I'll start with school: I am not going to school. This is something else entirely. Every morning we convene as a group at some or another organization to attend a briefing or a conference on a particular topic. Over the past 3 weeks some of those have included the World Health Organization (WHO) for a briefing on Alzheimer's Disease, Hôpital Universaire de Gèneve for a lecture on the importance of cultural sensitivity in healthcare, Médecines Sans Frontiers (MSF) for a conference on the value of "sans-frontier-ism" and impartiality in humanitarian aid, and this morning the International Center for Migration and Health to discuss the extreme marginalization of the health of refugees, particularly women. We also frequent the UN (United Nations) and the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross). It is really incredible being in the midst of all of this- we spend time talking with experts on reports they published last week (literally) on the malnutrition crisis among children in Niger or the difficulty of providing acceptable healthcare to illegal immigrants. It is all fascinating, the contacts available to us are invaluable.
The only thing that feels remotely like class is French. There are five of us in the class, and Rita, our professor, is FABULOUS. I had reeeeally been dreading 3-hour French classes (I'm used to 55 minutes at Duke) but Rita makes it fly by. Class is a great opportunity to ask questions about what is appropriate (and inappropriate) in certain homestay situations, as well as different Swiss customs that have caught us by surprise. Last week, Rita informed us that we speak French 'comme les parents'- like parents. Fortunately, we did not despair for long: Rita's remedy to this situation is simple: Sex and the City. Now once a week she brings in an episode of Sex and the City (in French, obviously) and before we watch it we review a list that she has prepared of the slang used in that particular episode (along with numerous words that one could not find in your average French-English dictionary). Good thing we have Rita to save us from a semester of squeaky-clean French vocabulary!
While Rita is fabulous, the other French classes (there are 4 total) weren't so lucky. Apparently the other professors are either way intense or downright scary, so someone proposed 'Anglophone Night' as a weekly tradition following French on Tuesdays. All this really means is that we all trek down to the edge of the lake after class (about 5pm, or 17h00- still struggling with the 24-hour time thing) and make ourselves comfortable at a little English pub called Fisherman's. It is invariably full of a handful of red-faced Englishmen who are a bit too interested in the hoard of college girls, but we are able to overlook this given the endearing nature of the place. We all nurse pints and become 'de-Frenched' as someone put it, chatting and watching whichever football (not soccer- FOOTBALL! I have been reprimanded twice so far for my flawed (read: American) terminology) or rugby game happens to be on. Our first time to Fisherman's I had a very serious discussion with the bartender about the possibility of playing college (namely Duke) basketball games. My request was rudely rebuked, but since that night we seem to have completely CHOKED, so I'm grateful to watch live stats on the internet at home in my own private misery rather than be humiliated in public.
Moving on to weekends: my first real weekend (i.e. fully surrounded by 'school') I spent in Geneva/Nyon/Begnins. On Friday afternoon Tante Lou (for those of you who are unaware: my aunt who lives in Bern, Switzerland) took the train out to Geneva to visit- it was so wonderful to see a familiar face! We had a fabulous afternoon together- delicious lunch, lots of window shopping and our fair (ok, maybe more than fair) share of actual shopping. We ended up at a store called Ann Fontaine (apparently it is a crime that I was previously unaware of this designer) in search of the 'perfect white shirt.' Fear not: we found it. Actually, we found three each. Nice work.
After the epic shopping afternoon I made my way from Geneva to Nyon where I met a couple friends, Kara and Kyle, for dinner and a night out. We settled into a cute bar and proceeded to cough for about 5 minutes before we adjusted to the excessive amount of smoke. We all ordered drinks, and within about 3 minutes the inevitable happened: the three of us were surrounded by men (aging from probably 19 up to 48- ick) trying to buy us round 2 and goggle over Kara's and my blue eyes. Never in my life has having blue eyes been a big deal, but let me tell you- here, it is. You can't even go a day without someone stopping you on the street or tapping on your shoulder in a bar to tell you how beeeeeeautiful your eyes are. The strangest part: it isn't as if nobody here has blue eyes! At first I thought it was just the go-to pick up line, but its simply too universal for that to be the only purpose. Quite bizarre. That particular night, we were ambushed by 6 Kosovar men (there are lots of people from Kosovo who settled in Switzerland following the war) who were waaaaaay too pushy for our taste and spoke French with such a crazy accent that communication was more strained than usual. Luckily 'NO!' seemed to get across after several tries.
