Summer School Is Over and It’s About Time to Go On Home, Now? Mais, C’est Pas Possible!

Friends, Neighbors, Compatriots,

So, Strasbourg is over and I’ve just spent a lovely day in Hamburg with my dear friend, Tim (more on that later, this post is really about leaving Strasbourg). We are leaving for Venice tomorrow (well, really, a few hours, at this point) and I'm pretty excited about the rest of our adventure. Also, feeling a strange mix of relief and excitement about going home and getting back to regularly scheduled programming/starting my research assistantship with Shepard and a very deep sadness that this adventure is almost over. It is, however, a comfort that I am not too old for a golden summer, like this one has been. I haven’t had this much fun or felt so much like myself and just been really, truly happy, in a very long time. It is nice to know that I’ve still got it. It also really reinforced my conviction that I need to get into international law/public policy. What is interesting about that, though, is that, yeah, I find the work, itself, rewarding, but the real value in this arena are the wonderful people who work in it. The people I met in Strasbourg inspired and challenged me, all while taking me as one of their own and making me feel really loved. It never ceases to amaze me when I just click with people and even though I’ve only known them for a little while, maybe only a few days, even, I feel like they understand me and what I’m about better than some people who have known me for many years. This month was like that, only it was on a larger scale than I think I have ever experienced and the wonder of it was compounded by the fact that we were all from different cultures and places and spoke varying amounts of various languages.

I feel like I really am one of those people who has friends all over the world, finally, and almost all of the sudden (although I had friends all over the world before this adventure began, it just didn’t really click until now), and as I told my Polish friend, today, when were saying goodbye and talking about making plans to visit each other, it really makes the world seem like it is just not that big, anymore. It’s hard to imagine how we will make it happen, but I think my Malagasy friend is right, I think we will all meet again, someday, and soon. Because as much as it is hard to imagine how we will, it’s harder to imagine how we could stay away, now.

NB: Malagasy is apparently not the culturally correct term for the people of Madagascar, but, while I’ve hear it, I haven’t had a chance to ask how to spell the correct term, so it will have to do, for now.

It has occurred to me, today, that I have been planning and doing and thinking about things in a way that I haven’t for a very long time, since this trip started. Grown-up Emily is usually so much more reasonable and pragmatic, but grown-up Emily hasn’t been in charge, much, lately, and I think that is a very, very good thing, because she is kind of dull and unattractive, whereas never-planning-to-grow-up Emily is certainly a little more outrageous and lives on the edge, a little, but she also loves more, laughs more, and just generally speaking, lives more, so I think I’ll stick with her as long as possible, from here on. ;{P

Speaking of reasonable and pragmatic, my new goal is to go to Lebanon, next summer. Talk about the opposite of reasonable and pragmatic, but the real Emily Davis! will make it happen, if she really wants it. All I have to do, now, is come up with a list of things I might like to do there and Aline and Maya have promised to look into how I can pull it off. I think if I had to describe the entire group of people I met in Strasbourg in two words, those words would be generous and sincere. Oh, and brilliant, every last one of them. I feel like the entire trip, the money, the frustrations, the living conditions, all of the negative things that I could complain about, don’t even hold a candle to what I’m going home with, particularly because I feel like I’m going home with myself, the real me, I just hope I can hang on it to that, when I get back to real life, because there is nothing more precious.

My Canadian friend, in particular, has lit a fire under me to go after the big stuff. He has lived all over the world, speaks at least 4 languages, and also just started law school, at 29. He and I have a lot in common and it makes me feel like if he can do it, so can I. He said something to me, the first day that we really talked, as we wandering the streets of some charming Alsacian town, looking for more wine to taste, that I think I knew, but needed to hear from someone else. He said that, while it’s true that there are certainly logistical and financial limitations on anyone’s ability to travel the way he has and does, at the end of the day, it’s probably mostly true that where there’s a will, there’s a way, and the biggest obstacle to making it happen is usually your own mind.

Which brings me to Lebanon (well, hopefully it will bring me to Lebanon, if you know what I mean). I met these wonderful ladies from there who have encouraged me to come visit/get an internship, there, and I think it’s a wonderful idea. I have no idea how I’m going to tell my mother about this plan, but talk about a CV builder. We’ll see if my friends and I can make it happen, but I have hopes that the Canadian is right.

