This week at the Human Rights Council has been quite interesting. Monday and Tuesday held talks on North Korea and Syria, so security was heightened. Two incredibly sensitive and controversial situations in each of the countries. The representative of North Korea did not even bother to show up to the dialogue, and the representative of Syria denied the extent and extremity of the reports of human rights violations. I was a bit scared to be part of the meetings, but looking back I am glad I attended. These chances in life don’t come along too often!
ERI held an event on asylum seeker policy in Australia, and one of the speakers was a former child detainee. Detained for 3 years, from the age of 10 to 13, Mohammad told a heart-wrenching story of his own personal experience. He was forced to flee the Taliban in Afghanistan only to end up in a detention center with horrible conditions. Click here to watch a short video about him, it is worth the watch! Sean and I were able to hang out with Mohammad and his partner, Mariam, and they are really cool and down to earth. We met him prior to knowing his past, and we both agreed that you should always be kind and never judge anyone because you just never know what a person has been through.
My trips over the past two weekends have been incredible!! Last Sunday I joined the VIDES group on a trip to Annecy, France, about an hours drive. VIDES is the same organization that I went to Zambia with in 2014. They have a couple of cool interns with them now so I joined their trip! Since I have been in Geneva, I have had multiple people tell me that I have to see Annecy, and now I see why. It is the cutest little fairytale town on the water. I felt like I was in the town of Beauty and the Beast, and no matter how old I am I will always love Disney. My only problem was that I forgot to bring Euros! Since it is so easy to cross borders, I keep forgetting to switch currencies. Credit Card to the rescue though!
This past Saturday I went on an organized trip to Chamonix, France, with a mixed group of amazing people. A couple people I knew came with me, but we met so many cool people. One girl in from Argentina in law school, one guy from the US doing his PHD in particle physics, one guy from Hungary working at CERN, one girl from Egypt, another from Poland, another from Spain, and many more! It was awesome meeting so many people from so many different countries and backgrounds.
The bus ride to Chamonix was about an hour and half, and when we arrived we had two big plans for the day: to walk down to the glacier and ice caves, and take the cable car all the way up to the top of the mountain called Aguille du Midi. From the town in Chamonix, we took the Montenvers train to visit the Mer de Glace glacier and the man-made ice caves. From the train we took a gondola halfway down the mountain, and then walked the rest of the way. The walk down to the ice cave was long and steep, so you can imagine how fun the walk back up was…but we stopped a lot to take photos, so we survived.
The Aguille du Midi is 3,842 meters tall, or 12,602 feet, in the French Alps. They warned us of altitude sickness, since the body can react badly to the drastic change in altitude. Some people felt faint and got headaches, but I was alright. The only thing I noticed is you feel out of breath faster because of the oxygen levels. That is why so many athletes train at higher altitudes, which I always find so interesting. The cable car up was a box that fit about 60 people in at a time, and being claustrophobic, I struggled a little bit….but as long as I was near a window and could focus on the mountains! It was worth it though…the views at the top were incredible, breath-taking, beautiful, picturesque, gorgeous, you name it. It should be a right for every person to see a view like this in their lifetime! The temperature dropped to about -15C up at the top, and a lot of my fellow travelers were absolutely freezing, but to me it just felt like home again! At the top, they have a glass box over the alps where you can stand in with slippers and take photos. It was actually quite scary, but fun! The craziest part of all of this were the base jumpers…I watched them jump off the highest part of the mountain and just plummet until they eventually began to sail. TERRIFYING. So much respect for people like that!
These trips have been incredible, and only more to come. This weekend is Easter Weekend, so I am taking advantage of my extra days off to go to Paris! I will post about it next week!
Vale!
“I haven’t been everywhere but it’s on my list” – Susan Sontag
Geneva 
WOW, Kate ! What fantastic experiences… Amazing. How do you return to plain living after all these travels around the world.
sister Anne; aschenck@csj-to.ca
LikeLike