Since I don't really have any plans until late fall and Sean is away working in Alaska for the summer, I was interested in doing something different before flying home. I applied to several summer opportunities but was only admitted into one that provided some scholarship funding, which made decision-making easy. That opportunity was attending a two-week class called Higher Education in Emergencies through Geneva Summer School at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. For me, the course was particularly interesting because it gave a thorough and intensive introduction to the growing field of university education for refugees so it combined a field which I have a lot of experience in (working and studying in higher education) with one that I'm very interested in (development and humanitarian aid).
As I write this post today, I just finished the class yesterday and am waiting for my flight back to Tokyo later on tonight. I'll be in Japan for a few days packing up, moving out and finishing some final paperwork before flying back home to Michigan during the first week of July. It was my first time in Geneva and it was fun to live in such an international and diverse city for two weeks. Since I was a student, I felt like I was a part of something and here with a purpose instead of just a tourist as I joined the morning and evening commuters walking and cycling to work. We had to find our own housing for the program, which was an expensive challenge, and I ended up in an Air BnB near the train station which was a great location. It was nice to be able to walk to and from school every day (about 30 minutes) while watching the daily life of the city wake up and wind down.
The course was interesting but I quickly realized that I'm pretty "schooled" out. It was hard to sit and listen to lectures and do intensive group work from 8-6 every day after just finishing up at ICU. The content was useful and meeting different experts and practitioners from all of the world was great. But the most enjoyable part of the class, as usual, was meeting and getting to know all of the other students. Half of the class was student leaders from refugee camps and the other half was graduate students like me or employees from UNHCR or NGOs that work in the refugee and education sector. There were 30 of us from Kenya, DRC, France, Switzerland, Jordan, Georgia, Egypt, Somalia, Ethiopia, Finland, USA, Nepal, Italy, Israel, Mexico and a few more that I can't remember. Because we did so much group work before, during and after class, we all got to know each other really well which was a lot of fun.
 |
| My name tag - we passed them around to get different translations of our names |
 |
| One of the guys in the class from Finland looked exactly like Thor! (see picture below) |
Post a Comment