It's a long way to the top, if you wanna rock 'n roll...or do most anything else, really

Getting me through: proper tea & Doctor Who
Favorite quote of the moment: "Tea! That's all I needed! Good cup of tea! Superheated infusion of free-radicals and tannins, just the thing for healing the synapses!"
Lusting after: the books I bought in San Francisco and the others in my queue. Oh, to read as I please again! Crichtley, Camus, Pogge, Conan Doyle...

Spending this chilly evening sharing my workspace with a friend from Latin American Studies. She came to commiserate over the Grand Canyon-sized gaps in our respective educational programs.

I've got little spiritual, temporal or psychological space to write anything deep here. What I am writing is the third version of the application essay for my final field internship. Yes, those who decide in the department are having me and the other student who would have interned in Armenia write glorious new versions of our "Why should you get an international internship?" essays so they may decide which of us should get the Community Services internship in Geneva. I guess it's fair, but it feels a bit daft. Having started this whole process in mid-2009 in pursuit of a student-initiated placement, this will mark the third time I've explained things, in a way. Yes, I still want to work abroad, still want to work on forced migration and refugee issues as a part of the new generation of the global refugee regime. Still want to work on Convention Plus-type notions and use of soft law to expand protections, solutions for urban refugee populations, and dabble in some other issues such as climate change migration and emergency education. Still reading voraciously to learn things like research methods - coding in qualitative research is the new one, thanks to my friend Pamela and her Nicaragua research - and international law and global policy diffusion and lots more.

Yep. Same ol', same ol'. I guess I should just try to think that the third time's a charm or something.
Oh, and, still have a ticket to Istanbul dated 20 December. So there's that to look forward to, certainly. Now, what happens after that? I've no idea.
For now, it's head down and do as I'm told.
Peace/سلام