Geneva: Where foreigners are FINALLY the majority

This past weekend, I had an extra day off of school for one of the many saints' holidays that we get here in Spain. Gotta love a Catholic country... My friend Courtney and I took advantage of the extra time and took a weekend trip to Switzerland, to the city of Geneva.

What a cool city! So clean, and so beautiful. It seemed like everyone spoke AT LEAST 3 languages, with all of the signs being in French, German and English. Being so close to France, the amount of French people was slightly overwhelming, but I made friends with people from Sweden, South Korea and Australia who were staying in my room at the hostel. The hostel was quite the experience, I spent the majority of the time feeling like I was in a cross between a homeless shelter and a minimum-security women's prison. It was HUGE, all cinderblock and muted blue paint, although very clean, and you had to buzz yourself through every door/locker for security using your room key. Not cozy, but it was the cheapest place in town, and was overall a good place to stay.


Cheap was a word I don't think I ever uttered in Geneva. The prices were astronomically high, causing you to really think twice if you actually needed to eat dinner or not.

My main reason for wanting to go to Geneva was the international aspect of the city, as it is home to the 2nd most important UN building in the world, Palacio des Nations, after the one in New York. It used to be the League of Nations building back when that was around. It now is the main conference meeting place for the UN, with hundreds occuring every year.
I can proudly say that without me, one of those conferences would be missing a member, as I helped a West African diplomat find his way to the UN. We rode the tram together, and he was going to a conference on human rights. Very surreal experience, especially considering directonally-challenged me was giving directions to someone successfully in a foreign city.

I made a Mexican friend, who was overjoyed to find out I spoke Spanish, to my dismay as I was looking forward to NOT speaking Spanish for once, and took this picture of me in the most famous room in the Palacio des Nations. Bill and Hilary Clinton were here just last year for some sort of meeting about some sort of world crisis. Note my huge, bulky backpack, as I was about to sprint off to the airport as soon as the tour ended. Security had a field day searching that before I entered the UN.






Geneva was sort of like the United States, in which it is very difficult to find a typical Swiss food to represent the country. Everything is from other countries, and REALLY good. And expensive, of course. Courtney and I found a gem of a store, called the American Store. To you current residents of the United States, you might call this a grocery store. To us, it was food MECCA.

Boxes upon boxes of macaroni and cheese, chex mix, root beer, peanut butter m&m's; it was life-changing. AND THEY HAD PANCAKE SYRUP!! Pancake syrup has become my roommate and I's personal obsession, it is incredibly hard to find here. Of course, I couldn't buy anything because the prices were so high, and I couldn't bring liquids through the airport security, but it was still exciting.

Mom and Emily, Jane and Catherine come to Santiago in 3 days. The city will never be the same, I feel if I should go ahead, warning the innocent, Spanish-speaking only citizens of their imminent arrival. I'm excited!

Bad at blogging=good at traveling

Okay, okay, I know I've sucked recently at updating. It has been a whirlwind of travel adventures and my time at my computer has been limited to frantically checking facebook and e-mail. So, here's a quick update of my life the last 3 weeks:

*Went to London and Tunbridge Wells to visit my favorite European cousins, Jane and Catherine. I scared Jane a little when she asked what I would like to do while in the great city of London, England. "OH! CAN WE GO ON A CAR RIDE?? AND TO A GROCERY STORE WITH ENGLISH LABELS?? AND WOULD YOU COOK DINNER AND I CAN JUST SIT AND WATCH?!!" I am happy to report I got to do all of those things, and more!

Jane and Catherine got to live out their tourist fantasies, forcing me to pose with an assortment of law enforcement agents, some on horseback. Don't worry, I got one with a phone booth.

We took a day to visit Cambridge, just in time to see Nick at school before he finishes in June. I've always been pretty proud of ol' KU, but unfortunately Cambridge's campus blew poor little KU out of the water. However, they did have an unfair start of a couple hundred years. I kept wandering around the campus, quietly murmuring to myself, "We are the national champions of basketball. We are the national champions of basketball," to console my Kansan heart.

After I got home from that trip, I had 5 days of recovery and class before we shipped off to the south of Spain, Andalucia, to visit Ronda and Sevilla. Many group tours were had, as our professors kept reminding us that we were there for class credit. HA! Any field trip that you have to take 2 buses and a plane to get to does not lend itself to educational improvement. Our toga party in the boys' hotel room proved that point nicely. Both cities were beautiful, Ronda was beautiful for the landscape and nature, whereas Sevilla had breathtaking architecture in the bigger city of the two, especially in the cathedral.

^Ronda, a city built on cliffs to protect it from invaders. Also home to the first and one of the most important bullfighting rings in Spain.

>The main alter in the Gothic cathedral in Sevilla. Pictures can't do it justice, it was amazingly ornate, as was EVERYTHING in the cathedral. Christopher Columbus is buried here.

So, I've now returned home, back to the daily grind of life in Santiago. For two weeks. Then I have a day off school and a trip to Switzerland! Oh, how I suffer here...