Geneva

Over the weekend, I figured out the French train system for the first time and traveled to Geneva, Switzerland. A friend from the Gorgas tropical medicine course in Peru lives in Switzerland, so she met me there. I enjoyed reconnecting with her (in French and English :)) as well as exploring a new city. 

 Lake Geneva in the rain

 The weather improved as the day progressed. Switzerland is known for their clocks - this flower clock accurately tells time! 

 The Jet d'Eau shoots water 400 feet up into the air - you can see it between Rosalie and I in this picture

 St. Pierre Cathedral

 View of Geneva and lake and Jet d'Eau from the North tower of the cathedral. Supposedly you can even see Mount Blanc when it's not cloudy. 

 Reformation wall - built in 1909 on the 400th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin and depicting 450 years of the history of Protestantism

 Farel (Swiss reformer), Jean Calvin, de Beze (?), and John Knox (and me ;))

 The United Nations building - unfortunate closed to the public on the weekends, but we saw an interesting demonstration in front of the UN building of 3500 Sri Lankan Tamils protesting torture of their people in Sri Lanka and seeking independence (I looked it up later - it's amazing how much is going on in the world that I'm unaware of! ) 

 Probably not on everyone's top 5 Geneva list, but Rosalie and I (2 tropical medicine trained docs interested in the developing world) were pretty interested to visit the World Health Organization's headquarters. I used WHO guidelines in caring for patients in Kenya almost every day and will in Burundi as well, so it's nice to be able to picture where they are drafted now. I do hope the authors get to leave their offices periodically and actually visit the places where their guidelines are implemented, though!

 Tribute to the lives saved through vaccinations around the world - something I value so much more now after seeing kids die from vaccine preventable diseases

 Sunset from pier on Lake Geneva looking at the city

 Jet d'Eau again

Lighthouse

Update

Classes are now in full swing and we've even had our first test. French is certainly not an easy language to learn! Especially the pronunciation! But I'm so thankful for being placed in the appropriate class for my level of French, for a teacher whose teaching style resonates with me, for fun classmates (including two of my teammates - John & Eric - read the team blog about our class here), and for being the dork that I am that I actually like school. (Course I've been in school a pretty high percentage of my life, so that's a good thing!) The highlight of the past week in class is that we've learned both a past and a future tense, so now we can have real conversations - it's hard to talk for long only in present tense! Unfortunately, though, it's not learned immediately, as was evident today when I tried to have a basic conversation at the bank and sounded like a 2 year old: "I to put money and to go home work money to buy to the internet now?" Hmmm, hopefully processing speed and consequent speaking ability will improve with time! I'm thankful for sign language and gracious people for now. :)

But language learning doesn't occur exclusively in a classroom, and I've enjoyed participating in some community activities over the last couple weekends:

A hike with some classmates to a nearby peak:

La Belle Etoile as seen from our school 

 The hike begins

 I worked on memorizing Psalm 121 in French on the way up ("I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come?...) - with some very helpful and necessary pronunciation corrections from the fluent French speaker in our group (whose wife is a student at the school). An apropos psalm! 

 The peak of La Belle Etoile

 View of Mount Blanc from the top

 Another weekend event - visiting a nearby castle built literally on a rock in the 1500s

 Two weekends ago, Cropseys and I visited the town of Annecy (about an hour and a half away) and enjoyed a boat ride on the beautiful lake there

Ou se trouve Mercury?

After several days of rain, I was thankful for a beautiful day on Sunday and set off on a hike with two friends. I had visited the village of Mercury with another student last week and thought I could find it again easily, but anyone who has hiked with me before knows my tendency to get lost. So we missed a turn somewhere along the way and then spent the next hour practicing French in asking various people how to get there. We were lost on a scenic country lane complete with raspberries and apple trees growing on the side of the road, vineyards, quaint Alpine homes, cows, and varied views of green, rocky, & snow-capped mountains in the distance. Though in a rural area, a Sunday afternoon stroll seems to be a common pastime for the French, so we came upon several friendly, helpful, fellow travelers. Each time we exchanged greetings, and then I attempted the above question ("Where does one find Mercury?"). This would be followed by confused looks, so I would try again. And again. The problem was the "r's" in "Mercury". We should have chosen an easier to pronounce village as our destination! Those uvular (gutteral) r's in French seem quite impossible right now, but I learned in the language acquisition course to add "yet" to any such statement. I can't YET correctly pronounce the French r's! But eventually, they would figure out what I was saying, and then followed a string of directions and, I presume from the few words I understood, a recommendation as to the beautiful view of Mt. Blanc from the church in the village. Thankfully sign language usually accompanied the directions and we would head off again in the direction they were pointing. Great opportunities to practice speaking and listening to French, to enjoy conversation with friends, and to see more of the beautiful surroundings in our home for the next 10 months. And, bonus, we finally arrived in Mercury - and found the shortcut (and correct route) back home - only took 3 hours round-trip instead of two.

View en route

 We found Mercury!

 Jessica, Rachel, & I with the city of Albertville in the valley behind us

Didn't actually see Mt. Blanc during this hike, but the above picture is from last week and I think it includes the base of Mt. Blanc

 

  There's actually a swing set to the left of the castle and it looks like people currently live there. Imagine growing up in a castle!

 Albertville in the valley

 And back in Albertville, we realized that the rain clouds we'd been experiencing must have contained more than just rain in the mountains. Snow on August 31st!

Our placement exam is tomorrow and then orientation and the start of classes is on Thursday. I'm excited to get beyond Rosetta Stone French 1 - hopefully pronunciation will be the first thing covered!