Valentines Day

Today was a good day!  Helena came to visit us this morning and brought chocolates!  She is very sweet, and I love her Korean-Australian accent.

I had the office to myself this afternoon, and I was able to get lots done.  I met with Nicole and it seems like we are both on the same page with this full text review, which is excellent since we have to review 75 studies together.

I had tea with Sarah, a fellow WHO intern and foyer resident tonight.  She is going skiing this weekend, so she is going to borrow my ski gear.  It's really great to have someone to chat with and to be able to get to know her better.

Tonight I watched some hockey and figure skating on Swiss TV.  I get really nervous watching the Canadian athletes compete.  It's a strange feeling, having nervous energy but not actually racing.  I am really missing the energy of being at the Games in Vancouver.  It's just not the same watching on my laptop as on the big screen at Saskatchewan House.  Tomorrow I am going to the Olympics Museum in Lausanne, and they will be showing the events live from Sochi, so I'm hoping to get a bit of that experience there.

Olympic valentine :)

Vistors Day

I'm a bit behind, since my computer decided to stop working last night, but I wanted to write every day, so I will still do a Thursday entry.   I am proud of myself for fixing my computer, I was able to do a system restore all by myself, and it seems to have worked!  Woohoo!

Thursday was the day of family visits at my intern cave at the WHO.  Rachel's Mom was visiting from New York, on route to a wedding in Israel, and Eleni's boyfriend was also visiting from the US.  It didn't make for a very productive day,  but it was great to learn more about Eleni and Rachel's lives back home. Eleni's boyfriend used to be a swimmer, so we had lots to chat about.  He's a PhD student in computer science, and I think he should enter a 3 minute thesis contest, because he was able to explain his research in a way I actually understood.

Nations by night.

I stayed later at work to go to spin class, and walked home past the Palais des Nations lit up and with flags flying. 

Wine and cheese

This afternoon at work, the cluster I work in had a little snacks and drinks party/ "meeting".  I still can't wrap my head around the idea of having wine at work, but I sure did eat a lot of cheese, and other treats!  The WHO headquarters organisational structure is impossibly complicated and acronym-laden.  After nearly 4 weeks, I still can't tell someone the name of my cluster, department and group without looking it up.

My cluster is Health Systems and Innovation (HIS), department is Health Statistics and Information Systems (HSI), and group is Surveys, Measurement and Analysis (SMA).  I usually just tell people I work in "health equity monitoring", because that is my project and what my supervisor and his staff mostly work on, but that isn't even a real department.

I have been watching some Olympics events this evening, catching up on the women's hockey win against the US and Denny Morrison's silver in the 1000m.  I've got to say that long track speed skating looks like such an incredibly painful sport.  You can really see the athletes suffering on the last lap and some just seem to hit a wall around the last curve.  That's why I found Denny Morrison's performance so impressive, he looked so solid right to the end.  I'm still working on figuring out how to stream Canadian coverage, but at least I was able to watch today on RTS (the French Swiss station) and not in Swiss-German!

(very copyrighted picture that is not mine) Go Canada Go!

French class was much better tonight, we debated the pro-EU Ukrainian protests, a topic I know at least a little bit about.  I also had a coffee before class so I wasn't so sleepy.

8th floor views

Mont Blanc in the distance

Today was a beautiful sunny day, and since my office has no windows, I took some time this afternoon for a coffee on the 8th floor terrace.  It was warm enough outside to be out without a jacket.  The views are pretty spectacular when you can see the mountains.  WHO is up on a hill, so the view is better than 8 floors would normally give.

La Saleve

French class was tough tonight.   We had a debate on the recently passed referendum on limiting Swiss immigration.  I haven't been reading much news since I've been here, and when I do, I read the Star or the CBC online, so I am really quite ill-informed about Swiss politics.  That, combined with my sleepiness from yesterday's night bus and general lack of French skills made for a pretty sad debate performance.  The Swiss system of participatory democracy really is quite fascinating, I really should "do my homework" and read up on Sunday's votes.

OK, after 10 minutes of reading, the vote was on whether Switzerland should put immigration quotas in place for European immigrants.  It was proposed by the very right-wing Swiss People's Party, and no one predicted that it would pass, but the "Yes" side won by 50.3% to 49.7%.  The country was quite divided, with the French speaking cantons and Zurich voting "No", the Italian speaking region and most of the rural Swiss-German cantons voting "Yes".  It's unclear at this point exactly what the consequences of this vote will be because, the Swiss government now has to re-negotiate the freedom of movement agreements with the EU. 