I’m relieved that I’ve finally found something that excites me, professionally, though, too. I’m thinking right to development and/or rights of refugees are calling my name, because they both present challenging economic problems and are related to a lot of things that interest me/strike a chord in my bleeding heart. I suppose I’ll have to look into which IGOs will provide assistance with paying back my loans for law school and/or if government work might suit me, for real, this time. I don’t know why I didn’t think of going the “outside of Europe” route, before, though, with respect to internships, because I feel like, outside of the European system, nobody is going to care what school I go to or how my grades are (to a degree), having an American law student/lawyer with the international interest and experience and connections that I have, now, will be more than sufficient to impress and interest an IGO, NGO, or government such that I could get an internship, someplace else. Besides, the Middle East or North Africa (or anywhere in Africa, for that matter) are both the important places for development and refugees where the real work is needed.

I’ve been thinking about Latin America, a lot, lately, too, because of my experience in Panama and the fact that I’m really quite comfortable interacting with people from the various cultures there, but that also seems like something that is overdone by Americans, at least insofar as anything is overdone by Americans in the international sphere. Also, because of the ease and comfort with which I interacted with so many different kinds of people in Strasbourg, it has occurred to me that, when I started this grand adventure called adulthood, way back in 2002, my goal was to push my comfort zone so far that I could be comfortable in most any social/cultural situation. I have been falling behind on that goal, in recent years, and I feel the need to get back on it. Hence, an internship, literally on the other side of the world. That seems like a good way to go, to get back up on that horse, in a big way.

So, what do I want to do now? First of all, I think I should start doing some research on what kinds of development and refugee challenges and opportunities exist in Lebanon. I would imagine they have issues with Palestinians, being so close to Israel, but I don’t know, for sure, and that, in itself, bothers me a little. Next, I think I will start talking to Shep about water rights issues and see if I can tie property rights and the right to development and refugees together. I’m thinking access to safe water and the right of education to girls and women might be a good journal article, but I’ll need some help narrowing my focus, to be sure.

I guess maybe that’s where the plan should stop, for now, because those two things are pretty ambitious, oh, except I should find out who teaches that Human Rights Law class and find out if there’s an international law journal at JMLS that I might be able to write onto. Oh, and try to get on staff at AMUN, for the fall. That seems like a good idea, too.

On a mostly unrelated note, I’ve also begun questioning whether I want to continue taking the ADHD drugs, on this trip. I feel like the grown-up Emily that I have become not so fond of, recently, is as much a result of being able to focus as it is about maturity. I mean, really, does setting a goal to find out how to say “swing set” in as many languages as I can, just because I like swing sets, and collecting that information in roughly 10 different languages seem like something grown-up Emily would do? Who would you rather be/hang out with? The ability to focus and function on a grown-up level might have to be sacrificed in the interests of following my heart, and my deep down smart place. Especially because the drugs don’t really seem to be doing anything for my grades, at the end of the day, and I kind of feel like they are limiting my creativity in ways that seriously hamper my intelligence. I guess there will be time enough for experimenting with that, soon enough.

In any case, it turns out that, no matter how many times I was tired and frustrated and wanted to go home, over the past 9 weeks, it has been the adventure of my lifetime, thus far. I laughed harder, sang more, smiled bigger, and felt more, good and bad, than I have in a long, long time. I even had a good cry in my dorm room, last night (okay, very early this morning), before I went to bed because I was sad about breaking up the band and going back to our respective real lives, and even that felt right, if a little painful. Even though I am sad about saying goodbye, I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything.

I’m still blown away by how quickly the people I met came to mean the world, to me, which is really kind of funny, because they also happen to BE the world, to me, literally. From the Scots and the Brazilians to the Africans, Arabs, and Eastern Europeans and everyone in between, I choose to believe that the best humanity has to offer would look, think, and behave a lot like this group. Almost everyone at the conference was friendly and seemed genuinely interested in getting to know people from everywhere. Even the French speakers, who didn’t speak a word of English, would at least greet you with a smile and a “Ca va?” or “Bonsoir” on the stairs or at the door. It was a lovely atmosphere, in spite of the Spartan accommodations, and it was really neat to see everyone making the most of it.

I had a really interesting conversation with my favorite Italian (shhh, don’t tell the others) about this, while we were doing laundry, yesterday (laundry, like a lot of other things, particularly corkscrews, will never be the same after spending a month with that guy, c’est pas possible). He was actually the one who pointed out that the Americans, generally speaking, were the ONLY people there who didn’t greet everyone they encountered in the public spaces in the dorm.

