Bonjour Géneve! – January 18-27

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Made it to Switzerland bright and early on the morning of the 18^th! The next three days were a whirlwind of orientation: all the nitty-gritty rules and regulations, program logistics (finally figuring out what sorts of academic work we will be doing while we’re here – there’s a lot of it), tour of the Old Town in Geneva, meeting with the homestay coordinator to learn all about our new families, and of course some free time to explore and get lost in Geneva.

In some ways you can definitely tell that Geneva is an international city: just on the one street by our hostel you could find almost every different kind of ethnic restaurant imaginable. In other ways it is less obvious: everyone speaks French, even the foreigners (at least when they’re out in the city). We have 28 people in our group, so even though we try to be discreet it is impossible to not be loud Americans just because there are so many of us everywhere we go. It’s definitely a different experience to be traveling with so many Americans. Old Town is your quintessential European old district – it wasn’t as big as I was expecting, just a couple streets, but full of history of course. Geneva is right on Lac Léman in a little part of Switzerland that on the map looks like it should really be a part of France. We can see across the lake into France and if we end up on the wrong bus we might find ourselves crossing the border within a matter of minutes…

On Saturday we moved into our homestays. My family has three girls, 13 (Courtney), 15 (Sabrina), and 18 (Leandra) and seems pretty similar to my family at home. All the girls have a lot of homework since they’re all in the most advanced section of school (there are three different levels in Switzerland) so everyone mostly does their own thing. My host mom, Susi, is from the Swiss-German part of Switzerland and my host dad, Clark, grew up in Iowa, so everyone in the house is completely fluent in English, French, and Swiss-German and switch back and forth all the time, even in the middle of conversations! They’re making an effort to speak French though, since that’s what I’m here to learn. My family lives in Givrins, a small neighborhood that is a 10 minute train ride on a little red mountain train from Nyon (which is a 13 minute train ride from Geneva). I think it is technically a town, but there are not any stores (have to go to Nyon for groceries), just houses. My house is a part of the last row of houses before the base of the Jura Mountains. We can supposedly see Mont Blanc (across the lake in France) from the living room window but it hasn’t been clear enough for that yet…

Saturday afternoon my host mom and dad took me into France! Another country to add to my list. We went to a wood museum where we learned all about wood, making boxes for cheese, water-power, and the history of skis in this area. All in French of course so I understood bits and pieces. Sunday my host dad and I went on a hike in the snow – we took the train up the mountains and then hiked back down. We could see out over the whole valley so I got a better understanding of where everything is in relation to everything else.

Classes started on Monday and have continued ever since then. I leave my house at 8:15, walk 20 minutes to the train station, 10 minute train to Nyon, 13 minute train to Geneva, and then a 5 minute walk to our building. We have lectures with a huge variety of guest speakers from 9:30-12:30, then French from 2-5. Wednesday and Friday afternoons we have off (usually) to do all our readings and interviews for our papers. Or to procrastinate and explore Geneva and the surrounding areas 😊

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