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
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