Geneva Gibber

My blog is almost always focused on the weekends, so I thought I would share a little about my typical weekdays.

Frisbee with the Wizards - Mondays and Thursday nights– You may recall from my beginning entries that I was not entirely enchanted with my frisbee team here. However, now that I’ve practiced with them twice a week for the last nine weeks, I have made some great friends, and it’s going to be really hard to leave them behind. Maybe some day I will come back to Geneva to work, and will be a Wizard once again.

Pickup frisbee – Wednesday nights – This is a pickup game with local professional types, who know very little about frisbee. It’s a good way to network and meet people, but the quality of frisbee is pretty low. Mostly I play because its better than going running, and it is fun, so long as I don’t get on a team with guys who won’t throw to teammates lacking penises (something that is especially infuriating when the guys are crappy frisbee players). In these situations, I generally get very cranky and start bitching at people on my team for bad throws and lazy defense. For some reason this makes the testosterony men that much more likely to look me off, and then I get very angry and swear I won’t ever come back to the pickup game again. Then the game ends and we go swimming, and I’m happy again. Once again my ADD comes in handy, as even my anger doesn’t have a very long attention span.

Coaching softball – Tuesday nights – Geneva has one fast pitch softball team that practices on the fields where my frisbee team practices. During frisbee, I often watched the softball girls bat and pitch and would suffer so greatly from their form that I would lose focus on what I was doing. Finally, four weeks ago, I approached one of the coaches and offered to help the girls with their pitching (for anyone who has the slightest idea about softball pitching, the girls looked more like they were bowling than throwing a pitch.) The coach I talked to seemed enthusiastic, so I came to their practice the following Tuesday and helped out with the two pitchers. The following week, a coach who had been absent during my first practice arrived and proceeded to undermine everything that I said. Much like the pickup frisbee men, he was also clearly unimpressed by my lack of penis, and decided that there was no chance that I knew anything about any type of sport. Three of the four coaches were completely behind me and my advice, but one stupid penis proud man had to go and ruin everything. So now one of the girls is pitching under my advice, and another one of the girls is attempting to incorporate a giant leap forward into her pitch, which is not only unnecessary, but also very prone to throwing one off balance and creating a wild pitch. Not so surprisingly, the girl I’ve been working with has been much more successful in keeping her pitches straight. And I say – HA HA – to the stupid man.

So that’s pretty much my weeknights. I realize that this blog entry makes me sound like I hate men, but that's not true at all. I only hate stupid men. And even with stupid men around, four nights a week of sports has made my summer very fun.

And no I'm not talking about Blue Oyster Cult, Will Ferrell style cowbell. I mean Swiss cowbells that actually hang around cows' necks. I love the sound of the bells clinking when the cows come in from the pastures. Do you think I could get my classmates to wear cowbells at school?

Last night I had dinner with Monica, Chandler, Joey, and a friend I will call Jason (ok, that’s his real name, but he didn’t do anything illegal, so I’m not worried about using his name.) During the evening a number of things were said that Monica suggested I put in my blog. I have to confess that I remember only one of them, but I enjoy the story, so I will post it.

This story is further proof that I aptly applied the Joey pseudonym. Apparently as a child Joey (Dukies, this is a classmate of ours, feel free to guess which) thought that eating stones would make his head harder. So he and his friend would sit around swallowing pebbles, and then head butt one another… Hmmm, now that I’ve written the story it just isn’t that funny when sober. Perhaps you should all be in the same state that we were last night when we found it funny. Go find three or four beers and a couple glasses of wine and then reread the story (it may also help to picture a little Joey Tribbiani eating stones and head butting his friends.) Now it’s funny, right?

Being in Europe, I have had the pleasure of reading primarily European coverage of the Israeli –“Hezbollah” conflict (i.e. – fight the Hezbollah by killing lots of Lebanese civilians and destroying all access routes to prevent any kind of humanitarian assistance). While reading a more balanced view of the matter hasn’t made me any less enraged about what Israel is doing, at least I’ve had the luxury of reading about the conflict from a less biased press. Today, however, out of curiosity, I decided to venture over to CNN.com to see what they were saying about the conflict. I am currently fuming at my desk, and may have to cancel my flight back to the US in protest of our crappy press and heinous president. (Don’t worry mom, I won’t actually do that – I miss free pop refills and air conditioning too much… sadly I am that shallow of a person).