Sleepy Monday

The bus station is only about 500m from my place, so when my bus arrived at 5:30am, I was able to go home for a couple hours of sleep before going to work.


Surprisingly, I wasn't too tired at work today.  I'm moving on to the next phase of my project, so now I have the pleasure of reviewing 150 articles in full text.  It is actually pretty interesting, since the topics are so varied.  Today some of the topics I can remember were access to radiation therapy in Atlanta, infant mortality in Indian states and access to grocery stores and recreation facilities in Appalachia.

Tonight, I even made it to running club in the rain.  I ran with a British doctor who just started at WHO last week.

I'm going to quickly try to catch up with what I missed at the Olympics this weekend and read about the ladies bringing the OUA banner back to Toronto (damn right!), and then hit the sack!

Sunday in Paris

Sunday morning, Laurie and I slept in a bit and had a relaxing morning of eating croissants, drinking coffee and watching a bit of Olympics coverage.  At lunchtime, we hopped on the Metro and headed to Chinatown to see the New Year parade.  Laurie is the master of the Paris Metro.  I think I have now officially celebrated Chinese New Year more than any other holiday.   We had lunch at a Thai restaurant, and I had morning glory with rice, yum!

Chinese new year parade

After lunch, we watched the parade for a while, then Laurie headed home to finish up her project and for some much-deserved relaxation.  I kept on exploring on foot.  I went to the Eiffel tower, walked along the Seine and across to Champs d'Elysees and l'Arc de Triomphe.

The Eiffel tower...in case you didn't know what this is...

On recommendation from my absurdly large France Lonely Planet Guide, I went and got a macaron at Ladurée.  I lined up for about 20 minutes to purchase a single salted caramel macaron.  It was worth it!  Although, Carly's that she made for the cookie exchange were pretty darn good too.  I will have to get lessons when I get home.

Arc de Triomphe

I still had a lot of time until my night bus, so I kept wandering around the city.  I stopped for dinner at a place near the Gare d'Est and made my way over to the Canal St. Martin.  I remembered the canal from the movie Amelie, so I wanted to check it out.  It was very quite and peaceful there at night.

Canal St Martin

My bus left Paris at 11:00pm and arrive back in Geneva early at about 5:30am.  I had two seats to myself on the bus, so I was able to get some sleep.  What a great weekend! 

Saturday in Paris!

I didn't take my laptop to Paris with me, so I am a few days behind on blogging, but now I have lots of interesting pictures and stories to write about!

I left Geneva on an early high-speed train and was in Paris in time to meet Laurie for morning coffee.  I was very lucky not only to get to see an old friend from Major Street, but also to have such a knowledgeable guide who is not only Parisian, but also an urban planner.

My lovely host for the weekend :)

Laurie took me around Montmartre and through some other Paris neighbourhoods, including where she used to live while in University.  We went for lunch a cute little vegetarian burger place, where Laurie saved the day by turning the breaker when the power went out. 

After lunch, Laurie had some work to do, so I went exploring on my own for a bit. I walked to the Louvre, along the Seine to Notre Dame and through the Latin Quarter.  I didn't have enough time to go into any museums, but I did tour through Notre Dame. 

The Louvre.

The weather was kind of strange this weekend, it would be rainy for a half hour or so, then blue sky would come out and, then it would be back to rain.

Awkward tourist pose in the gardens by the Louvre.

I got an amazing crepe with Nutella from a stall in the Latin Quarter and confirmed to myself why I should never ever be left along with a jar of Nutella.  

Notre Dame

I was surprised how many tourists were out and about on a rainy Saturday in February.  I can't imagine how busy things must get on a sunny summer weekend.

Here comes the rain...

As I was walking back to the train station to meet back up with Laurie, I got caught in a bit of a downpour.  Luckily, Laurie had lent me her umbrella for the afternoon.  I almost lost it in a gust of wind, but it protected me from the worst of the rain.  When the mini-storm cleared, I was treated to a beautiful rainbow near city hall. 

After the rain

In the evening, we went to a housewarming party at a friend of Laurie's.  She had also done an exchange in Toronto at York Glendon Campus.  It was great to meet some of Laurie's friends and to have a chance to practice my French a bit.  I was pretty lost in some of the group discussions, but I think I was able to manage OK in one-on-one conversations. 

We ended up spending the night at Laurie's friend Marie's place in one of the closer suburbs to Paris.  Marie had visited Laurie in Toronto for a couple of weeks, and we all went to New College Grad formal together at Ontario Place.  Marie was out of town for the weekend, but I really appreciate her hospitality :)