Greetings from Geneva Switzerland, a city of beauty, history and outrageously high prices. I've lived here for the last four years, but have been living and working outside of the U.S. for more than sixteen years. I often wonder if anywhere will feel like home. Certainly, my country has significantly changed since I last lived there, and even more so post 11 September.

For the last ten years I've been working with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). They've been years of both satisfaction and incredible struggle. To learn more about what UNHCR does, click here.

My secret dream: quitting my job and becoming a massage therapist. I would set up my operations, working with two or three other trained masseuses and masseurs, in a refitted building that abuts a park or wilderness area. Each massage room would be individually climate-controlled, with soothing music, candles, top-of-the-line heated massage tables and adjacent Jacuzzi/hot-tub/shower facilities. The rooms would be designed in soft Thai-influenced colors and motifs. We would surround ourselves and our clients with soothing, positive calmness as we worked to unknot muscles and free blocked energy and emotions.

• Looking out over miles of blue plastic sheets making up temporary shelters for hundreds of thousands of traumatized refugee survivors and being overwhelmed by the pain
• Soaking in the rose-filled sunsets on tropical beaches, while sensing the humid air on my skin and reveling in the smell of franginpani flowers.
• Curling up on the couch with my dogs who look up at me asking to be caressed.
• Watching ballet artists performing to Bach's double-violin concerto and crying from the beauty.
• Entering the "Dark and Stormy Night" introductory- paragraph writing contest and chortling over the winning entries.
• Listening to the muezzin's call to prayer accompanied by the scent of wood smoke at the end of the day.
• Relaxing with my husband, sharing the day's adventures and frustrations, laughing together.