But back to my rant - My favorite sentence in the article was

The combat has left more than 400 people dead on both sides of the Lebanese-Israeli border.

Hmm, that’s an interesting way to obscure the facts. Somehow, I think that clarifying that 377 of those people (almost all civilians) were Lebanese is a rather important part of telling a nonbiased news story.

I also enjoyed the news footage they had of Israel’s plan to enter “Hezbollah’s terror capital.” Of course if it’s a terror capital, what choice does Israel have but to obliterate it?

I could go on and on about this, and I’m sure you’d all rather not here it. Feel free to post comments about how Israel has a right to protect it’s people, bla, bla, bla, but I’ll say now that I think that argument is a load of crap. Sure Israel has a right to protect its people, but they aren’t fighting the Hezbollah, their just using this as an excuse to bomb the hell out of the Lebanese people and to flex their US provided military muscles. I’ve even heard (firsthand) talk of war crimes from people at the UN (which really is a remarkably unbiased source, even if Fox News and the Ann Coulters of the world don’t think so.) In the end Israel is doing exactly what the US is doing in Iraq – making millions of enemies and exponentially diminishing the security of its citizens. It is remarkable how the US and Israel continue to be shocked that their practice of killing lots of people never results in a sustained peace.

Pre apology – I think I’ve started writing Gibber more like a journal, than a blog. Sorry if I put in too many details:

We went back to the chalet in the Alps this weekend! I love it there. Sadly, we all forgot our cameras, so no pictures from this trip (the pictures you see are from our first trip). Spending the full weekend there was much better than leaving Sunday morning, as I got to sleep off my hangover on Sunday morning, and I got a whole extra day of hiking.

We headed up to the chalet on Friday night, and watched the thermometer on the car drop steadily as we drove further into the mountains. Leaving behind 93-degree weather for high 70s is a glorious thing. I even wore my sweatshirt at night because the temperature fell so much – who knew wearing a sweatshirt could be so thrilling?

Saturday morning around 8:30, on cue, a stressed out Chandler woke us all up. For some unknown reason after Chandler drinks, he wakes up early the next morning anxiety ridden, and then shares his concerns with everyone near him (or accessible by phone). Luckily, I find his early morning fretting quite amusing, especially because after he has flipped out for a little while, he will usually let you go back to sleep.

Once we all eventually crawled out of bed, we begrudgingly headed to the grocery store to buy food for the weekend. Sitting on the porch enjoying the morning in the mountains seemed like a much more desirable way to pass the AM hours, but being in Switzerland, if we didn’t make it to the grocery store by five that evening we would be foodless for the remainder of the weekend. After the grocery store and tasty brunch of eggs and bacon we headed out for a hike. The hike never really happened though. The ski lift we were planning to take up the mountain had been shut down for the summer. We drove about looking for a functioning lift, but we never found one. Instead we cruised around for a long time until we dead-ended at a meadow. We walked around in the meadow for a while, and then sat and enjoyed the scenery and ate sandwiches. It wasn’t the afternoon we had planned, but you can’t really complain about a scenic drive, wildflower picking, good company, and lunch high up in the Swiss Alps.

After our frolicking in the meadow we stopped in Gstaad, a near by town known for it’s ridiculously wealthy inhabitants. The goal of our stopover was to find a tourist office to tell us which lifts were open, so we could hike on Sunday, but we also took a little time to do some window-shopping in the ridiculously expensive jewelry and watch shops. Monica and I were horrified to find that an overwhelming amount of the diamond jewelry was in heart shapes – why, why, would you do that to a diamond. To my readers, if, on the off chance I do eventually find a serious boy friend, and he happens to ask you if I might like any kind of jewelry involving a heart, please tell him absolutely not. Hearts are fine for some people, but I am not a heart kind of girl. Phew, glad I cleared that up with all of you.

