DG quits and I say good bye

All the fun times come to an end someday. The same with my time in Geneva, which I already left last Saturday. Another chapter closes. But, before I can leave you faithful readers for good (till my next adventure), I think I owe you an proper ending of this blog. So for the last time, here we go again with a review of the last few weeks:

Huge events were few in the last month of my internship, since work was taking me in sooo much! I literally didn't have any weekends nor holidays, since I was eager to finish my project on the "Distinctive Features of the Cooperative Model". And after hours of reading unbelievably complicated and confusing common law legislature (I really appreciate now that I studied law in Germany) - I actually managed to finish this thing!! Hurrayyyy! Around 80 pages of comparative law disquisition. Who's gonna read it? I have nooo idea! Do I care? Not at all.


Now to some highlights in September:

14.09.2011 - Human Rights Council session on Right to Development


In September the Human Rights Council met for 3 weeks to discuss all kinds of important human rights issues. They regulary meet in Salle 20, the so called "Spanish room", because it was financed by the Spanish Government. It looks really pretty with a really interesting looking artwork on the ceiling. I took part on the session on the "Right to Development", where they showed the promotion video I participated in. If you wanna have a look, go to the link below the pictures. It turned out not very impressive (in my opinion), but hey, who can actually say to have participated in an official UN video?!





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hxhZd-zPP0


It was acutally forbidden to take any pictures in the salle. But I risked my life (well, not really; but surely my permission to stay in the room) to give you guys some visual impressions. ;-)

The discussion of the members after the presentation was quite interesting, too. E.g. China claimed to be the first one to reach the Millennium Development Goal to eradicate extreme poverty (?) and the US started questioning, whether the Right to Development is an human right at all.



Anyhow, on my way back I took this valuable picture. There are many pictures with the chair in the front and the flags in the back (so to say from the other side). But, you hardly can see it from this side, since only UN staff-members have access to this part.


23.09.2011 - Farewell Party

For my farewell party I decided to cook for my foyer-girls a nice dinner. So, I spent 2 days in the kitchen to make some Asian dishes for 10 persons. Its a feeling you have after making hundreds of Christmas-cookies. You never wanna make a single cookie again! But, everything turned out very nicely and we really had a lot of fun - so it was definetly worth it!!



some Vietnamese spring rolls, deep fried aubergines and fried salmon.


deep fried pumpkin with rice...


Japanese vegetable pancakes for the main dish...


some coconut-buttermilk-cake for dessert.




It was a great night with my girls!!


Palais des Nations

As I said, a normal person cannot enter the UN grounds. So I used the opportunity to be able to enter the UN-park to give you some exclusive insight into the "holy grounds" of UN of Geneva (UNOG):




30.09.2011 - DG quits

On my last day, the Director General from ILO called all the staff members to gather for an important announcement.

So we gathered:



and listened to his speech...



Just to find out that Juan Somavia, Director General of ILO will end his term 2 years in advance, in other words already September next year, since he wants to spend more time with his family. Well, I guess its understandable for a 70 year old man that this job can get hard sometimes...

So after his speech, I wished him good luck for his last year:



With this terrific finale, my amazing story in Geneva ends. I thank you for reading my blog and wish you all the best, till we meet again for my next adventure.

Good bye, au revoir and auf Wiedersehen!