(Short) Project Week

Work Week two was designated as "Project Week." Alison and I each received individual project assignments to be working on this week. When we originally received them we were told to do a "Mapping Exercise." When asked if we understood what that was I asked if it was like a comprehensive outline (we'd both received large stacks of print offs). She said no and asked if we knew what a map was then proceeded to explain to us how a map has tram lines and one way streets etc. so you can find your way. This still did not really help us with understanding what exactly she wanted us to do for our "mapping exercise." So when Monday morning kicked off project week I asked again for clarification on my defamation of religions project-I got a little more direction but not enough to be confident in my work. Due to lack of direction and mass amounts of homework I split my time between my project and my 20-25 page paper on the Yugoslav Wars. However, at about 10 am a class of Italian students came for the training session on the UPR that is held in our office so we told our boss we were going to the UN to work until the class was over. This information seemed to fluster her and asked if we would be returning, we told her we would and when would she like us back? She then asked if we would be back after lunch and we said no problem and headed to the Serpent bar at the UN to do some work

pictures of the bar where we work from the UN-in the one on the right you can kind of see Lac Leman
After lunch we returned to the office, and continued our split attentions until 6:00 then when we were about to leave the woman from Kenya asked me for help sending an email attachment.  Normally this would have been very easy-however the settings on the computer were in Korean-not my first language.  I was eventually able to navigate through the Korean and convince her more or less that she couldn't just staple the hard copy to the computer for it to work and then it was time to go to class with Professor Krause.  His class is only one tram stop from our office which is nice.  AND he decided to weigh our final grades heavier on the paper than on the final exam (which is good as we haven't really been keeping up with the readings since our pile of work landed squarely on our heads).  After class we headed back to the cite and went to sleep.

Tuesday morning when we arrived at the office our boss quickly showed us to a room (the third of the three in the office) where we could work uninterrupted by the class and then not end up at the UN.  So we now work in a smaller room with a pseudo desk set up and spent the day again splitting our work between our papers and our projects.  The woman from Kenya came in to say goodbye because she was headed back to Nairobi as the UPR on Kenya had officially ended.  Then a little before four our boss had to leave to pick somebody up from the airport so we got off early.  I headed back to the Cite where I hung out for a little bit before making dinner and then went up to our classroom in the cite to do some more homework-quite the exciting life I lead these days.

Wednesday we went to work working on our projects and our papers (surprise surprise). And later tonight we have Kotts class (which I already know will go poorly), for dinner since it's a quick turn around between work and class dinner will be purchased from the chicken man who parks in the parking lot of the cite and sells chicken on Wednesdays-yes this is a real life thing.  After class we are going to go to ladies night at Club Platinum-this is where I tried to go out on my birthday but failed due to silly music department policies at Colgate-so we are trying again.  Hopefully there will be some good updates from that.

And in about 4 hours my work week will be over because we have Thursday off as the Assumption is a national holiday in Switzerland (Europeans take every opportunity-more than I do to take work off).  Then our boss is going to Spain until Monday so she said we could have Friday and Monday off too!  Yugoslavia HERE I COME (but only in the paper writing sense...)

Goals: 

• to finish the outline of my first paper tonight
• to see some of Geneva this weekend
• to catch up on sleep
• to have an amazing time out in Geneva as we have yet to successfully enjoy the nightlife