Day 1

Hello from Geneva!

Well, to be quite honest, hello from a small town whose name I do not know.  Let me explain...

After a flight to Washington Dulles, we then had a long (7 hours?) flight into Geneva (this was after waiting an hour on the tarmac for reasons unknown).  The average amount of sleep was about 1 1/2 hours.  I think I got an hour, but only after 3 hours of tossing and turing.  I don't know of anyone who got more than 2.

Upon arrival (8:30am), we boarded a tour bus.  We then quickly got back off the bus when we found out one of the globalites left their camera on the plane.  After reassurance from the airport officials that we could call them after 2pm to find out if they had found the phone, and me purchasing a reusable water bottle, we headed out again on the tour bus.  We spent the morning touring the lovely city of Geneva, first by bus, then on foot.  The city is small (200,000 residents), and boarders more of France than the rest of Switzerland.  Because of this, and a large population that daily commutes across the boarder, Geneva feels a lot like a French city.  There is little to no English outside of the airport, and most residents have forgotten much of their English lessons for lack of use.  The architecture mostly resembles that of a small medieval that has been expanded upon, with parks that were once estates and a plethora of statues to commemorate everyone from leaders of the reformation to a very bad map maker.  The city is immaculately clean.  While outside St. Paul's cathedral, we saw someone sweeping with an old fashioned broom. Pictures will come after I have gotten more sleep.

The international section is the exception to this description.  Most of the buildings were built in the 50s, and are quite ugly concrete and glass buildings.  Everything here is in multiple languages.  To give you a sense of size, this area is about 4 blocks.  To go any farther is to leave Geneva.

The Swiss residents of this city seem eternally caught in the 50s.  Stores are not open after 7pm or on Sundays, alcohol can only be sold at certain hours of the day.  The citizens fight any attempts to renovate public buildings in an attempt to keep them the way they are.  But maybe that is just how Europe is in general.

It is also is strangely quiet.  There are not that many people milling about, despite the fact that it was a Saturday.  Later in the day we visited a small village in south of France where the streets were filled with people.  Not so in Geneva.

For lunch we took a 1/2 hour drive to southern France to a little town on Lake Geneva to have a lovely three course meal.  First course was thinly sliced ham, second course was roasted chicken, and dessert was creme brûlée.  I have never been the biggest fan of creme brûlée, but this stuff was AMAZING.  It is true what they say about French food being good.  After that we walked along the coast for a while.

Getting back on the bus, we were all exhausted.  We all fell asleep, and woke up at the John Knox center (a hostel for grown-ups).  There is currently some dispute about the name of the tiny village that the center is in, or whether it is actually part of Geneva.  A few of us took the remainder of the evening to try to find a grocery store.  We finally found it after asking a nice man for directions by pointing at a map and looking confused.  He did not know much English, so he pointed, and we got there.  Coming back, we saw Marty (our prof) trying to find the same supermarket, and equally lost.

Tomorrow is a free day, so a group of us intend to take a Gondola up a mountain and picnic at the top. Monday and Tuesday we are spending time at the European UN center, WHO, and other giant international organizations.  More on that later.

I promise not all of my posts will be so long.  But in my defense, I am too tired to edit, and it has been a long day.

Good Night

Final Countdown

Let chaos reign for the last 24 hours that I am in the United States!

Ok, maybe that is an exaggeration.  But things have been quite tense during the last week as I have been buying things for global, packing them, unpacking them and repacking them!  My suitcase started at 46lbs.  Now it is at 42lb, which is a little too close to the 44lb weight limit for comfort. But I don't know if I can take any more out!

Adding to the stress level is my mother, who, despite her best intentions, is freaking me out more than I already am by being panicky herself.  But we will get through this.

I finally finished my skirt and I love it to death!  If I have to throw out clothes on the trip I am not throwing out that skirt!  Or if i have to, I will make a new one when I get back to the states.  I guess this is where I would insert a picture.  I still have to figure out how to do that.  But fear not, I will figure it out.

Other than packing I have spent the week hanging out with friends.  This morning I had an epic skype call with 7 people from college, and this evening I am going to see many of my high school friends one last time.  It makes saying goodbye very difficult when you have such wonderful friends.

As for now, all I can say is "Adventure is out there!"

Andrea

Consuming Culture

In preparation for going abroad, I have come to reflect more and more on my time at Holden Village.  I guess it would only make sense to do so.  Both trips were St. Olaf sponsored trips.  But there is something else that keeps coming to mind.  As I am panicking about this trip, I am reminded of how seemingly little worry I had up at Holden village.  Which has led me to wonder what was so different about my time up at Holden?

I had thought at the time that most of my problems before going to Holden were sleep related. And that was fairly accurate.  When I got more sleep I went up a letter grade in three of my classes.  But now I am realizing that there was something much more profound about being there that had helped me.  What it was, I don't know.  I hope to figure it out, since a life with less worry sounds wonderful.  Well, it is something to ponder in the next couple of weeks.

In my Holden musings, I was looking back at some of my old books.  There was a couple of them about consumerism that had hit home for many of us reading it.  The idea that people had begun to wantonly consume everything around them, and that everything was for sale, no matter the impact, really hit home for me. And it is making me wonder, whether I came into this trip with the idea, that my whole goal was to consume as many cultures as I could.  My job on this trip was to shlurp up all the cultural experiences that I could, and that was it.

That thought process is not wrong, but it does seem incomplete. I am going to these countries to see all that I can see, and learn all that I can learn.  But the impact of this trip cannot just stop with me taking in the sights.  What is equally important is what I do with this experience.

So, as a good Lutheran, I must now ask, what does this mean?  I have absolutely no clue.  I feel like Holden in general brought up more questions than answers, and so does this trip.  I guess I can only hope that the answers that I need will be revealed when I need them.  But I do feel a slight bit more urgency to keep up this blog.  If nothing else, it is something that I can produce from this trip that will help me and possibly others make sense of this trip.  But enough rambling for now