It makes me wonder if that is because people from other countries were there for the Human Rights aspect of the conference and were, therefore, naturally friendlier people, whereas the Americans were there because it was an easy way to spend the summer in Europe or if Americans are, as a whole, generally like that. I told him about my friends from Texas and Louisiana who came to Loyola after Hurricane Katrina and the culture shock they experienced and we talked about the possibility that the climate plays a role in that kind of thing, because he is an anthropologist and spent some time in living in Finland and Poland and found the same to be true, there. This, and all the conversations like it that I had, this month, certainly have deepened my suspicions that I am an academic, at heart. Which probably means graduate school, about which I have mixed feelings, but too, but that’ll have to wait, because I think the best approach is one school, at a time, for me.

I have to say that I think the world would be a safer, kinder, more fun place if it could be run the way our study group was for the final exam. Granted, the exam was not nearly as complex as the problems in the real world (much to our collective chagrin) and we didn’t anticipate the questions as well as we would have liked, but most of us passed (no small feat, believe it or not) and one among us even got the only distinguished diploma in Human Rights Law that was given out at this year’s study session, and all of the other finalists/high scores were among our social circle, so I would say we were pretty effective.

I have mixed feelings about going home, at this point, because I’m excited to get started figuring out and working on my next move, in some ways, and I can’t wait to see my friends and sleep in my own bed, and all that stuff, but I also worry that I’m going to feel different, in some pretty fundamental ways, than I did when I left, which was, of course, both a reason to do this, and a reason to be apprehensive about it, in the first place. There are also two things about that that worry me. On one hand, I want to believe that I HAVE changed, in some fundamental ways, for the better, and I hope that it will stick, but am worried that I will somehow lose my grip on myself, again, because it’s happened before and Chicago is a hard place. On the other hand, I’m worried that I HAVE changed and it will be isolating, because I had grown accustomed to turning off some parts of who I am, because that’s what it has taken to be comfortable in the space and time in which I find myself, these days.

In any case, it will unfold as it will and I’ll deal with it as it comes, because there’s nothing else I can do about it, but I’m very glad that I have this week vacation with my German, before I go home. I need some kind of transition, for sure, why not do it in some beautiful cities and on beautiful beaches in the Riviera with my favorite German man? Especially since he has planned the whole thing and all I have to do is get myself to Hamburg (which I almost have) and be pleasantly surprised for a week, straight, haha.

And now that I have poured all of these thoughts onto “paper” and killed about 5 hours on the train (I’ve been alternating between writing and taking pictures of Germany as it zooms past my window), I think I’m journalled out for the day and will just sit, listen to music, and think more deep thoughts for the last hour of my journey to Hamburg.

A bientot!
Emily

Fireworks and Lessons on Being the Most Popular Girl in the Dorm, or Why I Carry a Corkscrew Around with Me...

Friends, Neighbors, Countrymen,

So, I wrote this post, like, two weeks ago, but it never made it to the interwebs because of my shotty internet access, I’ve decided to just post it, as is, instead of trying to edit it, because it is old…  Anyway, enjoy!

I can’t believe that it is Tuesday, again, already!  Last week was one of those week where there were not enough hours in the week, but in the best possible way.  I still have very little idea exactly what it is that I am supposed to be getting out of this conference, substantively, but I came for the networking and the caliber of people with whom I have become friends, here, has exceeded any expectations I could have had, so I still think it was worth the trip.  I hope I can remember all of my adventures for last week, I suppose I should start from the beginning… ;P

Last Monday, we had class all day, then I went to dinner in one of the university cafeterias, for dinner, and as I have mentioned previously, the food was blah, at best, but it was cheap and it was sustenance, so it got the job done.  Then, Monday evening, I went to a “live coding party” (we weren’t told that that was what it was until we had been there for a while…) with a bunch of heroes from 3 continents.  :P  The show wasn’t great, but the company was, so we sat outside in this courtyard on the campus, here, at the University of Strasbourg and hung out and laughed and laughed. 

