after raining nonstop for at least six hours yesterday, i ran to the bus outside and went to meet up with some people from the Humanitarian and Trade Fellows Program which I think is loosely associated with the program I'm in this summer, the Global Health Fellows Program. we're run by the same administrator, anyway, who organized this happy hour/meet up of sorts.

as i've been increasingly not-with-it the longer i sit at this desk in this really drab office, i forgot the folder i had with the documents i wanted to review. unfortunately, the directions to the bar that i had hastily scribbled before running out the door were also in them. since i hadn't programmed anyone's cell phone number into my phone from the program (smart, i know), i had to use my powers of memory to try to reconstruct an address and a means to arrive at the address. all i really remembered were the two closest tram/bus stops (möle and navigation), so i got off at möle after going in the wrong direction one stop, walked around a bit, thankfully ran into rue de navigation, and then walked down it until i found the bus stop, which was at the end of it. i then wandered around because i thought i remembered a number 5 somewhere in the address, but 5 ended up not being a bar or restaurant. the area was really cool though and i had fun seeing all the cafés and restaurants around. i poked my head in a few of them to see if i could identify a group of people at happy hour, but was unsuccessful. after awhile, i seemed to remember rue de zurich as a possibility, and walked up it to find les 5 portes, which was the bar/restaurant where we were meeting up at. good work. good adventure.

the other people i met were nice but almost all of them were in the same master's program at Duke and were all living in the same dorm. i kinda felt like i was crashing a party and didn't know any of the people they were talking about or who was friends with whom. i made small talk with some people, had a glass of sangria, and decided to order dinner because i was hungry. i ended up liking this girl named maria cristina from venezuela and talked to the program administrators silja (who seems around our age) and matthew (from australia). i also got to hang out with two other duke students, beth (originally from kalamazoo...she could talk all the med school lingo as everyone in her fam is a doc) and eric. around 8ish i headed back to gare cornavin, the main bus station, but had missed the bus (only one runs to ferney, where im living now, per hour after 8 pm). although i really like public transportation, i hate being bound to it and having to organize my life around it. lesson: always carry stuff you actually want to read with you. it should be better after i move to the city tonight though because the trams run all the time, and i can actually walk home from a lot of places if it's not terrible weather outside.

im reading snow, by a turkish author whose name starts with an O. has anyone read it? it's supposed to be a great book but i can't really seem to get in to the writing style. when i was staying at evil girl's house (who hasn't emailed me back yet), i read the dogs of babel, which was interesting and fast. suicide seems to be a common theme these days though in the books i'm reading.

okay, should get back to work. please post comments on the previous post!!