Last week's events and upcoming projects

It is the weekend, horray! Let me fill you in on the details of the past week. As I mentioned, I’ve been doing A LOT of reading trying to catch myself up on all the human rights (HR) and UN happenings. I got my first semi-official task the other day when my boss asked me to edit a report she had written regarding our organization’s (World Federation of United Nations Associations, WFUNA) annual meeting. It was a little tricky; normally I like editing papers and am decent at it, but I’ve never edited an official document like this before. I knew it was wordy, and she wanted it cleaner and crisper, but it was a bit difficult since the sentences were so complex and I wasn’t always sure what I could cut down on, but I did my best and the next day she said the people she turned the report in to were very impressed.

So this weekend I have several things I need to accomplish. I have my first assignment for working on WFUNA’s new HR website. Right now all we have is the basic framework, but it’s missing a lot of details and info and formatting. So this weekend I need to write a section for the website on Human Rights Institutes. I also need to finish some training material for our official orientation next week on UN and HR basics. ALSO, all next week is the second ever meeting of the Human Rights Council (HRC) Advisory Committee (CAC), which I have the privilege of attending, taking notes on, and writing reports on. So in preparation for that, I’ve been reading up on the documents produced from their first meeting that took place last August. In continuation of that, I will follow the general HRC meeting in March, which is cool because they only meet every three years I think and this happens to be the year. For more info on the HRC, you might check out Wikipedia’s article. Normally I don’t promote Wikipedia as resource tool, but I think the article was actually written by the HRC and isn’t too bad. So I think the website and following those meetings will be my big tasks, with little stuff in between. So there are the general details of work.

As for the not-so-relevant details- There are about five of us that I work with regularly, the director (who’s really cool), a girl about 21 or 22 I think from Romania who works in the office but is kind of working with a different organization called Making Commitments Matter; she’ll be giving us our orientation next week. Then there’s another girl who’s 25, speaks Spanish, French, English, and I think Italian, I’m not sure where she’s from. And then the other girl who I’ve gotten to know the most is Maria. She was born in London, one of her parents is English the other French, but she grew up in Spain, so she grew up speaking all three languages, and then spent a year in Italy learning Italian, knows a bit of German and is working on Portuguese (she can understand everything, just not speak or write it yet). Talk about me being jealous. Someday. She’s been following the Durban Review, a series of meetings currently taking place in the UN that is following up on and determining the effectiveness of a conference that took place in Durban, South Africa dealing with issues like racism and xenophobia. So once again, I’m the youngest, least experienced, least language proficient. But I keep reminding myself she wouldn’t have accepted me as an intern if I didn’t have something to offer.

Other random cool things include a hot pot in the office complete with a never-ending supply of tea and coffee at our disposal, a cool feature on the phone where we can listen to meetings going on in the UN from the office, and official badges that not only get us into the buildings, but also, I discovered, get us a 10% discount on the gift shop and other things. I feel so grown-up, getting all dressed up and wearing heels and going to work every day : )

On the academic front, classes are busier than ever but going surprisingly great. I think when I have less time I’m more productive in the time I have and it’s helped going every night after work to study at the Uni. of Gev.’s library. I think the last time I wrote, I had just gotten an 18 on a grammar test. Well, a few days later (we have a test about once a week in grammar), we had another test, which we were all quite scared of. We got to class the day before the test to review and none of us had a clue what was going on and Pierre was getting quite frustrated and worried for us, but the next day he handed us back our tests and we had aced it! I got a 19/20! The best I’ve ever gotten! I was thrilled. It’s now hanging on my wall : ) Other than that, not a whole lot else to share. I love my current schedule and life, but I’ve never appreciated a weekend so much since… well the end of last school year.

I am currently under my quilt watching the snow fall and thinking I just might have to go for a walk and take pictures of how gorgeous it is. It was so bizarre; it was starting to warm up and had rained several days this week, all the snow was gone, and it was raining last night as I went to sleep, then when I woke up this morning there was a good 3-4 inches on the ground and it’s still snowing! Definitely still winter, which is fine by me, all the better for when I go snowboarding : )