On Tuesday, I think we just hung out, but I don’t even remember…

Wednesday was kind of out of control.  Thursday was Bastille Day, which is, obviously, a national holiday in France, so we didn’t have class.  As a result, we went to class, on Wednesday, obviously, then we went out to dinner (I’m pretty sure we had kabab, but that could just be because I feel like that is all I eat, here), opened some wine and hung out in front of the dorm and drank for a few hours, then we decided we were going to go to this nightclub, but it was one of those places with the red rope and the list and they wouldn’t let us in, so the group kind of split up and I ended up on the boat with the nightclub, again, with a couple of my American friends (again).  They played a really strange mix of music, that night.  There was an unfortunate amount of French rock and pop played, but they broke it up with some MC Hammer and 80s delights, so we stayed and danced the night away.  Literally.  When they finally closed it down and we left, we came up out of the cabin and I looked to the Eastern sky and said “is that the SUN I’m seeing over there?!?!”  Someone looked at a watch and said, “yup, it’s 5AM…”  Can you imagine?!?!  5AM on a Wednesday night!!  I’m getting too old for this nonsense.  :P  Still, we headed back to the dorm and decided, at that point, that we might as well watch the sunrise, at that point.  It was a pretty lame sunrise, but it was a great night.  J

On Thursday, I slept in (obviously) until about 2:30PM, then pulled myself together because there were FIREWORKS to be seen!!  We had another get-together at my professor’s apartment and I when I offered to bring something, my professor asked me to bring something sweet (besides, and I quote, “your own self”, she’s a gem), but a lot of places were closed so I went to this pastry shop by the dorm and bought all of the macaroons the guy had.  It was pretty funny, because he was shocked that I wanted all of them.  I said “tous” (all) and gestured to all of them with my hand and he said “two?” and held up two fingers and I said “non, tous” and made a more elaborate hand gesture.  He still wouldn’t believe that I was buying every macaroon he had in the display case, so when he asked how many, again, I just told him I wanted twelve.  He got out a box and asked about flavors (there were chocolate, pistachio, and coffee macaroons in the case).  I didn’t know he would have more so when he went in the back and came out with raspberry, I was pretty excited.  He packed them in a box for me, then, before he rang them up, he did the math on a calculator to show me how much it was going to cost.  When I agreed without any argument or shock, he decided to throw in six Turkish delights for free and was very gracious.  It was pretty neat.  J

I went to the party at the professor’s apartment with my classmates and there was all kinds of good food and the macaroons were a big hit.  After we ate and cleaned up, it was time to go find our spot for the fireworks.  As I may have mentioned before, I bought a corkscrew in Geneva that was the best investment I have made, on this adventure.  It comes with me pretty much everywhere I go, and is often accompanied by plastic cups and at least one bottle of wine.  Wine is the best way I know of to deal with the lack of air conditioning pretty much everywhere (at least when it’s hot, that is), so it’s been kind of a staple.  I bought this cute little cloth bag at Gap, the other day, to carry my books and computer to and from class in, and it has also really come in handy.  That night, I discovered that it quite nicely holds a bottle of wine, cups, the corkscrew, my wallet and other necessary, my airplane blanket, and a sweatshirt. 

Anyway, we got the park and sat down on the blanket with the wine and waited for the fireworks to start.  While we waited, one of my classmates who is a real gem (and happens to have coined the term “jank”, which is simply brilliant) came up with games for us to play.  We played a game where we had to come up with names of comedians that started with certain letters that was pretty fun.  As for the fireworks, well, those of you who know me best know how I feel about fireworks (as for those of you who may not, they are among my favorite, favorite things in the whole world, ever), and, growing up in St. Louis, I had access to some of the best fireworks displays in the country, if not the world, so I’m not too easily impressed.  That being said, it turns out that the spot we picked was AMAZING and the fireworks were really, really cool.

After the fireworks were over, we wandered back to the dorm to drink more wine and play more games.  Some of my Americans and some of my Europeans and some new friends we made, that night, and I went to this patio in the back of the dorm and sat on the blanket, again, and played drop, screw, or marry.  The premise of the game is that someone in the circle gives someone else a list of three people (and house rules, in this case, said it couldn’t be anyone in the circle, other than that, anyone is fair game) and the other person has to say who they would drop off a cliff and wave goodbye as they plummet to their death, who they would sleep with for one night, and who they would marry, which entails sleeping in the same bed and generally living together for one year, but the chooser can determine whether said marriage is consummated.  The game was SUPER fun, because I was playing with a group of really clever, well-educated people, so the lists of people were pretty ridiculous.  They ranged from Tweetybird to Lavar Burton to Jesus, Karl Marx, Charles De Gaulle, our professors from the three courses, and folk singers from the 1970s, among many others.  This went on late into the night, but eventually we ran out of wine and went to bed.  :P

Learning to Speak Italian and Polish in France. Baden Baden Panda.

