Winding Down the Term

  Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
Monday, March 2, 2009

I haven't been up to a whole lot these days. It has been that point in the term when things become mass chaos, but all of my papers and assignments are completed and turned in. So, I'm floating through this week and getting excited for break!

The only major thing that has happened since I last wrote, is that the school hosted a humanitarian conference at the end of last week. The conference had the potential to be pretty awesome, but like all things here, it fell short of my expectations. The best part of the conference was that the other campuses were invited to attend as well. So, some of the students and teachers that we had befriended in Leiden and London were in town ... which was reallllllllllly fun!

PvK - Our Favorite Professor from Leiden

I'm not really sure if I have mentioned that my professor here and I have not been getting along. It was never really good, but we had a major disagreement over my midterm exam. He is under the impression that rocks are not/can not be weapons. So, I explained the problem to to my professor from Leiden (Leonard), who, like most people in the world, agreed w/ me.

The next day, Leonard gave a lecture at the conference. It was essentially about spontaneous wars/fighting where children were involved. It just so happens that the children in these conflicts use ROCKS to fight. If that weren't enough, he actually said something along the lines of, "...the children use rocks as weapons. Even though I understand there are some people in Geneva do not believe rocks are weapons ..." It took me about 10 minutes to pick my jaw back up off of the table. It was soooooooooo awesome!

My small victory at the conference was definitely the best part. We got to hang out and have dinner and drinks with everyone both nights of the conference. Getting to see everyone from Leiden again made me realize how much I missed it and how infinitely better the professors are than at any of the other campuses. So, I will definitely be going back to Leiden for the summer!

Leonard, Angel, and I at dinner

Drinks - clealry still early in the night

That's about all that's been going on. Classes are over on Wednesday, and we are leaving for break on Friday. I am traveling w/ a completely different group of people this time. Chris, Annie, and I will be DRIVING from Geneva to Vienna throughout the week. We are planning on going to Zurich & St. Gallen, Switzerland; Innsbrook, Austria; Bled, Slovenia; and then Graz and Vienna, Austria. Clearly we will stop whenever we see something/somewhere cool, so who knows what else we will be doing.

That's about it ... I'll try to update early the week of the 16th, when I get to Vienna.
I hope everyone is doing well! Keep me updated!