I apologize for taking so long to write. It was such a pleasure visiting, I wish I'd had more time. Before I got completely wrapped up with academics and the magazine I work for I wanted to keep you updated on my life. Despite my best efforts to achieve a balanced schedule I've managed to take four classes that require an incredible amount of reading: one book per week for each class (that adds up to four books, approximately 300 pages each, plus supplementary readings). Yesterday I was reading from 9am to 2am, I've never had so much reading in my life! I feel like I'm cramming my brain full of Christmas baubles, bright new ideas that break easily to make room for new ones. All of my classes in some way relate to either a) historical theory or b) British history and imperialism. I'm thrilled to say the least, though I wish I was doing more African history. I met my potential thesis reader and ran some ideas by her and she liked them. I won't lie, I squealed in the privacy of my own room I was that happy. I'm vigorously working on the magazine, it's hard but rewarding work - I love it (having the title associate editor soon to be editor in chief helps). After trying for a year to learn guitar, with marginal rather pathetic success, I've decided to take up the fife. I never considered myself very musical, but from my art and dance experience I've learned the power of practice and perseverence. Hopefully it'll pay off; so far I can only play "Kookaburra" and I probably annoy my neighbors to no end.
Transitioning/adjusting to college life is going alright. I have my moments of "Where the hell am I and what am I doing?", it takes a little patience to adjust my psyche. The most heart-breaking part of this experience is realizing how quickly I'm forgetting what I learned in Kenya. Scripps is a very different life style, full of clothes, books, booze and everything in between. Priorities are different and its difficult to adjust to that. It's hard getting used to the hedonism, materialism and superficiality I see every day and that I'm slowly becoming a part of again. I try my best to look at this as a separate foreign culture which requires the same understanding and open-mindedness I had in Kenya. Taking things day by day is important, it's easy to get hysterical about very minor things...and major things like post-college plans. This evening I went to an info session about Teach For America and I'm seriously considering becoming part of the movement after I graduate. It's crazy to think about life after college, I don't really know what to do with myself.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
correspondence
I know (vaguely) what you mean about being busy. I say vaguely because I just finished talking to some Teach for America Corps members who successfully convinced me of the amount of work teachers face. Anyway, I feel slightly overwhelmed here at school but nowhere near as you must. I've managed to take four classes that require I read one book per week plus extra readings and writing responses. I spent yesterday reading from 9am to 2am. Unbelievable. I think I'm going to start counting how many pages I'm expected to read per week and post them on my door or something. Thankfully I love everything I read, I just wish I had more time to do it! I desperately want Hermione's time device...that would make my life slightly less hectic.
Since you last wrote has there been a second date??? I love hearing about my friends' romantic journeys, they are most often far more exciting than mine. I tend to focus on academics and "me" when I'm at school - boys are the perifery, the back-drop if you will. They flit in and quickly out of my life very much like butterflies and I regard them as such: beautiful, incomprehensible and dumb (am I cruel?). Occasionaly I get rather fluttery when I find a guy I can actually communicate with. In any case, I'd love to hear more.
Since you last wrote has there been a second date??? I love hearing about my friends' romantic journeys, they are most often far more exciting than mine. I tend to focus on academics and "me" when I'm at school - boys are the perifery, the back-drop if you will. They flit in and quickly out of my life very much like butterflies and I regard them as such: beautiful, incomprehensible and dumb (am I cruel?). Occasionaly I get rather fluttery when I find a guy I can actually communicate with. In any case, I'd love to hear more.
Friday, January 19, 2007
correspondence
It was equally lovely to hear from you! Apparently you're having some rather chilly weather over there, almost as cold as it is here (it snowed here a week ago). I'm glad you enjoyed the email; I enjoy writing, it gives me great satisfaction. However I'm struggling with my grammar and punctuation, commas are still a mystery to me. I also tend to go overboard when it comes to description, "carried away" is the best way to put. I could easily just say the hills were green and there were sheep (so many sheep!). Perhaps with age and experience I will learn to tone down my exuberance for metaphor, simile, analogy and whatever else I use. Give me your favorite memory from the past two weeks (it's so much more fun than just asking "How are you" which ellicits a simple one-word answer, hardly descriptive). What really stands out? Perhaps you don't have time, I understand - my life is quite hectic back at school.
I nearly pissed my pants with joy when I saw the books I had to read for my classes. Three of my classes relate in some way to Victorian England (my concentration in history) and the fourth is a history seminar. Yipee! I met my potential thesis reader and ran some ideas by her and she liked them. I won't lie, I squealed in the privacy of my own room I was that happy. I'm vigorously on the magazine I write for, it's hard but rewarding work.
Transitioning/adjusting is going alright. I have my moments of "Where the hell am I and what am I doing?", it takes a little patience to adjust my psyche. The most heart-breaking part of this experience is realizing how quickly I'm forgetting what I learned in Kenya. Scripps is a very different life style, full of clothes, books, booze and everything in between. Priorities are different and its difficult to adjust to that. I try my best to look at this as a separate foreign culture which requires the same understanding and open-mindedness I had in Kenya. Taking things day by day is important, it's easy to get hysterical about very minor things...and major things like post-college plans.
