June 26

Before I set out to visit different organizations in the city, my host thought that I would be better off by learning how to use the public transportation to get around. So, I set aside the planned schedule for today and agreed to take a tour with him in the city via public transportation. Getting to the heart of the city was pretty straightforward; I just had to take a tram into the city and transfer to different buses depending on my destination. Although there was only one line from the station in front of the house, I later learned that there were multiple tramlines in the city. Usually, I wouldn’t have a problem travelling around through buses and subways, but I did have a problem this time because all the station names and information were in French. So my host cautioned me to keep my eyes peeled for each station.

As we arrived to the transfer station, my host told me about different bus lines that went everywhere in Geneva. He advised me to look out for the Nations station because that was where all the headquarters were. In order to get to the Nations station, I had to take the number 5 bus from the Bel Air Station, which was the station that we transferred from the tram. After 20 minutes or so, the bus arrived in front of the broken chair and my host briefly showed me which buildings there were around the Nations station. Then we took the number 8 bus to the final station, which was the headquarters of the WHO (World Health Organization). All the station names and different bus lines were hard to take in at once, but I was confident that I was going to be okay soon enough.

After my “training”, my host and I came back home and ate lunch. Feeling adventurous yet worried to go back out by myself again, I decided to visit the International school of Geneva with my host’s son, Alex who attended there. The school did not go on summer break yet, so it felt awkward to just snoop around the school while Alex went to his class. So, as any other outsider would do in a situation like this, I took a nice little nap in the library. Although my nap was short, it was one of the sweetest naps that I had in a while and I felt refreshed again. Alex came to pick me up after an hour or so and encouraged me to come to his P.E. class. As an enthusiastic sport lover, I followed him right away and jumped into gym shorts that I borrowed from the school. At first, we settled on playing basketball, but later switched to soccer instead because Alex liked soccer a lot better. The sun was sizzling and the field was made out of fake grass, which burned the soles of my foot. It was painful to run for a long time and I was seriously worried whether my only pair of shoes would meet its death on my first week in Geneva. Alex and I were separated on different teams because we arrived late. One thing I realized about their playing style was that these guys passed a lot and it was apparent that they were hungry for the ball. Although each player wasn’t very good individually, they worked together as a team, passing the ball around and looking for the opportunity to strike a goal. It was an entertaining round of soccer and I was completely exhausted as I literally dragged my feet back to the house.

The rest of the day got lazy as we both stared blankly into our computer screen without much conversation. Looking back though, I could still feel the rush of excitement that I had at the beginning of the day and my palms were sweaty thinking about going around by myself tomorrow. I guess I remember where I had to go, but for now all I wanted to do was sleep.