After Gstaad we headed out for a boys vs. girls bowling outing. Sadly, the girls’ team lost, but we did both individually beat Joey, so at least we’ve got that going for us, which is nice. The girls also lost at pool (two games to one), for which I entirely blame myself. I have become an abysmal pool player; I was never great at pool, but I have definitely deteriorated to a player that can only be described as terrible. I’m going home for ten days this August, and the padres have a pool table - I’m going to have to put in some serious training time while I’m home.

Sunday morning we slept in a little later and left the house around eleven. We found a functioning chair lift and had an outstanding hike. It was a bit steep at times, but luckily we had mountain man Chandler leading the way with his walking stick. Apparently, no mountain man worth his salt would even consider a hike without a giant stick to aid his progress - I have a lot to learn about being a mountain man. Sadly, I have no pictures to share, but it was very beautiful. After the hike, we headed out to a lake in the mountain valley and grilled hamburgers and played badminton. It was very close to an ideal day, the only disappointing part being that it was Sunday and we had to leave the next morning. Monday came all too fast, and now I’m at work, roasting in my office, wishing I were back in the mountains. Maybe some day I’ll make millions in a public policy career, and I’ll buy a chalet there too… or more realistically, maybe I can get Chandler’s family to adopt me – they already have five kids, what’s one more.

It’s very hot today. It’s actually been rather hot here for the last month or so, but today it seems to be taking a larger toll than normal on my work ethic (by work, I mean the work it takes to entertain myself for eight hours while trying to avoid doing real work). Rumor has it that it’s been very hot in Midwest and northeast lately too, but you all have air conditioning and Geneva definitely does not. The heat has made me so apathetic today that the internet is completely failing to entertain me. Every time I try and find something amusing to read or consider watching a video on youtube, the effort of having to watch my back to avoid getting busted seems too great an obstacle to overcome. So mostly, I just sit at my desk and wait for the brief glorious moment when the oscillating fans swings my way before it turns back to my breeze hoarding coworkers (by breeze hoarding, I mean that they refuse to let the fan blow only on me.)

So instead of searching the internet, I thought I would write a blog entry. Writing blog entries in Word is the best way I know to amuse myself without having to worry about getting caught slacking – whenever you’re typing in Word you always look like you’re working. So even though I don’t really have any stories to tell, I feel inclined to ramble a bit, to help pass the last hour of my day. Here goes…

My room is full of spiders. They don’t have screens in Geneva (which is especially irksome when combined with the lack of air conditioning that requires people who wish to avoid heat stroke to keep their windows open all day and night). When I first moved into my apartment swarms of small bugs would gather in the corners of my room at night and completely creep me out - so much so that I would spend a good twenty minutes before bed trying to crush them all – there are now a lot of bug guts on my ceiling. But then a spider or two moved in and did most of the bug killing for me, which I greatly appreciated. I considered naming the spiders and making them my pets, much like Petey in Costa Rica (readers of my Costa Rican blog will of course remember my dear, sweet Petey). However these spiders were bigger than Petey and more prone to moving around (I prefer spiders that stay in one place, so I always know where they are and don’t have scary thoughts of them crawling on me while I’m sleep); hence these spiders were not nearly as suitable to being pets as Petey. But even if they weren’t pets, I still accepted their presence and appreciated their job well done.

But now things have changed. There are about fifteen spiders in my room, and there just aren’t enough bugs from them all, so I’m pretty sure they’re going to start attacking me soon. In fact, one has already tried. Last night, I woke up to use the bathroom, and when I turned on my light, I saw the biggest spider of them all (think the giant, scary spider from Harry Potter), crawling down the wall right at my bed. He was clearly coming to attack me, so I had no choice, but to crush him with my kleenex box. I tried to explain to the other spiders the human-spider rules of coexistence, the first of course being that no spider may leave the ceiling at any time. Sadly, I do not speak their language (unlike with Petey), so I could not communicate with them, and I do anticipate more spider killings in the near future. But what can I do, you just can’t have spiders running wild in one’s room – there must be order.

