Well for those of you who don’t follow my Facebook/Twitter feeds, my voyage to Geneva was kind of a bad deal.  You can check out the Twitter feed to the right if you want some of the details, but the bottom line (I love that phrase) is that I ended up getting there about 12 hours later than I was suppose to and without the luggage that I had checked.  This luggage contained all of my clothes and toiletries, and after traveling for 24 hours straight I was definitely in need of both.  So after escaping the airport, taking the bus to the Grand-Saconnex stop, making my way to the John Knox Center, crashing for a couple hours, I woke up with one mission:  To find a toothbrush.

I walked down to the bus stop around 8am and rode into downtown Geneva.  After wandering the streets, looking in windows, and trying to find signs that indicated hours of operation, I quickly determined that everything was closed and probably wouldn’t be opening for several hours if at all.  So around 9:30am I decided that perhaps the Hyper-Champion (a French Walmart equivalent) would be open across the boarder in Ferney.  So I rode the bus across the boarder, hiked into town, and quickly discovered that everything in Ferney was closed as well.

At this point my mouth tasted like complete garbage and even though it appeared that every store on the continent was closed, I had one ray of hope: the airport.  My thinking was that the airport had people coming and going all the time, and business would not grind to a halt just because it was Sunday.  After yet another long bus ride, I made it to the airport, found a pharmacy that was open and scored a toothbrush and a tube of paste.  I could not wait to get back to the John Knox Center, so I ended up brushing my teeth in one of the airport’s bathrooms.  Never has the act of scrubbing my teeth and gums felt more satisfying.

From that point on, things continued to improve.  My luggage was found, I reconnected with all classmates and friends from last year, and partook in a collective picnic feast with fancy cheese, wine, etc.  It felt very good to be back watching the sunset behind the mountains while chilling with a group of extremely cool, intelligent, and passionate people.  Having discussions about modern math pedagogy, the proper role of an education technology coordinator, and the merits of early college programs while drinking absinthe and smoking Cuban cigars on candle lit tables at 11:00pm is not something one gets to do everyday.  Though this program has cost me a lot in terms of time and money, experiences like that remind me that it is totally worth it.