Friends, Neighbors, Countrymen,

What a weekend it has been!  Thursday night, I went out to this place called Giraf Café with a group of people that my Polish and Croatian friends met the other day and we a blast.  The place was really chill and we just sat outside and had drinks and laughed about silly things until we cried.  The Filipina girl (who is such a gem) tried to text the Canadian guy from the Australian’s phone and had a hard time with the touch screen, so she ended up accidentally saying that he should meet us at the pan, instead of meeting us at the pub.  Somehow that devolved into he was probably lost, roaming the city, looking for pandas and giraffes, never to be seen, again.  The poor Filipina was harassed about that, for the rest of the weekend, but she’s been a good sport.  

Friday, we, of course, had class from 8:30-12:45, then, went to the university cafeteria for lunch.  It’s funny how university cafeteria food is universally awful, no matter where in the world you find yourself eating it.  There’s no flavor to it and it is all carbs and fat.  Now that I am more aware of what I am putting in my body than I was as a college freshman, I am not at all surprised that people gain weight in college.  Gross.  On the plus, though, I have somehow become part of a social group at the conference that is, in fact, so large, that we don’t all fit at one table.  When we split into two groups, I found myself sitting with my Polish BFF (because we are together, most of the time) and two people I had not yet met, an Albanian girl and a Russian guy, both of whom had interned at the Council of Europe and knew Strasbourg, so they filled us in on where to go and what to see, while we are here.  The Albanian girl ended up sitting next to me in class that afternoon and we bounded over our general nerd tendencies and gossiping about boys.  :P

Friday evening, my Americans and I had an extra class for the Santa Clara program taught by a lawyer for the European Court of Human Rights which was very interesting and gave me some insights into how much has changed in global politics, and particularly in the Council of Europe/European Union since I graduated from college and why my European friends looked at me like I was a little crazy when I was confused about the case studies we did in the UN Human Rights Protection System seminar (because I was trying to figure out what effect a decision from the Human Rights Council, for instance, would have on the actual protection of an individual’s rights from their state, if the state is the violator).  These courts are actually gaining some real legitimacy and power in the international community and it’s fascinating to learn about how that process is occurring, right now, here in Strasbourg, and in other regional courts around the world, as well as at the UN level. 

That being said, more class on Friday evening was a little rough, but I had a delightful dinner with the Albanian girl and my new Italian friend.  These two met at the airport and became fast friends.  The Italian guy knew the Croatian guy from a conference they attended together in Venice and we’ve all just kind of become one big, happy family, haha.  Anyway, the Italian guy recognized the owner of this Egyptian kabab place we went to when he and the Albanian were at the airport because the Egyptian guy owns a pizza place in Rome where the Italian guy used to go, all the time, before he moved to Spain.  They apparently talked at the airport and the Egyptian guy told my friends that they were welcome at his kabab restaurant, anytime, and that if they asked for him, he would make them something special.

Sidebar: This was the 3^rd or 4^th time, last week, that I had Middle Eastern food for dinner, I’m kind of in love with it, right now, which is not what I expected to happen in France, but it seems to be better for me than traditional French food, so I’ll take it. 

Back to my story… my new friends invited me to join them and it sounded like fun and I had nothing else to do, so I happily agreed.  We went to the kabab place and asked for the owner.  As it turns out, his cousin is also at the conference, because she works for Boutros Boutros-Ghali and he sends her, every year, because he knows that she likes to come to visit her family.  This young woman (who has the most adorable children, ever), helped me pick out what to eat (I had a kefta sandwich that was amazing) and then told us about living through the revolution in Egypt while we ate.  She said that she and her sister went to Tehrir Square to see the protesters, but they couldn’t tell their mother because she would be very worried.  She also told us about her friend, an artist, who had been a part of the original facebook activists, who was disappeared and later found murdered because of his involvement.  It was a sad story, but it underscored the reason we are all here, at the International Institute for Human Rights, quite poignantly, I think.

Anyway, we ate our sandwiches and then the owner brought us pizza that he made especially for us (the restaurant doesn’t even serve pizza) because my Italian friend knew him from his pizza restaurant in Rome.  The pizza had a chorizo-like sausage, red peppers, and onions (I think) on it, and it was the best pizza I have eaten since I arrived in Europe about 6 weeks ago.  It’s probably the best pizza I’ve had in longer than that, but that’s as far back as I can remember.  The owner and his family joined us and sat and chatted, but, except for the cousin from the conference, they spoke very little English, so I just sat and smiled and listened to them and my new friends speak Italian.  Italian is fairly close to Spanish, so I was actually able to pick out words and phrases, but I feasted like a queen and enjoyed the evening and was, in some ways, delighted that I wasn’t expected to participate in the conversation, unless some actually spoke to me in English.  For some reason, the restaurant owner decided that I was blond and kept calling me “blond girl” in Italian, even though my friends told him that I am a redhead, not a blond.  He told them that he was not wrong, though, because I have blond eyebrows.  It was very strange, but very funny.