As my weekdays are minimally interesting (enjoyable, but not story worthy) I will fast forward to my Saturday festivities. Saturday was the Geneva Lake Parade, and I met up with the usual suspects, Chandler, Monica, and Joey, plus some of their friends around 3:00…

Sorry, I feel the need to digress a bit, back into my weekdays, to tell a story about a very special person that I met during class. My weeklong seminar was on humanitarian assistance (ie – food and water distribution, refugee camps, protecting women and children from abuse, etc.), and the group of students was consequently a very liberal assemblage of people – except Ben, the tragically clueless Mormon. I’m not implying that Ben is clueless because he is Mormon; he is just completely and utterly clueless. For instance, suggestions of corruption and bribery in developing governments shocked him to the core; he really had no idea that such things went on. This is especially remarkable because Ben is studying international relations at the Geneva Graduate Institute for International Studies, one of Europe’s finest IR schools. His naivety was bewildering, but back to the point of the story… this does all tie back to the aforementioned parade. Ben’s ignorance did not stop at failing to understand the nuances of the international world; he also did not seem to realize that the rest of our class wasn’t quite the Jesus loving, sin condemning crowd to which he was accustomed. This was most clearly revealed when I mentioned going to the Lake Parade that weekend, and he looked at me with horror in his eyes. I knew nothing about the parade, so I asked him what about it was so upsetting. His response was – “Well, ughhhh, gaaaaaah, it’s just that, maybe I shouldn’t be saying this but, the parade is full of GAY and LESBIAN people.” I think the daggers coming from my eyes were enough to give clueless Ben a bit of clue, and he shut up fairly quickly. Surprisingly, I’m not Ben’s biggest fan.

But back to the parade – After some cocktails at Monica and Chandler’s, the crew departed for the parade. I was pretty excited as Pride parades are always a good time. This one did not disappoint in terms of good times, but it wasn’t really a pride parade. It was a bunch of floats from different local clubs, with scantily clad people (some of whom, judging by their behavior, were not at all gay) dancing to techno music. Every float was basically the same, except the color of the clothing and the veracity of the float riders gyrating. Luckily, I was with company that I thoroughly enjoyed, so we danced to the music, took pictures with some of the parade participants, and had a grand time. Best part of the floats was definitely this guy - I think he thought I was checking him out, but I had to make that sacrafice to get the picture.

After the parade there was a “performance” by some local rap artists. I’m calling it a performance because there were people on stage with microphones, suggesting that they were in fact performing, but really the rappers had very little to do with the show. They pretty much just threw on some old rap albums, and then the men with mics sang along with the chorus. They actually played Hip Hop Hurray and Jump Around and when the chorus came on they would appear from the back corner of the stage and behave as if they were rappers putting on a show, throwing their arms around, trying to hype up the audience. It was really very sad. So we gave up on the show fairly early, and went back to Monica and Chandler’s apartment, where most of us quickly fell asleep. Good times.

Unfortunately, prior to my invite to the mountain chalet, I had agreed to a Sunday work trip, escorting the Algerians on their trip to Gruyere, Switzerland. The trip was going to include a tour of the cheese factory (including cheese samples!), a tour of the local castle, and a free lunch. When I made the commitment it seemed like a great idea; it was a trip I would have probably paid for one my own, and this way I could do it for free, and enjoy the company of the Algerians. Of course, the day after I committed to Gruyere I got the invite to Chandler's chalet, which was infinitely more enticing. Chandler told me at the concert on Friday night that his chalet was conveniently, just ten minutes from Gruyere, so they could just drop me off at the cheese factory on Sunday morning – how simple. Sadly, life can never be that simple. A week earlier two of the Algerians had fallen off of a train when the doors opened and the train continued to move (in the US they would now be millionaires, but people aren’t very litigious here.) Because of this incident, my boss was worried about other potential catastrophes, and refused to allow the Algerians to travel on the chartered bus without me. Hence, on Sunday morning, I woke up at 5:30 AM (three and half short hours after I had gone to bed), and got on a 6:00 AM train back to Geneva, so I could get on a bus to go back to where I had started. It took me three hours to complete a ten-minute trip.

