Take off from Mississauga and Arriving in Geneva

Pearson International Airport
I was quite pleased to be joined by my two friends Kristen and Chrystal at the airport in addition to my mom to bid me fairwell. As you might notice from my facebook pictures we drank some coffee, did some walking and I attempted to relieve the tension with comic relief. Pretty normal stuff.
I'm not going to lie though the stakes in this trip are pretty high and I definitely started crying after I walked through security. However after that minor hickup I managed to stay relatively calm throughout the rest of the trip, except when I got to Trudeau airport in Montreal and security refused to let me go into the international departures section because I didn't have my boarding pass, which in Toronto they told me I could pick up at the gate. On top of that when I got to the check-in counter the flight attendant who was servicing me insisted she couldn't issue a boarding pass because I had already signed in online (which was true but it wouldn't let me print my boarding pass) and that I'd have to go and buy another ticket. When I protested quite adamantly (read loudly) she then asked if I had my receipt which I did and then she decided it was okay (good) grief.
An interesting side note is that on the plane between Montreal and Zurich a fellow graduate student sat next to me who was at the University of Quebec in Electrical engineering who was coming to Switzerland to research wind turbines.

Switzerland
One of the first things which struck me when I got off the plane was how beautiful Switzerland was. The sun was coming up behind the mountains in Zurich which were dusted in fog which made for a beautiful backdrop to a rather unfortunate looking and poorly designed Zurich International Airport (but never mind). Flying from Zurich to Geneva was quite short, although by that point I was aching to be on the ground. An interesting side note there is that the majority of the population of Zurich and surrounding areas speak German. On several occassions my flight attendant said something warmly to me in German, and I didn't want to bother explaining that I didn't speak so I just laughed along with her.
Upon landing I collected my luggage (which was all there thank god!) and proceeded to the hotel where they told me they wouldn't have a room for me till 2 (it was around 9) and then fortunately changed their mind. So I went to my room and took a two and a half hour nap, which was rudely interrupted by my alarm clock which I had set to make sure I didn't make the jetlag worse.

That being said, in the last 46 hours I've had 2.5 hours of sleep and so the details of my first day in Geneva will have to wait until tomorrow! Good night!