weekly recap

Nothing too much to report as the week has been quite intense at work. Work has pretty much occupied my week with a lot of important task to accomplish. You see, I started here on the 8th of January and it has been almost 3 weeks on my internship. But so far, I haven't accomplished anything constructive with my work and this thing makes me worried a lot.

There has been a couple of factors why it hasn't been that smooth sailing for me. First, I am still in the process of adjustment with the culture and how people make things work here. Initial impression was that people in International organizations are really formal with all the bonjour ca va? exchanges that we have and that everything must go with the hierarchy. And in my organization, there has already been 3 cocktails held and I feel uncomfortable attending them with all the flairs, protocols and formalities involved.

Next is the language barrier. To those who would like to be interns at the international organization, make sure that you have a good command of the working language of your superiors. I find it a little bit hard to communicate with my superiors as they speak French and I speak English. Although I can converse a little bit in French, I still have difficulty conveying things around as my field involves a lot of technical jargon to be communicated. And sometimes, its kinda funny as the technical jargon in French does not make sense literally when translated mechanically. Sometimes, when I talk to them, I see their faces a really puzzled and vice versa for me as well when they talk in French to me. Haha....

With the busy schedule this week, I tried really hard to have some time off and socialize with my fellow interns. I went into an English bar Wednesday night to meet with the new interns from the WHO and surprisingly, most of them are from Canada!

I met interns from Saskatchewan, BC, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Quebec. Perhaps, the Canadians are starting to take it over in International Organizations with the exposure and promotion of this internship programs in Canada. Unfortunately, unlike other governments, the Federal government does not even provide financial support to interns to keep themselves affloat in the tremendously high living expenses in Geneva.

There was one funny incident that happened during the meeting. Perhaps Canadians outside the MTV area (Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver) find it automatic to explain where they are from with Canada being the second largest country in the world. When interns meet, the standard questions are whereabouts are you from and how long have you been here? Then I met this person and started asking details as to where is she. Having no idea where's my home city in Canada, she started out by saying shes from New Brunswick and then went on a roll with her explanation where New Brunswick is that it is besides Nova Scotia and that its about 3 hours drive from Halifax. When I said that I came from Winnipeg, I think she got really embarassed and did not want to talk to me after that.

Good night from cold Geneva.