But ridiculous travels aside, the trip was great. Spending time with the participants is always fun and the castle and the town of Gruyere were beautiful. The cheese factory was a little boring, but the cheese samples were stellar, making the factory visit completely worthwhile. I did admittedly get a little angry during the trip because everyone kept dispersing to take photos of everything. I had to try and rein in 29 stubborn adults who did not want to function on a Western time schedule – hence we were late everywhere we went. I finally started leveraging my control over lunch, threatening to leave them behind without telling them where we were going to eat. Food was a very effective tool to keep them all moving. Once at lunch, I had the pleasure of participating in one of my favorite kinds of conversations – what’s your culture like. Although I learned a lot about Algeria, I think the most important piece of information relayed was from me to one of the Algerians. He told me that he could never live in the US because our cheese was so bad. Now, judging by our current location in Gruyere, and the general quality of cheese in Switzerland, I wasn’t entirely shocked by this statement until it occurred to me that this man had never been to the US. How could he possibly know what kind of cheese we have available in the States? So I asked him how he knew about US cheese, and he said, “Well, I’ve had American cheese at McDonalds and it’s awful.” He was shocked when I explained that we had lots of other kinds of cheese in the US and that most of our food was quite different from what you get at McDonalds. Apparently Mickey Ds is giving us a bad culinary rap in developing countries.

After lunch and a little free time for the Algerians to spend far too much money on crappy Swiss souvenirs (they love that stuff, I don’t know why) we headed back home. I was exhausted, but spent the ride chatting with my favorite Algerian, Hassen (pictured in the 4^th of July entry). By the time I got home, I was in a bit of daze, but I diligently set my alarm clock for 8:00 PM, so I could get up to watch the World Cup finals. Sadly, after setting my alarm, I failed to turn it on, and I slept from 6:00 until 11:00 when I woke up to the stupid Italians honking their horns. I was disappointed that I had missed the game, but not so upset that I couldn’t go back to sleep – I slept until 6:45 the next morning; it was great.

If you’re curious, no I did not fall off the face of the earth. I did however, spend the last week in class, hence my inability to write in my blog. I have lots of catching up to do, but I’ll start with two weekends ago.

On Friday night, a slew of people headed out to one of the best features of Geneva – free concerts in the park. Donavon Frankenreiter, of Jack Johnson’s label, was performing and I highly recommend checking him out. There was a little rain, but instead of dispersing the crowd, it sparked their enthusiasm, and the evening was full of good ol' hippie style dancing and fun. At one point, questing for a cigarette for Monica, we stumbled on a group of gypsies (or perhaps they were just dirty, grungy kids – but gypsies sounds better) sitting in a circle near the bathrooms. Why they chose to sit near the bathrooms was unclear, but they were very friendly, eager to speak what little English they could, and were thrilled to roll Monica a cigarette – I am officially a fan of gypsies/dirty teenagers.

After the concert, Joey and I slept at Monica and Chandler’s apartment – why you ask – so we could get an early start for Chandler’s chalet in the Swiss Alps! Yes that’s right, I’ve made friends with someone who has (well his parents have) a chalet in the Alps. We had grand plans to leave for the chalet at 7:00 AM, but didn’t actually get up and out of town until around 11:00 (shocking I know). At one point during the drive, Chandler claimed that the chalet was just a nice little house in the mountains, nothing too spectacular… but he was lying. The house was beautiful; everything in it - walls, floors, closets, cabinetry - was made of brand new pine. It smelled amazing. Everything about the house was elegant while at the same time homey and inviting - I loved it. Aside from the house itself, the fact that it was in the Alps added just a bit to the whole experience. The mountains are beautiful, there’s a stream that runs by, providing a constant soothing sound of water, and the air is so fresh and so clean, clean. The whole thing was so choice… if you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.

After a delicious lunch of bacon cheeseburgers (not sure when I last ate one of those) the boys and girls split up for different hikes. The girls opted for a nice little uphill jaunt to see the valley just on the other side of the mountain, while the boys decided that they would climb to the top of the mountain. Being boys, and consequently somewhat absurd, Joey and Chandler anticipated making it up the mountain in about an hour - that hour ended up being four. We (Monica and I) were quite happy that we had skipped the mountain climbing, and instead enjoyed some extra time for showering, naps, and a lively game of scrabble. After the boys finally resurfaced around nine we had a tasty dinner of steaks and fine wine courtesy of Chandler’s parents (they called and said we could have whatever we wanted, so we weren’t being terrible guests). All in all, it was a lovely day, and I wish I could have spent more time there. Sadly, I had to leave at 6:00 AM the next morning – reason for this to be explained in my next entry.