Because we started late and sat and talked and ate for hours, we didn’t leave the restaurant until almost 1AM, we had planned on going to a bar, afterwards, but when we realized the time, we decided to come back to the dorm and take the bottle of wine I had in my room outside to share, instead.  We found my Polish friend when we got back and sat on the front stoop of the dorm and talked to everyone who walked by.  We had had a minority rights lecture, that day, and were talking about who raised their hands when the professor asked who belonged to a minority, in the room.  I said that I thought about it because I’m a redhead and this delightful Brazilian guy turned around and told me that we no longer count (in his words, “It’s ova.”) because one of us went flying around New York City in the arms of Spiderman, so now we are sex symbols, all over the world.  I tried to argue that lots of minorities are also sex symbols and he tried to convince me that, with Spiderman’s protection, we are certainly not vulnerable, to which I responded that vulnerability is not an internationally-recognized element of the definition of minority, but he wasn’t having it and I decided to concede because he did keep telling me that I’m a sex symbol and that I have beautiful hair.  :{P

As we were sitting there, my Polish friend (who, as I think I told you before, teaches Human Rights Law at a law school in Warsaw) decided to TRY to teach my Italian friend and I, some Polish tongue twisters to improve our pronunciation in Polish.  It was very, very hard and I decided that I have a lot of respect for anyone who can learn Polish as a non-native speaker because of all of the different kinds of soft consonant sounds that language requires you to be able to make.  We sat and talked and laughed until about 3:30 in the morning when we decided that it was time for bed.

On Saturday, I got up at around 10:45 to pull myself together and go shopping with my Albanian friend, because I needed to get a French phone number so we could communicate, later that night, after I had a dinner party with my Americans.  I ran into my Italian friend in the dorm and we went for coffee and decided that we do laundry together after I shopped and he went to Germany to pick up the bike he rented for the month.  We couldn’t find any place open for coffee, except this little Turkish restaurant, so we sat down to have espressos.  While we were sitting there, the Albanian, and then, later, the Croatian happened to pass by and sat down to join us.  After we had our (terrible by all of our standards) coffee, the Albanian girl and I went shopping to get my SIM card and some other things, then I came back to the dorm, found my Italian, and started the laundry.  It was funny because he had never used a dryer, before, because in Italy and in Spain (where he lives, now), he just hangs his clothes out in the sun to dry.  I told him that his clothes might shrink in the dryer, but that I wasn’t sure, so he should dry at his own risk (don’t worry, though, as far as I could tell, nothing bad happened). 

In the meantime, I had to shower and get ready to go to a potluck at my professor’s apartment.  I had no idea where it was and, while I’m sure I could have figured it out on my own, I was relieved that I ran into my friend from Chicago in the dorm and we agreed to go together.  The Italian and I had a little trouble figuring out the dryer situation, so that took longer than I expected and, of course, my clothes weren’t dry when I went to pull them out, so I pulled out a pair of jeans, put them on, and left everything else in his capable hands to go to the party.  As I was leaving my room, I ran into my next door neighbor, who is from California, too, but is here with a different school.  I asked if he had plans for the evening and he said, not yet, so I got his number and told him I would let him know what we were doing, later. 

We went to the party and there was lots of good food and wine and we generally had a lovely time.  At around 10:30, we left the party and I went to meet up with my new CA friend and his classmates at this little bar area along the river.  We sat and had drinks and then they decided that they wanted to get something to eat, but he and I wanted to keep drinking so we went to try to meet up with my ragtag band of international superstars.  We ended up back at Giraf Café and ordered the “Giraf” of beer which is a 3L beer dispenser similar to what you would get if you ordered a yard, in Chicago.  After we finished the Giraf with that crowd, my neighbor and I went back to the river to look for his classmates.  We didn’t really find any of them, but decided we would stay and check out the bars that are actually on the boats docked there.  We paid 3 euros as a cover charge and then we boarded the boat and went down into the cabin of the boat, which turned out to be a very small nightclub.  We got drinks and sat on a bench at the back of the dance floor that gave us a good view of the whole place.  We sat there and made up stories about people on the dance floor and generally enjoyed ourselves, then wandered back to the dorm at around 3:30AM.

