Hello, all!

It’s been a (shockingly) (embarrassingly) long time since I last posted in April. I promise, I am still alive and well!

Simply, I’ve found myself busier and busier as the months pass by. My twice-monthly blogging requirement has remained on my to-do list for the past (6? yikes) months, but just hasn’t gotten around to being completed, as evidenced by my radio silence.

I will, however, be writing retrospective blog entries to make up for the ones I’ve missed– so be on the lookout for those! I’ve done a massive amount of things since I last wrote– went on a Holy Land Pilgrimage with the Church of England internship program, traveled to Barcelona, Amsterdam, London, and Zurich with friends, worked further on my French (and even started a little Swiss German!), and most importantly have spent a large portion of my weeks at Emmanuel working on anything and everything. The church has some really amazing initiatives going that I feel very passionately about, and it’s been great to see these expand and grow. If any of these topics sound particularly interesting, let me know and I’ll make sure to include it as I work through my backlog of blog posts!

I also will be giving a rundown of what each of my days of the week look like (credit to my fellow YASC-er, Charlotte, for the idea from her blogs!) so that you can get an idea of what I’m really doing and what my schedule actually looks like. I can tell you that currently, my Google calendar is alarmingly, but happily, full.

But, to tide you over until then, let me give you a picture of my life, right this very second. I’m sitting in the Starbucks on the second floor of Cornavin, Geneva’s central train station, writing this blog with a warm cinnamon roll. I’m next to the window, and I can see the masses of people coming and going. It’s Saturday, and it’s been drizzling gently all day outside, with a bit of chilly wind. When I return to my apartment, I’m going to swap out my t-shirts from my dresser, and replace them with my sweaters. It seems crazy to me that I’ve been here for over 6 months now, and yet I also feel like I have been here for a very long time.

In some ways, living abroad can feel very glamorous, very cosmopolitan. For example, last month I went to London for the weekend, last minute, to see my best friend Sav from uni, on an EasyJet flight for 40 dollars round trip that I booked two days before. Such a trip, which reinvigorated me and let me spend 48 hours with my best friend uninterrupted, would have required months of planning and a lot more money, had I tried to visit her from the US.

In other ways, however, living abroad can be difficult and frustrating. Yesterday, I spent 8 hours on the phone as well as traversing Geneva, trying to get an emergency refill for a prescription medicine I had been taking from home. I thought I had one more bottle, but it turns out I only had one more dose. Between the mental effort required to explain this in broken french multiple times, the anxiety I had about not being able to get anyone to prescribe it to me here, and the navigating of a foreign health system that I have barely used– it was a lot. I did end up getting the medicine I needed, but times like these is when I long for the days when I could hop in the car, drive 10 mins to Griebs Pharmacy, and have my refill waiting for me with my 10 dollar copay without thinking about it.

All this to say– get ready for an influx of content coming your way! If you want to see my life more in real time, follow my instagram @mirandaawilson for stories and the occasional travel post.

I can do all things through him who strengthens me. — Philippians 4:13