Bonjour!

It has been quite a crazy ride since Eliza, Lisa, and I arrived in Geneva, Switzerland, almost three weeks ago. I'll try to be brief. Lisa did great on the flights and managed to sleep most of all three flights and we arrived to be welcomed by our wonderfully kind landlord, Lilian. She managed to stuff four suitcases, our stroller (for those who have seen it it is not a small one), a car seat with Lisa, Eliza, and myself into her Toyota Corolla wagon/hatchback looking car. I still get a kick out of seeing the European model Honda's and Pugeot's and Fiat's.

Our place is kind of far from the World Health Organization. It is actually in France and is in a small town called Sergy. It is very green and so far very rainy. People say that this spring has been abnormally long and cold. It takes me about an hour and ten minutes depending on if I catch my second bus in time to get from our barn-converted-to-modern-home to my office.

My internship is finally picking up since my WHO intranet account is activated. There are two others that I work with. One is a med student from Singapore named En Qi (pronounced "N" "Chi"). Apparently if accepted, you can start medical school in Singapore after high school and it is a 5 year program. So I think En Qi is 21 and next year is her final year in med school. Pretty crazy... 21 and a doctor. However, they still need to take the US medical board exams to practice in the States, if they ever decide to.

The other intern Nadeeka works for the Australian government. Her family is from Sri Lanka but she was born and raised in Melborne. It still takes me a moment to get over how she speaks with a heavy Aussie accent.

Anyway En Qi and I work on validating data that has been entered into the on-line WHO Global InfoBase databases... pretty much a database that users can find info about prevalence of non-communicable diseases from most countries. However, last week, before our WHO accounts were activated, my supervisor had us edit and offer suggestions for the new version of Global InfoBase that is to roll out in a few weeks and create a FAQs page... needless to say... the things I learned from creating a good survey layout helped me offer some good suggestions to the website and they are actually in the new version. (He showed me yesterday).

I've also been validating (checking reported numbers) from publications by other WHO departments on school health surveys and today started working on another survey report for Gabon and another west African Country.

Anyway, enough of work, so I don't Lisa is ever going to sleep by herself in a crib after this trip. Here she is in the middle of our bed. She has been sleeping much better through the night since she has Eliza and myself to put her foot on or to sleep on top of... I love it.


We live on the top floor of this converted barn and it is big. We have our own room and own bathroom. We share the kitchen with Lilian and her husband. Here is what it looks like by our place in the French country-side.





Here is the road we walk down to the nearest bus stop (about 10-15 minute walk from the house). This is "downtown" Sergy. There is really old church and a water fountain as well as some nice homes.




Well... since we are outside of the main bus routes the buses come every half hour or every hour on the weekends. Here is how I feel sometimes waiting for them.

Eliza and Lisa are keeping themselves busy. Actually, if you want an interesting/more up-to-date log of what goes on outside the internship, you can checkout the main blog that Eliza writes:

alexandelizawu.blogspot.com

I can add you guys.

Here are some pictures of our adventures exploring "Old Town" Geneva. Some of these were built in the 1400's




Here is the famous Jet d'Eau. It shoots water 148 meters (485 feet) high. I took Lisa and walked out to as close as we could without getting wet. You can't actually get to the fountain, it's fenced off and plus that would really hurt.