First impressions

I am now smack in the middle of my third day in Geneva and I more or less feel like I can go on a few random rants about my time here:

Rant 1: The city
Now, I might be setting myself up for disappointment, but I rather like it here. As soon as I got out of the train station I felt like I was going to have fun. I walked around for a few hours and even understood a map of Les Paquis (and everyone knows my map reading abilities resemble those of a poorly trained French Poodle).

Rant 2: Housing
For the next couple of weeks I am staying with a nice Swiss-French family that entertains my awfully rusty French. They live in a small, cozy house with a big garden that has apple trees (from which we get our apple juice). On my first night, there was a freshly baked pie and my bed has two down pillows (could life be any better?).

Rant 3: Buses
So I should totally get a fake ID... I mean, I have the looks for it, apparently. Turns out I almost got the child's buss pass (and would have it had I not shown my passport with my birth year). No, it was not my idea... the dude at the station did it that way and then realized I might not be underaged... I'm happy that continental Europeans are just as prone to giving me the child discount as Scandinavians. Nice to see they have stuff in common. I wonder how much longer I will be able to get away with it... maybe next year I can ask for a 'young person' discount seeing as how I'm going to be 30 and everything.

Rant 4: The WHO
So after 1.5 days at the WHO I can say that I like it. Sure, they don't fika (which is not a plus, let me tell you), but the building where I'm interning has huge windows overlooking some birches (that make me miss Umea a little less) and a lot of other trees. My supervisor is really nice and interested in my work and there are a lot of Spanish speakers around (sorry to say that no Chapines around... so no one's called me 'patoja' just yet).

Rant 5: French
Apparently, if you go six years without practicing your French... you lose it. My accent sucks and for the first few days of French (during the summer vacations with Magnus), I kept bumbling Swedish phrases (that I didn't know I knew). It's slowly coming back though... and I do plan on taking a couple of classes while I'm here.

Rant 6: Travel
Is there a grant place I can apply to for extra traveling? I'm just saying...