Here's a good way to waste time at work.

This was my first 4^th of July that I’ve spent outside the US, and I was a little bummed about not being home barbequing and spending the day on the lake. Luckily, there were festivities in Geneva, so we still had a chance to celebrate. The Geneva American Club hosted a party complete with line dancing, hot air balloons, bumper cars, bands, and the one thing no 4^th party can be without, a fife and drum core. We made it to the party around 8:30, starving for dinner, and excited about the prospect of eating lots of American food; we ended up rather disappointed. There was one tent that served miserable looking hamburgers, with a line at least 40 or 50 people long. This line in the US would not have been entirely daunting, but in Europe a line of four people takes about fifteen minutes to get through, so waiting in the hamburger line was out of the question. The other three tents served kebobs, Thai food, and crepes, the evening of Americaness was not starting out very American. In fact, none of the people who worked at the tents spoke English, and I would guess that over half of the people in attendance, including the cowboy hat-wearing line dancers, were in fact Swiss. There was just as much French spoken at the party as there is on the streets of Geneva. I must say it’s rather disturbing to walk past a woman in a cowboy hat and boots, a ruffled skirt, and a tasseled jacket, and here French coming out of her mouth. It’s like you’re watching a dubbed Western film, except it’s real life.

Having settled on a kebob, and springing for the over priced Budweiser (you can’t drink European beer on the 4^th) we wandered over to the TV screens to do something entirely un-American… watch the German v. Italy World Cup semifinal. While standing by the TVs, I bumped into two of the Algerian participants from my work. They were quite excited about the festivities and were going to the bandstand to hear some more American music, which they apparently loved.

A half an hour later, fed up with crowding around a tiny TV screen to watch a match I really didn’t care about, I wandered over to the bandstand to see if I could find the entire Algerian group (six of them had come to the party). When I arrived, I found a highly amusing site – Algerian men dancing to Blue Suede Shoes. It’s not something you can really appreciate unless you’ve seen it in person, but just imagine a lot of flailing about, some air guitar, and an overall complete lack of rhythm. One of the men saw me in the crowd and invited me to come dance with them. How could I resist – it was going to be one of those rare situations where I looked like a great dancer because I was surrounded by awful dancers. We danced for at least an hour or two, during which time they insisted that I teach them how to dance like Americans. It is important to note that they meant, dancing like the other Americans around us, which was older couples dancing in a 60s rock fashion (there was no grinding involved). So we did some basic twirling and attempted that one move where you both put your left elbow over your head and slide your hands down the other persons arm, and grab hands at the end (did that make any sense). Anyhow, that move was less than successful, so a good portion of the dancing just meant me being twirled and being very, very dizzy. Needless to say, I laughed a lot.

After the dancing, there were fireworks, which were a bit erratic, but the grand finale was stellar, so that made up for the occasional three-minute pauses we had to wait through in the middle of the show. The end of the night was capped with another half hour of dancing, before my ride (Chandler has a car!) was ready to go. All in all, it was a wonderful 4^th of July, even if it was only vaguely American.

A parental warning: Behavior of Beth and her friends during the previous weekend may not have been the most mature. However, be assured that the situation was always under control, and everyone was always very safe.

A warning to everyone else: This is a very long entry. It probably should have been in installments, but its too late for that now.

My weekend more or less began on Thursday night after a riveting lecture on the future of the IMF and the World Bank in Global Governance (yes that is what people do for fun around here.) After the talk there was a reception with cold food that was meant to be warm, and a dreadful two hours of answering these two questions: So, what’s your internship? & What do you plan to do after graduation? Of course the worst part about having to answer those questions is that you are obligated to then ask them back, and then listen to the response. So, when the gaggle of interns all agreed that they would continue the evening together by all going in mass (about twenty-five people) to a party at a hotel, I announced that I was very sorry to have to miss the rest of the evening, but had already made plans with another friend. (Actually, that would have been the polite thing to do – but in reality I just told a couple of my Duke friends that there wasn’t a chance in hell I was going along with the group and that I was going to have a beer with one of our other friends. This friend is a blessed soul who also hates traveling with large groups and doesn’t enjoy conversations with interns who like to talk about their 5 Year Plan.)

