geneva!

the battery on this laptop lasts less than an hour when it's fully charged. i thought of all kinds of things to write about on the plane today (yesterday?), but i had no where to put them. hopefully i'll remember now.

i always look for lights on transatlantic flights. usually i can't sleep, and they turn off the lights a couple of hours into the flight--perfect for star-watching and boat-spotting. for the first ten minutes i get all excited every time i see a boat or a new star pops up as the city lights fade. i wish i could stay entertained by that for the whole time--it would make staying awake much less painful.

i was surrounded by sick people today. the woman sitting directly in front of me had a terrible cough; she was sputtering for the entire trip. i felt kind of bad for her at first, but the more she coughed, the more angry i got at her, for no real reason. maybe i'm a little jittery and claustrophobic, and it manifests itself in general directionless rage when i have to sit still in a small seat for seven hours. at least i'm little enough to curl up into the seat and take cat naps. i don't know how you tall people do it.

the sun was rising just as we got over france. i could see it out the window--it looked like a really fat rainbow starting with red on the horizon and going all the way up the spectrum to violet in the middle of the sky. [tangent: i heard that they removed "indigo" from the light spectrum. weird.] i could see all the colors, even the greens, which are usually the least visible. pretty neat.

europe looked like it was napping, tucked under a blanket. there was a thick mass of low clouds way under us from the english channel inward. i couldn't tell if we were over land or sea. when we got near switzerland, i could see the alps popping their little heads up out of the clouds, saying hello. from that far up, the mountains looked tiny, like ant hills.

geneva is very european. i forget how much smaller everything is here--cars, toilets, streets. it's grey and cold and foggy, but it smells clean. i think i'm staying in the hotel district; at least, four of the five buildings across the street from my window are hotels. right next door is a lovely church that looks about 300 years old. maybe i'll start my walking tour there this afternoon.

i checked in to the hotel in time for breakfast, and i remembered how much i love cheese in the morning. do you remember those cow cheeses, that came in little foil cubes and had a picture of a cow on them? they were really creamy and tasty. i used to beg my mom to buy them when i was little and we went to the supermarket together. they had them in the breakfast room (except these are shaped like triangles, and come in different flavors). i got so excited! i brought one back to my room for a snack later. yum.

i'm realizing that i have a hotel ritual. when i get to my room, i have to unpack, completely, even if i'm just staying for two nights (like now). i've put the do-not-disturb tag on the door, hung clothes up in the closet, spread my toiletries out on the bathroom counter, and set my desk to "organized chaos." i can't imagine letting someone in to fiddle with this and that. having to use the same towel twice is a small sacrifice for making the space mine.

it's 10:50am now. i slept maybe an hour on the plane, and i'm starting to fade. thankfully, my normal weekend sleeping schedule doesn't see me out of bed before 1pm, so it makes sense to take a nap now for a couple hours. i'm going to meet mark and his microfinance friends later for dinner, and i should really get some more work done before then (now that i can't use a dead battery as an excuse). the hotel has flat-rate wireless internet--lovely. wireless internet really should be a public utility, like heat, or water. why else do we live in the developed world?

and with that, goodnight.

[UPDATE: there is a bottle opener in the wall of the bathroom, right next to the toilet... brilliant!]