The rest of the weekend was spent with the Raimondis and was awesome. On Saturday I went cross-country skiing for the first time with Catherine and Pierre. This experience was probably very good for my humility because my attitude going into it was 'I can downhill ski, so obviously I can ski on a flat surface!' Not so. The combination of minimal contact between boot and ski and my already questionable balance proved too much for the first 15 minutes. And my pants weren't waterproof. Despite these struggles, it was an absolutely perfect day and I took heaps of photos, being very careful to keep the camera pointed away from me. Sunday all five of us went snow-shoeing which was otherworldly. Overnight we had gotten a good 8-9 inches of powder, and up in the Jura mountains it was still snowing hard while we trekked around for several hours. Outcome of the weekend: Adela = winter sports QUEEN. ;)
Last weekend I went to Val d'Isère, France, for the World Alpine Skiing Championships along with 4 friends from the program. EPIC weekend. Val d'Isère itself is the Aspen of the French Alps, and staying in the town was completely out of the question. Instead, we ended up in a little mountain town called Les Arcs that was a 10 minute funicular ride, a 15 minute walk, and a (harrowing) hour long bus ride from Val d'Isère. As inconvenient as this sounds, it was great and CHEAP. Actually, much of the cheap-ness derived from the fact that our hotel room was meant for 2 people and there were 5 of us. No biggie (I mean, all we did there was sleep), and my friend Talya (who is about 5' and 95lbs) slept in the tub. We realized belatedly that the last funicular up to Les Arcs left at 9pm, so our grand scheme to stay and join the party in Val d'Isère until the wee hours was thwarted. This ended up being inconsequential, however, because Les Arcs turned out to be GREAT. We made friends with a group of French ski bums and went dancing with them on Friday night in Les Arcs and met up again on Saturday night. These ski bums introduced us to 'girafes.' Yes, this does mean giraffe in English. Un girafe is a clear glass column about 2.5 feet tall and with about the diameter of a baseball, and it is full of beer. It kind of resembles a giant test tube. But with a tap at the bottom. Too bad I'm not the biggest fan of beer.
The time we actually spent in Val d'Isère was OUT OF CONTROL amazing. Two girls on the trip had made it their personal quests to find Bode Miller (an American skier infamous for his party lifestyle- and good looks), and my friend Kara's old ski coach (and ex-Olympian, at that) Alberto, whose job it is to test all the new skis that come out, met up with us so we got a true insider view of the entire event. Two items of note: 1) apparently I resemble Lindsey Vonn. Uncannily. Lindsey Vonn is an incredible American skier who happened to have won at Val d'Isère the day before we arrived. No less than six (!!) people freaked out when they saw me and rushed over yelling "Lindsey!" and asking for me to pose for photos with them and autograph various items. Getting out of this gracefully was a challenge. 2) We met a ton of really interesting people in Val d'Isère, but topping the list was a small troupe (roughly 8) of French policemen. Not just policemen- ski policemen. Had NO clue that this existed. The best part of their story was that they're living in an igloo that is a 5 hour hike from anywhere!!! They invited us back with them to spend the night (again- the blue eyes. BIG deal)- 3 guesses as to our answer! We made another friend on the train back to Geneva- a nice Australian kid named Chad on summer break with his family. Chad asked us how we had found the French boys and we relayed the story of our igloo-inhabiting ski police. We then inquired about the French girls and without a word he shed his shirt to reveal scratches- legit, skin-breaking scratches that ran all up and down his back. Seriously, it looked like this kid had tried to shimmy under a barbed-wire fence. We're now frightened of French girls.
Ok, nearly done...
This past weekend I met my friend Jordan (from Duke) in Prague! Jordan is studying abroad in Madrid for the semester and we decided to do something fun together for Valentine's Day. First impression of the Czech Republic: the language is IMPOSSIBLE. Never have I been to a country where I could speak less of the language. Luckily our taxi driver spoke a little English so I was able to ask him how to say the basics- I was very uncomfortable with being unable to say even 'hello,' 'thank you,' 'yes,' and 'no.' Even these aren't intuitive!! Example: 'yes' is 'ah-no.' Seriously? I was given an idiot Czech course with several phrases written out phonetically. I think you'll enjoy this:
Hello: dob-ree den
Goodbye: nas-khled-ah-no-u
Thank you: dje-koo-yi
Do you speak English?: nloo-vee-teh an-glits-kee?
You have beautiful blue eyes: Mah-teh kraah-sneh mo-dreh ochee.
