As a note, I wrote that last entry quite awhile ago.

Right now Im in Geneva, writing on a really irritating french keyboard. Pardon my ango centrism, I dont have the punctuation to be politicallz correct. Anyway, the program is absolutely amazing...as much as I have been trying to avoid supurlative language like "amazing" and "fantastic" (the positive thinking hippy girl syndrome), sometimes it cant be helped. Im at a summer school conducted by the Quaker United Nations Office, which works with human rights, refugees, peace and disarmament, and global economic issues. It kind of runs the gamet...but the idea is that we meet people from all of those different sectors, hear about the main issues and what it is exactlz what they do. Mainly, it has been helping me to realize that the UN is made up of well intentioned and imperfect human beings with limited budgets and political constraints. Considering it si kind of like a giant non profit thats been around for less than sixtz years, its modest and imperfect accomplishes are, at times, worthz of some kind of applause. All of my fancy pants liberal arts education stuff has sort of treated the UN as this amorphous bureacratic tangle representing all of the hegemonic evil in the world. And to some extent thats true. Yes, a lot of it works on personal connections--very few institutions in this world dont work that waz. Am I turning to the dark side?

The greater thing thats happened here is that Im with Quakers, and recieving a lot of the same kinds of renewing and affirming vibes from the rest of the group. The UK and Netherlands Quakers here have the same kind of open minded sense of humor that was so familiar back in the States. There are two particularly amazing girls from Bosnia and Serbia who have been working in peace organiyations for a few zears. Thez have truly unique senses of humor, seem to have a really good grip on what does and does not matter to them when everything is said and done. I was intimidated att first bu tnow it loks like I might end up visiting