February 17 – University of Geneva,

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I woke up this morning to Mont Blanc staring at me from my living room window! Finally. My host family has been telling me since I got here that you can see it from the house, but even on the sunny days there have been clouds over the Alps (good for snow I guess). This morning it was finally clear enough to see! In the afternoon we had our meeting about our Brussels and Paris trip and then had the rest of the afternoon off. Some of us decided to start getting on random trains and seeing where we ended up. We got off in the University of Geneva district and wandered around. We had been talking about how Geneva isn’t that interesting of a city – mostly just office buildings and such besides the Old Town area – we didn’t think it had interesting architecture and cute parts to wander around in like most other European cities. Turns out we just hadn’t found those spots yet. The University area is great! All sorts of nice architecture, crazy looking trees that have clubs instead of branches, little cafes and shops and winding streets. It was nice to wander around. And then in the evening when I was going back home the sun was shining on the Alps and doing all sorts of beautiful sunset colorings. From the beginning I have liked Geneva and Canton Vaud, but after today I am sold on the beauty of Geneva as a city and on the surrounding areas and views.

This week we spent 2 days at the United Nations, learning all about different organizations that are part of the UN system. Since we’ve been here we’ve gone to the Red Cross, a cyber war conference at Webster University, the United Nations, a Swiss Culture center and have had a bunch of different experts come talk to us at the office. The focus of this first section of the semester was on migration and refugees, international humanitarian law and diplomacy, the United Nations and its evolution, global security and geopolitics, and Switzerland and its foreign policy. One of our speakers was the top UN staff member in Somalia and Bosnia – he didn’t have anything specific he was trying to teach us, he just told stories and talked about his experiences. It was interesting to hear very specifically about the challenges that go along with UN missions and dealing with conflict. We’ve learned about all types of migration its impacts, the changing system of the United Nations and challenges that it is currently facing, both regarding reform overall and specifically within the security council. We have explored the intricacies and challenges of humanitarian interventions and international humanitarian law – the laws of war (as much as you can call them laws in the midst of such complete chaos). At the conference we talked about the role of the media, the fog of war and problems with communication, and the increasing possibility and threat of cyber war. The topics are often ones that I have covered theoretically in classes at college, but it is a completely different perspective and approach to hear about it from people that are actually dealing with these issues on a daily basis. Plus we’re getting a better idea of just what exactly people in all these different organizations actually do and making connections.

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Photos

Mont Blanc
The morning view from the living room window

University of Geneva district
check out the crazy club branches. I really need to figure out what kind of trees these are...