The second route we took went from the center to an overlook at Les Frutières de Nyon. On the way up, I heard a kind of hissing noise to my left and looked up the slope. After a second or two of searching, I saw curved horns and a brown face. It looked down at us for about five more seconds, then turned tail and ran. The rump was white; I looked for pictures on Google Images to show something similar, but nothing obvious turned up.

The view from the top of les Frutières de Nyon (my French dictionary tells me this means a place where cheese is made, which was not what I expected it to mean) was absolutely fantastic. We had a full view of the Alps along Lake Geneva, including les Dents du Midi and one other very famous mountain which I will not mention because my father hasn't guessed it yet. As soon as we saw the peaks over the edge of the final hill, none of us could stop until we were at the very top, drinking in the vista. The Alps stretched as far as I could see in either direction, until the edges were hidden by the Jura mountains we were standing on. I took a panorama of most of it, and it took five photos stitched together to show that. If it had not been very windy at that exposed area and also only an hour before dark, I could have stood at that viewpoint forever.

Pictures from my stay so far, including the cross-country trip: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=370746&id=724815701&l=1eeca89a30. This is a public link which should allow anyone to look at the album, whether or not they have facebook.