Obviously, having been out until the wee hours of the morning two nights in a row, in addition to not getting enough sleep, the rest of the week really took it out of me.  On Sunday, my friends rented some bikes and rode them to Germany (which is apparently only about 15 minutes away, by bike), but I decided to sleep in, so I didn’t get up until about 3PM.  When I did finally pull myself together, I met up with my Italian friend, because he still had all of my clothes, since I had left the laundry for him to pull out of the dryer when I went to the party at our professor’s apartment, the night before.  Of course, the fact that all of my clothes were in his room became a running joke about what they were doing there, haha.  It gets better, though, he is a total gem and had folded most of my clothes and put them back in my suitcase, which saved me from having wrinkled clothes and saved a lot of time, so he’s obviously my favorite Italian, this week.  ;{P  We met up with our other friends and decided and to get dinner.  The Albanian girl speaks Turkish (among several other languages, she’s AMAZING) and had made friends with some Turkish people who own a kabab place near where we are staying, so we went there and, in addition to the food we ordered, they also served us these little appetizers that were like spicy couscous nuggets wrapped in lettuce before our meal and then traditional Turkish tea, after dinner. 

As you can imagine, I’m delighted that I have become friends with all of these people, but, from a very self-interested perspective, the Albanian girl is a REAL find.  I’m obviously sticking with her, as much as possible for dinner.  J

Anyway, class is over and I have more adventures to find, so I should get going.  I promise more exciting tales to come!

Hugs and Kisses!

Emily

A Pole, a Croat, an Australian, and an American walk into a Mexican Restaurant in France...

Friends, Neighbors, Countrymen,

So, I have been in Strasbourg for nearly a week and am really enjoying myself, here, despite what can generously be described as Spartan living conditions and the incredibly disorganized nature of this conference.  I have made some very cool international friends and the lectures are starting to get interesting/useful to me.

First, let me tell you about the living conditions, which I have to laugh about, because there's nothing else that can be done about them and it makes me feel a little better about the whole situation.  :P  We are staying in college dorms at the University of Strasbourg and I really do not envy the people who must live in them full-time.  We seemed to be assigned rooms on a first-come, first-served basis, so whomever was next in line after you checking in is your next door neighbor.  I’m really glad I took the train and arrived with my girl, Karbear, because we got rooms together, which was nice. 

The bathrooms and showers are community-style, but there is no separate accommodations for men and women.  There are about 20 rooms sharing 4 toilet stalls and 4 shower stalls and we are all mixed together.  The good news is, it turns out that this doesn’t bother me as much as I would have expected and there is a decent amount of privacy in both rooms and I haven’t have to fight or wait for a shower, amazingly.  The bad news is, there are NO TOILET SEATS and the showers are the kind of things you find at public pools with the faucet that has to be pushed in every 30 seconds. 

When I say there are no toilet seats, I don’t mean that these are toilets that are designed to not have them, I mean there holes on the toilet on which one would typically expect a seat to be mounted but there is nothing there.  My Croatian friend says that he has seen more luxurious water closet facilities in the middle of the Sahara and I have no problem believing that.  The showers are kind of annoying, but they get and stay hot and the water pressure is adequate, so I will live.

The rooms are actually not too bad.  We are all in single rooms, which is critical, I don’t think I could handle sharing one, at this point.  I like having a sink in my room and I have a fridge and enough storage for my clothes and other necessities, so I can’t really complain about that.  The only big problems I have with my room are that I keep tripping the circuit breaker with my hair dryer (thankfully, not a big deal, because I the fuse box is in my room, so I just have to flip it back up and go about my business) and the lack of internet access, which is seriously frustrating.

At least we have internet access in the building where we have classes, but, of course, there are not NEARLY enough power outlets for everyone (there are probably about 120 people in the English-speaking section and about 8 outlets in the classroom), and we are in class from 8:30AM – 12:45PM, then again from 2:15PM – 4:15PM (and until 6:30PM, one day a week, when we have an additional smaller seminar section), so it’s basically impossible to use a computer to take notes for every class.  That being the case (among other things, that aren’t really interesting, so I won’t talk about them), it has been REALLY difficult for me to feel organized with this stuff, in any fashion.  That wouldn’t really bother me, except that I will have an exam at the end of this thing, so I’m a little concerned about what will happen when (if) the material gets more challenging.  Ugh.

