glad midsommar, mina kompisar

Greetings from Geneva... it's been a long time coming but i'm finally here. i've had lots of good little adventures over the last few weeks, visiting Andrew in Needham, Maya in the capital, Toyoko and Dorothy in NYC, and then of course meeting all the cern kids at the orientation in Boston. Lots of exhilarating biking around Boston with Kenny2 (kennyjensen) who is totally awesome — I've already given him power of attorney, so you might as well just check out his livejournal to see what i'm up to. (-: Yeah, we went kiteboarding, we hung out at MIT and saw not just MITERS but the MIT model railroad club (birthplace of hacking), we toured the Mother Church/Ship of the Christian Scientists, we drank Californian white wine in Room 1126 of the Collonnade hotel, all the while Artemis babbled on to us about hooking up. The other interns even conspired to announce to the restaurant staff at one point that it was my birthday — isn't that sweet?

I don't have any mind-blowing first impressions of Geneva. It reminds me a bit of Israel, a bit of Alaska, and a bit of Sweden, the three major places outside CA that I've been. We're all living in Building 38 on the CERN campus which is cool but has us all a little bit bummed since it's costing us more than half our salary to live there (versus the hostel in St. Genis, France which is dirt cheap). Tonight we wandered over to St. Genis (30 minute walk or something) for some kind of jazz festival and ended up sitting around drinking a lot of red wine and eating some sausages. Kenny2's been enlisted to teach me French but in the meantime I'll babble on at people in Esperanto and then get all offended when they don't understand The International Language. What kind of people are they, anyway?