New in town

I like to celebrate the small domestic victories of day to day life in a my non native country and language.

Things like negotiating a money-saving bus pass that will get me from my temporary home in Ferney-Voltare to every corner of Geneva.

Or the fact that I've found a baker with whom I can negotiate for half a loaf of delicious, fresh bread, knowing full well that a full loaf would become a brick before week's end.

Or the discovery of possibly the only 7 day a week late-opening grocery store in the entire region at the airport train station. Clearly no secret to the dozens of internationals I found happily shopping there on Sunday, a day when the Swiss go into lock down. Sunday is like Christmas minus the presents around here.

There's nothing quite like moving abroad to remind you that the way we do it, and imagine that that is how it's done, is rarely, rarely how others do it. Every day brings a load of new discoveries.

While I know how stressful that changing jobs and countries and lives is for me, I can only imagine what it must be like for families with children.

Here at the apartment hotel, I'm sharing the experience of being a new arrival with plenty of others who've made their way to this international hub from every part of the Globe.

Even thought I've only been here a couple of weeks, I find myself watching them unravel of the secrets of buying a bus ticket (trust me, the ticket machine looks like the dashboard of the space shuttle), have their pictures taken in front of the United Nations and slowly discover the thousand ways that this new life is so very different from the one they left.