I nearly pissed my pants with joy when I saw the books I had to read for my classes. Three of my classes relate in some way to Victorian England (my concentration in history) and the fourth is a history seminar. Yipee! I met my potential thesis reader and ran some ideas by her and she liked them. I won't lie, I squealed in the privacy of my own room I was that happy. I'm vigorously on the magazine I write for, it's hard but rewarding work.
Transitioning/adjusting is going alright. I have my moments of "Where the hell am I and what am I doing?", it takes a little patience to adjust my psyche. The most heart-breaking part of this experience is realizing how quickly I'm forgetting what I learned in Kenya. Scripps is a very different life style, full of clothes, books, booze and everything in between. Priorities are different and its difficult to adjust to that. I try my best to look at this as a separate foreign culture which requires the same understanding and open-mindedness I had in Kenya. Taking things day by day is important, it's easy to get hysterical about very minor things...and major things like post-college plans.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
correspondence
My appologies for missing our phone date, life was a bit too crazy but that's a poor excuse.
My heart really went out to you as I read your email. Coming back is hard, I'm going through it right now. What holds me together is something my Academic Director told us: take the same cultural understanding and openmindedness you had while in Kenya/Ghana and apply it to your home culture. It's helped me immensely. The materialism, hedonism, superficiality, are hard to deal with but I have to understand that these are parts of my culture and are coping mechanisms to wider social/cultural/economic issues. They are not random but have a history and it's helped I know that history. Does this make sense? I struggled with my gut attraction to materialism. New things, bright things, bigger things, things things things. I felt so guilty for wanting when I'd just come from a place where people had so little. How could I want that shirt? I have enough shirts. It was even worse with books. Books were so hard to find and so expensive in Kenya, most people couldn't afford them. Yet here I was in a store, one of many on the same street, being able to get anything I wanted. All this knowledge, which is of course a form of empowerment, being denied those who could use it most. Libraries! A place to find books for nearly FREE. It just killed me inside.
I too felt a new type of happiness and contentment while in Kenya. Shedding myself of my materialism (to the best of my ability), being reduced to the bare resources/necessities, connecting on such a human level with perfect strangers was a powerful experience. It's confusing finding yourself caring about things you may not have 2 months ago. But don't be too hard on yourself. We are socialized and programed to think a certain way, it's hard to break out of that pattern. What is important is to understand how that pattern effects us and what we can do to change it. I'm also forgeting many of the resolutions and promises I made in Kenya and hurts to see this is happening. But I feel it's a psychological way of coping with a changing environment. People tend to want to fit in wherever they are, adapting as best they can to the new culture; perhaps even comprimising some of their previous ideals just to feel connected. Still spending emotional energy on him is human, so is the temptation of drugs. In emotionally fraught situations reverting to old habits, regardless of how detrimental they may be, is reassuring if only for the familiarity. Why do I want to smoke cigarettes? Because it reminds me of the life I had before and because it's addictive. Why drink? It makes me feel connected to people, sharing their experience, when I'm having a hard time connecting to those I was closest to. Yet everything feels so surreal. Being at a party, drinking, watching young men and women flirt with each other, watching the games they play - all so unreal, so different. I find it difficult not screaming at them about the pain I witnessed, about the suffering they are ignoring, about how they don't understand. Why are they damaging their bodies for pleasure? Shouldn't they be thankful for everything they have? Every breath they take is blessed because they are able to breathe without worrying. Such rantings would be hypocritical, for I destroy my body and will eventually play the games they play. The only hope I can have for myself and for you is to somehow find a balance between my life here and my life in Kenya. One is not better than the other, only different. So I admired the way elderly were treated in Kenya? Should I just complain about how we ignore or grandmothers and grandfathers, sending them to homes to die alone? No. I refuse to give up. Instead why don't I work at a hospice or a nursing home giving the love, attention and breath of youth many elderly crave. There is power in the small things we can do to change our lives and the lives around us.
My heart really went out to you as I read your email. Coming back is hard, I'm going through it right now. What holds me together is something my Academic Director told us: take the same cultural understanding and openmindedness you had while in Kenya/Ghana and apply it to your home culture. It's helped me immensely. The materialism, hedonism, superficiality, are hard to deal with but I have to understand that these are parts of my culture and are coping mechanisms to wider social/cultural/economic issues. They are not random but have a history and it's helped I know that history. Does this make sense? I struggled with my gut attraction to materialism. New things, bright things, bigger things, things things things. I felt so guilty for wanting when I'd just come from a place where people had so little. How could I want that shirt? I have enough shirts. It was even worse with books. Books were so hard to find and so expensive in Kenya, most people couldn't afford them. Yet here I was in a store, one of many on the same street, being able to get anything I wanted. All this knowledge, which is of course a form of empowerment, being denied those who could use it most. Libraries! A place to find books for nearly FREE. It just killed me inside.