Ohhhhhhh man.
You can understand, then, that we were a bit nervous about the language situation. That first night we were trying to figure out the tram system to make it from our hostel (which was great but not in the best part of town) to the center of the city and having major troubles. Things are especially difficult when you are navigating by the first three letters of every word because that is all you can possibly remember of the impossible string of consonants topped with absurd accent marks. Anyway, we were big-time struggle-bussing when Jordan happened to hear two men speaking in Spanish- success! They directed us to the tram and we made it into the old town without major incident. After the language barrier, our second major observation about Prague was the cold. Miiiiight as well have been in Siberia. After a quick peek around the old city (which is BEAUTIFUL) and some utterly necessary vin chaud (hot wine) we made our way back to the hostel neighborhood to find somewhere to eat. The Raimondis (my homestay family) had made a point of saying that everything about Prague is beautiful- except for the food. We wanted to sample authentic Czech cuisine and we made our way through the sketchiest part of town to the recommended local haunt, where we ran into our two Mexican friends (who had helped us with the tram) and they invited us to eat with them. We couldn't exactly refuse since the menus were indecipherable and we require English, Spanish, or French. They ended up being nice, if completely arrogant and pretty full of shit. We told them to order us the most Czech mean on the menu that might still be considered edible to Americans, and we ended up with a leg. An entire leg. Of a pig- I think. This thing was monstrous. Jordan and I were sharing it and we managed to pick off some tasty meat, but on the whole the thing was bone and fat. Yummmmmm. Success of the evening was that we managed to shake off the Mexicans before they figured out where we were staying!
Saturday in Prague was full of successes and failures. Failure number one: our first plan for the day had been to go to the famous Prague Castle. Castles are pretty big, right? So not too hard to find, right? WRONG. Jordan and I walked up approximately 3422938529812 stairs only to reach the 'gardens' which really just served as a flashing sign that read "Welcome to a post-Soviet bloc country." Although this was not the most pleasant part of the trip, we were very glad that we saw it- certainly provided a more wholistic view of Prague and the Czech Republic. So 1.5 hours, frozen extremities, and no castle later we went back down the stairs and into the main square of the old city to thaw and have lunch. After lunch, we had decided to give the castle another shot (perseverance or WHAT) when we saw guided tours (by bus) of the Old City, the New City, the Lesser City, and the castle. As much as it pained me to be such a tourist, we succumbed to the cold, the language, and our insistence on seeing the castle and took the tour. It ended up being really great because we learned a TON of Czech history, most exciting fact being that King Wenceslas (from the Christmas carol!!) was from Prague and was a big deal there. I was inordinately excited about this. We also made it up to the castle, but there was a wedding going on inside so we couldn't go in (thwarted again!). After the tour we watched the sunset on Charles Bridge which was one of the more spectacular things I've seen. At this point the cold was debilitating so we retreated to a little bar/restaurant near the bridge called Charlie's where we drank the famous Czech beer and waited for feeling to return to our bodies. The waiter insisted upon bringing us shots of God-knows-what Czech alcohol that was on the house- it was.... interesting. Still, the place was great so we made a reservation for dinner and ran back to the hostel to freshen up, call our families, and toast Valentine's Day with the bottle of Spanish champagne that Jordan had brought- perfection! After beers, shots, and a bottle of champagne eating was a really good idea, and the food at Charlie's was great- it was Italian, not Czech- and there was a fun live band!
Jordan wanted to go to Mass on Sunday morning, and I refused to be defeated in my attempts to see the inside of the castle/cathedral so we trekked up the bazillion stairs which was a luxury because it kept our body temperature reasonably high. The inside of the castle was breathtaking, and it was only once we sat down that I realized how miserable the experience was going to be. It was so cold inside the cathedral that I could see my breath and I lost all feeling in my hands and feet in a mere 20 minutes. Czech is not a very pretty language to listen to, so I kind of zoned out the priest and focused on trying to raise my body temperature. The really exciting part of the whole experience was that I was sitting next to King Wenceslas's body- sweet! Jordan took communion and we busted the hell out of there- her justification was that "Jesus wants us to have all 10 of our toes." Too true.
In all a completely fabulous weekend!! Sorry for the lack of eloquence (and coherence, I'm sure) but energy levels are dwindling and I need to go pack- I am spending the rest of the week in Paris and then headed to Barcelona for the weekend- it should be warm there!! Love to all!
PS- Julie- your letter was the highlight of my week. :)