Other than in the classroom building, we can get internet access outside of the dorm, by a restaurant that apparently has wifi, but is closed for the summer.  Ridiculous.  At any rate, you now know one of the reasons that I have not posted in a while, at least.

All of that being said, I have met some SUPER cool people, here.  I am across the hall from a couple of PhD students (one, a Polish girl, is a lawyer, and the other, a Croatian dude, is a political scientist).  I’ve been sitting with them in class and it’s really nice to have people to discuss the material with who are actually more knowledgeable about it than I am.  There’s also a new girl in the Santa Clara program who is pretty great, she has travelled all over and has some really fascinating stories about her adventures.  I am probably learning as much from them as I am from the lecturers and I’m having a lot of fun with them, too, so I’m a happy little ginger, on that front.

The courses wear pretty elementary at the beginning of the week.  We had a series of lectures on the Human Rights Protection Mechanisms at the UN and lecture that was supposed to be on the Historical Development of Human Rights, but ended up alternating between the history of international law, in general, and international shit-kicking on the part of the professor.  It was a “beat up on America” session as much as anything else and, while I tend to agree with the premise of most of the criticisms, I’ve reached a point in my life where I have very little patience for criticism without a viable alternative solution, so I don’t want to hear about the big, bad US and how we should have captured Bin Laden instead of killing him (a premise I actually agree with, in theory) unless the critic can tell me how it could have been done (because I think we would all agree that that man had to be stopped).

It’s interesting to me that, whereas in high school and much of college, I might have been among the loudest critics depending , here, the exact same kind of criticism as I would have encountered from people from other countries at a Model UN conference, for example, puts me a little on the defensive.  I don’t know if it’s because I have a lot of faith in my current president (and I did not in the last one) or if it is the result of my furthering education and life experience or if it is just my age, but it feels a little strange, in any case.

As the week has progressed, though, the courses have begun to challenge me and excite me a little.  We had a great lecture on the Action and International Objectives of Combating Extreme Poverty presented by a gentlemen from the UN High Commission on Human Rights, Millennium Development Goals Implementation Unit.  The Techniques of Human Rights Protection series seems like it is going to be pretty great, too, so I have high hopes for the rest of the conference.

The occasional overzealous critique of American foreign policy (and misinformation on economics, which is a totally different subject that you don’t want me to get into) at the conference, aside, the people in Strasbourg are just delightful.  There are fewer English speakers, here, than any other place we’ve been, but I don’t feel like I’m not wanted, because I’m a foreigner, like I did in Switzerland.  The Swiss were, quite frankly, with a few charming exceptions, weird.  I was worried that I had lost my edge/desire to live abroad, etc., in Switzerland, because I just plain didn’t really like it there.  It’s a HUGE relief that I am pretty comfortable in Strasbourg and have very easily made friends with several people from other countries, since I got here.  I feel a whole lot more like myself, now, haha.

I have to admit, I don’t know what I expected from this trip, but I have been kind of disappointed, in some respects.  It has been hard to get excited about the subject matter (except the one class on the World Trade Organization in Geneva and the visit to the UNHCR, it’s a strange combination, I know, but it’s who I am, I guess).  I mean, the class in Geneva was a nice refresher, because I have been out of the UN system game and the political science aspects of international organizations for a while and I’m a little rusty, but I was hoping for something a little more stimulating.  I finally went up to one of the presenters and asked a question after class and got his business card, today.  I’ve only been in Europe for almost 6 weeks and came here primarily to network, so it’s about time I got my act together and started doing it. 

Still, it is really nice to have a summer to do something totally different.  I went shopping with my new classmate the other day and bought some fun, casual summer clothes, the likes of which I have not had in many years.  Spending all of my time with a bunch of people from California and living without A/C has me dressing like a Texan, again.  I bought a few tube tops and sleeveless shirts and peasant tops and couldn’t be more excited about the fact that I can actually wear them on a daily basis, so that’s one good thing that has come out of the lack of A/C situation (which, by the way, I expected, it just is what it is).

Anyway, as I mentioned, this conference is really poorly organized, so I have been having to put together all of the information that should be on one schedule, myself, and I should probably get back to that, reading the course outlines, etc., and get dinner.  We got to have a reception with some judges from the European Court of Human Rights and observed a session of the Grand Chamber, there, which was very, very cool, but I’ll have to tell you about that, later.  ;{P

I hope all is well, miss you bunches!

Emily