New member of the Mafia, with bleeding heels.

9 am this morning. As I step out of the bus and start walking up a hill, the first thing I see is an old man holding a big flag in his hands saying STOP WHO, STOP CHERNOBYL. Behind him three huge buildings loom up. Three seconds later a sign is confirming my thoughts. Before me I see the OMS: Organisation Mondiale de la Santé. I have found the headquarters of the World Health Organization.

I randomly decide to first try the building on my left. A nice security guy with a true ‘Michel-accent’ (Gilmore Girls) tells me that my first choice wasn’t unfortunately the right choice. I have to be in the building on the right. I go there, and 153 different flags from all the State Parties are waving me a nice welcome. After making my badge (terrible picture… I thought the camera had already clicked but it hadn’t), I walk via some tunnel to the third building. The fourth floor will be my floor these next coming months, and after being introduced to a lot of persons – of whom I already forgot 99% of the names – at 10 am I am sitting down at my supervisor’s desk. He is not there because he’s at a conference in some African country and nobody really knows when he will be back. So there I am, sitting behind a huge desk, surrounded by enormous piles of papers and without having a supervisor who's present.

The rest of the day I can describe in 6 words: I run around all day long. Everybody knew that a new intern was coming, but ‘who’ and ‘when’ were two questions nobody could answer. As a result, nothing was prepared for my arrival so I was walking from building to building and room to room to organize all the forms myself. I got lost every 5 minutes, but in the end it was actually quiet useful. Because after this first day, I know my way around in these huge buildings. And, since I had to ask the way to everybody I saw in the hallways, I already met quiet a lot of new persons!

Plus I met Silvia, another intern at the department. She’s from Austria and during lunchtime she introduced me to the intern-network. ‘The Mafia’ as they also call it, because the network is huge and they have a lot of meetings during the week. They have lunch together every day, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays – together with the interns from the United Nations – they go for a drink after work. Ah, and I think 50% of this whole Mafia family is from Holland, so luckily I can practice my Dutch a bit while I’m here…

At 4 am I had enough of all the running, and since nobody was really paying any attention to me, I simply went home. And while I was sitting in the bus I was thinking...

...Even though my presence is illegal in Geneva at the moment – Before I can get my carte de legitimation, I need a three fold copy of my birth certificate. They forgot to tell me before arrival, so hopefully my sis will manage to get it tomorrow for me in Holland...
...Even though I had to take care of everything myself and nothing was organized for me – compared to other departments where every intern got a welcome-package...
...Even though my supervisor unexpectedly popped up in the afternoon and told me it was probably not a bad idea to have lunch tomorrow to discuss certain things – because at the moment he still has no idea what I will be doing during my stay...
...And even though I can not log in to any computer and I won’t be having a fixed desk for myself – but I heard that that’s a normal thing for interns working at the WHO...
...I actually feel quiet happy after my first day! I met a lot of new people and I feel like I will have a great time here.

Let’s see what tomorrow will bring. But one thing is for sure: I will experience the adventure on flip-flops. Because without a doubt was the most important thing I learned today, that I will never, ever, ever, ever, wear new shoes again on my first day of work. My bloody heels, full of blisters, truly hate me.