Our First Day at the World Health Organization

Wow, what a day! We attended the opening session of the World Health Organization and heard from delegates from all over the world. The meetings are being held at the United Nations and Haley and I have gotten quite lost trying to find our way around this enormous complex. We figure we are walking off whatever we are eating. We have to take buses and trams everywhere we go, and sometimes the walk just to get to them is pretty far, not to mention that we are usually in a hurry so we are walking fast. Good training for the Trek later this summer! Tonight we attended a meeting and reception by the NCD Alliance. NCD stands for Non-Communicable Diseases. They are a global organization dedicated to addressing the need of dealing with diseases affected by lifestyle, or otherwise preventable such as Diabetes type II, Cardiovascular Disease, Cancer, and chronic respiratory disease. Very interesting meeting with lots of good information. The reception served some pretty interesting food. Most of it, we had no idea what it was, but I tried to be brave and ate it anyway. Some of it was good, some not so good. Our new friends, Marin and Andrea showed us how to get to the mall and where the shopping was. We are feeling a little more confident about how to get around Geneva. Everyone relies on public transportation. Things are very expensive here. Especially food. It's difficult to know exactly how much you are actually spending because they use Franc here as their money. It's like playing with Monopoly money, and little coins can be worth 5 Francs with is about 7 dollars. We really have no idea how much we are spending. I guess we'll just wait for it to run out! Tomorrow, Haley will be going to hear Bill Gates speak, but I have been invited to attend a luncheon for the International Council of Nurses so I am going to do that. Tomorrow night we are attending an awards reception for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation so I am assuming he will be there. We are kept very busy, and we still haven't caught up on sleep yet, but we are having a great time and making some fun memories. I've made Haley the official photographer. She's always taking pictures, and I really don't like to, so it works out. Until next time....