So I bolted from intern hell and met up with said friend (Joey) and his new S. African (but really quite British) friend Chandler. (I have decided to use pseudonyms for the explanation of this weekend, on the off chance that any of the people I write about opt to run for office some day. I decided to use Friends character names because I’m not feeling particularly creative, and this way you can picture the people while you read about the story.) Joey and Chandler had shockingly decided to miss the lecture on the IMF and the World Bank and opted instead to crash a party at Chandler’s work, which apparentlly had lots of free food and plenty of alcohol. When I met them, they were both a little tipsy and consequently far more fun than the people from the reception. We headed off with a plan to stop at the first bar we found, which in Geneva could take days of walking… luckily, it only took us about ten minutes. Three beers later, after lots of laughing (mind you I didn’t laugh once with the intern gaggle at the reception), we all headed our separate ways planning to meet again the next night to head to the Montreux Jazz Festival, in lovely Montreux, Switzerland. (Side note, the best part of Montreux, aside from the Jazz Festival, is the giant statue of Freddie Mercury, seen above, that graces the banks of Lake Geneva. Who knew the people of Switzerland love Freddie so much.)

Friday after work, Joey and I met up, and enjoyed an apple treat and then headed out to purchase alcohol from the grocery store to avoid having to pay for ridiculously priced beers once at the jazz festival. Then we met Chandler, his girlfriend Monica, and there two friends, Phoebe and Ross at the train station. (If you’re noting that I have left myself as Rachel, clearly the most desirable character, I would like to point out that each character was assigned there pseudonym based on some trait – Phoebe really is blond, Chandler and Monica are dating, Ross is a doctor (an MD, but close enough), and Joey really does say “how you doing?” to girls.) Once in Montreux, having become acquainted and a little inebriated, we made our way to the Reggae show that we had all paid far too much to see. On our way in we passed the “SHOTS” bar to which Ross quickly diverted us, as he apparently “loves shots.” A tequila shot and a bag check later we were in the concert. Strangely, although we were required to check our bags, we were allowed to bring in any outside drink or food, as long as it wasn’t in a glass container. A quick mix of our available liquids led to a lovely cocktail of peach iced tea mixed with whiskey in a diet coke bottle (I would say it made me feel like I was 16 again, except I didn’t drink when I was 16).

The concert was fun, but I can’t really confirm if the bands were good because my ability to identify quality music was a bit impaired. Each band had a guitar, a keyboard, drums, and some other instruments, plus a guy singing, and they all seemed to producing music in an upbeat, synchronized fashion – that was good enough for me. Aside from our peach iced tea/whisky cocktails, some lighted substances may also have been passed around (I debated whether to add this to the story, but decided that my highly occasional smoking of a mild sedative wouldn’t be too devastating to my parents… plus I have no intention whatsoever of seeking office in the good ol’ USofA.)

After the show we managed to find a food stand with Central American food and I got to eat something that resembled a quesadilla. It wasn’t as great as a post-bar burrito, but it was pretty good. After eating my food, I apparently took a little nap on my arm, but was mocked for the remainder of the weekend for having “fallen asleep in my tacos.” Oh how people exaggerate. The following day, the guys found much relief from their football misery (England lost to Portugal in a shoot out) thanks to a little nickname they made up for me. My “Indian” name was once Little Big Head, but I have now been rechristened She Who Wakes With Black Beans in Her Eyes. If you don’t find that name particularly funny, it’s ok, you had to be there, and it was only really funny if you are delirious with grief due to your team’s complete inability to capitalize on penalty shots.

But I skipped ahead in the weekend… back to eating on Friday night. During my brief nap Monica kept insisting that she had to have a crepe. Apparently her slurred speech led to crepe sounding more like crap, and a barrage of jokes about wanting a brown, messy crap ensued. I was asleep during these jokes, but I fear, had I been awake, I would have found them quite funny. After food we headed to the train station, which had a distinct shortage of benches, so we sprawled on the platform floor. On the train ride home, we were graced with the presence of many of the interns from the reception the night before. Joey apparently scared one of them away by repeatedly telling her how much he enjoyed the messy crap he had that night. Chandler then managed to rid us of another intern by asking about her 5 Year Plan. No, she didn’t leave because of how lame his question was, she was really excited to answer the question - she left because after he asked it, he would dose off and then around year three of her response, he would say… “wait, wait, can you go back to year one” or “excuse me, do you have a Five Year Plan.” After about four rounds of this, the girl finally realized that she would never be able to finish relaying her fabulous 5 Year Plan, and she left us too. Our loss I’m sure.

