Quarter Century Club

Yesterday I turned 25! I'm officially a quarter century old now. It was a busy day with lots of discussion of IR and a little bit of celebrating :)

I spent the morning in a lecture on the WTO and ICTSD (International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development). It was interesting hearing another point of view of the ag business (not the only thing they talked about but what I found the most interesting). I had to write and ask my mother about subsidies for farmers after that topic was brought up. So if any of you farmers want to give me the other point of view, feel welcome! International trade doesn't look too highly on them. Understandably, no one else wants the US to be self-sustaining.

In the afternoon I attended a NATO workshop. The Italian speaker, Antonella Cerasino is the head of the Public Diplomacy Division. She was an excellent speaker and gave a good overview of NATO's role in today's Post-Cold War era. (It doesn't sound that interesting but it was, I swear!) Afterward, the mediator had students give their opinion of NATO. He chose students from the US, Macedonia, Czech Republic, Africa, Russia, Ukraine and Brazil. Each gave their biased opinions of their nations. The Russian and Ukrainian opinions from two blonde haired skinny girls were both stereotypical of the Eastern view of NATO.

The evening was spent in class with our 80 year old Iranian professor that shows VHS! I haven't seen a VHS in years. It's amazing. But he is really a fascinating man. He is the former Director of the Third Political Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and
Former Chargé d’Affaires of the Permanent Mission of Iran to the Office of the United Nations in Geneva. His teaching style is a bit bland at times but if you get him on a tangent he will talk forever.

Finally, at about 11 o'clock I made it back to Geneva from campus and headed to a bar with about 10 friends to celebrate! We had a good time and headed home to stay up and listen to Italian music in the kitchen, of course with the Italian singing along.

Tonight the plan is to go out for a Swiss fondue dinner!

Better get back to the last conference of the week. Just heard a speech from the ambassador of Singapore. Cute little man :)

until next time

xoxo,
A