I arrived in Switzerland on January 24th on a crisp and cloudy afternoon. After driving hours in a snowstorm, missing my connection in London, and losing my luggage, I was delighted to finally meet my fellow students in the shopping area of the Geneva arrivals terminal. Though we’d all been to the same Zoom sessions and been waiting for the program for months, there was some consensus in the group that we still didn’t know just what we were getting ourselves into.

Banking? Ok, sure. Finance? Right, sounds good. Social responsibility? Yeah but, isn’t that the antithesis of late-stage capitalism?

After a few days, here’s my new formulation of the program…

SIT Switzerland: Banking, Finance, and Social Responsibility is meant to show students the kinds of banking and finance innovations happening worldwide, as exemplified by the capital of all things global news–Geneva, Switzerland. By bringing in or visiting guest lecturers from areas such as law, cryptocurrency, and humanitarian work, the idea is that we can formulate judgments on the next generation of finance and banking. Our class time will be split between French school (funnily enough Migros is not only a grocery store and a bank, but it’s also a school!), another in Geneva visiting various start-ups and professionals, and lastly in class at the SIT office in Nyon. Then we’ll go to Greece and when we return our schedule will be remade to fit our internship component. 

First night: tour of Nyon

Of the nineteen students in my program, we come from economics, politics, and business majors, and are roughly split in half from smaller colleges or big universities. What surprised me most was how international our group already seems to be, whether that means growing up abroad or in a multilingual household. Altogether, we have French, German, Mandarin, Spanish, and Polish covered! 

On our second night, a group of us went out to eat and had so much fun getting to know each other on a deeper level. To put it briefly, this group is hilarious, accomplished, and really game for adventure. People tended to go out on these first evenings to bars in Nyon or Geneva but I, unfortunately, came down with a bad cold. This made it difficult to do my French placement exam (which was not necessary for total beginners) as brain fog blurred my memory of all the high school French I’d been trying to relearn. I was stressed to meet my homestay Saturday since I felt miserable and was feeling all the adventure and bravery leak out of me. However, I had nothing to worry about because my host was able to bring me to the pharmacy right away and get me home to rest. I’m already feeling better in the comfort of my private room and through the attentive kindness of my host and her adorable dog.

Here’s to hoping I feel better for what is sure to be an extraordinary and busy next week! 

Finances (Tuesday 1/24-Saturday 1/28):

– 240 CHF prepaid phone plan to cover the entire program (only data for Switzerland, extra for calls/SMS). We were taken to the Salt store on day two.

Note: I wish I had gotten the T-Mobile international plan before I got here.

– 25 CHF for pad thai and a glass of rosé (the food here is expensive but superb!)

– 5 CHF for a bottle of rosé at COOP

– 75 CHF at Migros on food, toiletries, and school supplies

Note: Migros has a huge amount of cheap and healthy to-go food options, even for vegetarians. 

– 40 CHF for Swiss cold medicine (tablets that dissolve in water?? and paracetamol)

= ~385 francs/ ~418 USD

* I received a 510 CHF food stipend (for lunches outside our homestays to last until March).