We finally arrived back home around 4:30 AM, at which point I was oddly awake and forward planning. I got ready for bed, then, concerned with my lunch plans for the following day, put a Diet Pepsi bottle in the fridge and pulled some chicken out of the freezer to defrost. If only I thought ahead that much on nights when I’m sober and go to bed at eleven.

Saturday was not nearly as entertaining as Friday, so I will list the events for the sake of brevity.

- Awoke to a pleasantly cold bottle of Diet Pepsi and chicken ready to be prepared. Ate tasty lunch and cleaned apartment.

- Watched Portugal v. Britain soccer match, and feared for my life when giant, scary, bug eyed Portuguese man kept roaring (yes roaring) in our faces whenever Portugal scored in the shoot out. It is possible, had Britain won, that none of us would have survived the crazy man’s bloodbath.

- Cursed the Portuguese for driving in circles around Geneva for hours honking their horns. How this doesn’t get old after about ten minutes is a mystery to me.

- Christened "She Who Wakes With Black Beans in Her Eyes" – boys giggle about name for remainder of day.

- Headed to Chandler and Monica’s flat for a dinner of tortellini and delicious wine – rumor has it that Chandler’s family has a vineyard or a winery or both, I’m not really sure, but whatever they have – we drank very tasty wine.

- Moved to family room with girls to teach them how to play Texas Holdem (their request), while the boys stayed in the kitchen and partook in more of the previously mentioned lighted sedative.

- Chandler entered family room and said “I Don’t Mind if I Think I Join You,” which amused me to no end. Had to leave the room to go write it down, so I could be sure to put it in my blog.

- Drank a very nice bottle of 1984 wine, only realizing after finishing the bottle that fine wine should probably be saved for occasions when people can appreciate it (ie – not at 3:00 in the morning after lots of warm beer and three other bottles of wine.)

- Retuned home and passed out, awaking with a commitment to never be that ridiculous again (by never, I mean not until next weekend when Chandler has more friends in town).

Herding Cats

I'm working on my entry about last weekend, but in the mean time I thought I would share this commercial with everyone. I'm sure you've all missed seeing as much as I have.

Devastated is the only word I can use to describe how I feel today. Maybe I'm a little behind in my Michigan sports news being out of the country and all, but man did ESPN.com give me a one-two punch today. First the headline that Ben Wallace is going to the Bulls and then the official announcement that Stevie Y is retiring. Going from dumbfounded rage to reminiscent sorrow - it was quite a wave emotions. I, of course, went ahead and read everything I could about Stevie and his glorious career, watched clips of inspiring videos, told stories to my office mates about magical Stevie moments (they didn't seem to care, but I had to talk to someone about it), and remembered the good times we shared. I did not, however, read anything about Ben Wallace, as he is dead to me now. As of yesterday, he was probably my second favorite player in the NBA except for Tayshaun Prince. Now I have to admit - if he had a career ending injury I don't think I'd mind at all; it might even make me smile a little. Harsh words perhaps, but there's no forgiving what he did. If he had been traded, if he had no control over the situation, then I could have gone ahead and continued to support him, loved him for the goofy big man he that he is... but going to the Bulls as a free agent - it's unacceptable, treason really, and I'm through with him. And to all you Bulls fans that are reading this - just remember what happened to Grant Hill after he abandoned Detroit (under far more understandable circumstances) - the injury gods plagued him year after year. I bet Ben's ankles are getting weaker as we speak.

Sorry to those of you who don't care at all about basketball or hockey - I promise to write lots about my weekend soon. It was spent with a bunch of Brits, so it was of course an entire of weekend of amusing absurdity. That entry to come soon.

Oh, and happy 4th of July everyone!