The 7:11 Running Club

Every morning in Geneva (with the exception of the days we were traveling together) you could find a group of 8 by the rock ready to run. I would not say we are the fastest running club out there (with some exceptions) but we did our best. The rule was "we'll wait for you." Now we may wait for you at the end, but we didn't head in until everyone had finished.

This club soon blossomed into great friendships. Very much like undergrad, however now we had skype. The name of the club evolved from the time we meet every morning and soon that is how we were referred to in class.

We had our adventures to Chamonix, the Geneva Festival (where we missed the last bus from downtown and had to hike back to the JKC,) the van trip on the autobahn to Heidelberg, the trip in the down pouring rain to get fondue and the hours and hours of enjoying classics like Nena's 99 Luftballoons and R. Kelly's Remix to Ignition (Helen: some of them know the words better than I do.) Oh and don't forget the trip for fondue in the pouring rain (see picture on the left,) so on the way home we all decided it would be a good idea to fit ourselves into a very tiny European Colt Fashion instead of walking back in the downpour to the bus. We managed to squeeze 8 people into the car meant for 5 (three of which should be very small children.) It resembled a clown car when we all got out safely at JKC. Don't worry dad we were all buckled in if you count a human as a seatbelt.

So I hope this blog entry does justice to my new friendships. It certainly made our studying abroad more fun. And it also helped me insure that I didn't come home weighing 100+ pounds more than when I left because let me tell you that I ate my fair share of chocolate. Some people (not me) even lost weight on the trip.

Our last run in Geneva was from the JKC to the city center to see Geneva's famed water fountain that is in Lake Geneva. Well it turns out that the fountain doesn't start until 9 am. So we made our long run, with our bus passes only to find out that there was no fountain running, as you can clearly see in the photograph on the left. If the fountain were on we would be very very wet. We had to take the bus back because even though we got up early to run we weren't going to get up that early are you crazy. Plus we had bus passes and we had to use them one last time. To top it off we thought we would surprise the class with croissants for breakfast on our last day courtesy of all of us. Then we get back to the JKC with our bag of croissants in hand only to find out that on the last day the kitchen gave everyone croissants for breakfast. Oh well, we had fun anyway.

I loved running with all my friends and I will miss waking up to run with them, however, I will not miss the gi-normous hill that we had to run up at the end of our run, everyday. Despite the end of our official meetings for the year we do have some extra-curricular activities. For example most of the club will be running the Bobby Crim on August 25th. There has also been talk of running the Detroit Marathon as a relay team.

And I forgot to mention, as we all know every great club has a t-shirt. Hence our global program t-shirts you see us wearing in these pictures. (Don't ask me to explain what it says, becuase I am not sure I know exactly, just know that it is computer code: ruby on rails to be exact.) So Bruce has been busy making our very own t-shirts which we will sport on crim day. The colors will be simple, like the Swiss flag. Red with white writing.