I too felt a new type of happiness and contentment while in Kenya. Shedding myself of my materialism (to the best of my ability), being reduced to the bare resources/necessities, connecting on such a human level with perfect strangers was a powerful experience. It's confusing finding yourself caring about things you may not have 2 months ago. But don't be too hard on yourself. We are socialized and programed to think a certain way, it's hard to break out of that pattern. What is important is to understand how that pattern effects us and what we can do to change it. I'm also forgeting many of the resolutions and promises I made in Kenya and hurts to see this is happening. But I feel it's a psychological way of coping with a changing environment. People tend to want to fit in wherever they are, adapting as best they can to the new culture; perhaps even comprimising some of their previous ideals just to feel connected. Still spending emotional energy on him is human, so is the temptation of drugs. In emotionally fraught situations reverting to old habits, regardless of how detrimental they may be, is reassuring if only for the familiarity. Why do I want to smoke cigarettes? Because it reminds me of the life I had before and because it's addictive. Why drink? It makes me feel connected to people, sharing their experience, when I'm having a hard time connecting to those I was closest to. Yet everything feels so surreal. Being at a party, drinking, watching young men and women flirt with each other, watching the games they play - all so unreal, so different. I find it difficult not screaming at them about the pain I witnessed, about the suffering they are ignoring, about how they don't understand. Why are they damaging their bodies for pleasure? Shouldn't they be thankful for everything they have? Every breath they take is blessed because they are able to breathe without worrying. Such rantings would be hypocritical, for I destroy my body and will eventually play the games they play. The only hope I can have for myself and for you is to somehow find a balance between my life here and my life in Kenya. One is not better than the other, only different. So I admired the way elderly were treated in Kenya? Should I just complain about how we ignore or grandmothers and grandfathers, sending them to homes to die alone? No. I refuse to give up. Instead why don't I work at a hospice or a nursing home giving the love, attention and breath of youth many elderly crave. There is power in the small things we can do to change our lives and the lives around us.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
further notes from the southern hemisphere
Dear friends,
I am in transit again, though in New Zealand not Kenya. I made a whirling jet-lagged stop State side for a week and then off on another fifteen hour flight to Auckland. All this seemed excuse enough to keep writing my long emails. I should note that I've been working on this letter off and on during my time in New Zealand.
Returning to the States was strange, and yet that word doesn't quite capture the feeling. Life wasn't as foreign as I'd anticipated but moved too quickly. I was relieved to be near the familiar yet unsure what familiar was anymore. I felt naked in Penn Station with so many penetrating eyes. The way people passed each other, cold, ignoring, rushing, not trusting. There were few smiles and no cheerful greetings between strangers. I didn't like it, but I as I walked around Queenstown I found myself doing the same thing. Unfortunately I don't particularly feel like going into my "re-entry" feelings and thoughts. If you're curious ask, but I don't know if I'll have answers – I'm still working out how I feel. This email will skim the surface of my psyche and no more.
Being in New Zealand requires much eye-gazing, there is much natural beauty. Yet with every rolling hill a part of me thought "this isn't Kenya" – sometimes I wish it was. New Zealand possess a different beauty. There are farmlands of orchards and row after row of vegetables. Trees huddle together for company or stand in solitary meditation on grassy fields. Cows relax in fields freckled with dandelions and woolly sheep nibble the greenery like flecks of salt on lettuce green hills. Wildflowers line the roads like so many onlookers at a parade, watching the cars whip by. I spotted Queen Anne's lace, foxglove, Scottish broom, buddleia, double daisies, and white clovers. All English flowers brought presumably by the colonists. Quaint you say? Pretty even? Yes, perhaps they do make a pretty picture. However these flowers are choking the natural flora, destroying the native environment. Furthermore, along with cows and sheep British settlers brought Australian possums, stoats and rabbits to New Zealand, a land without mammals of any kind (except bats). Lacking natural predators these animals went forth, were fruitful and multiplied at exponential rates. They killed off the majority of exotic birds living on both the north and south islands. There are currently 60 million possums in New Zealand and about 2000 Kea birds (the only alpine parrot in the world). Prior to human arrival (including Maori to some extent) those numbers were probably reversed.
Many of the trees remind me of the American northwest but everything else makes me think of England. It's actually kind of bizarre. We're in Christchurch right now and I could be on the outskirts of London. I feel slightly nostalgic walking around this city or driving through the countryside.
What I find most amazing about New Zealand is its diverse environment. One moment I'm driving through a pseudo English countryside and the next I'm in a Jurassic jungle. I could've sworn I saw a pterodactyl swooping over the hills. A few days later we drove through dry Southern California-like mountains en route to Queenstown. At one point we passed an especially tempting field of flowers and wild grass; I nearly asked to stop the car so I could pick a posy. However we had a set itinerary which we stuck to, it didn't include much time for wandering or posy picking. So many bookstores, so little time etc.
Being with my family was rather a treat. I rarely get to see Evan nowadays. His hair is longer than my mom's – and still that amazing copper color. Damn genetics, its not fair! We are an utterly ridiculous family. Puns are pseudo mandatory (at least one per person per day), so is quoting from Monty Python and/or Lord of the Rings (preferably at the location where the movies were filmed). The first place we look for wherever we go is a bookstore and extra points if it's a used bookstore. My dad and I gleefully count road kill, argue about politics and history over dinner and get excited about live blues bands. I'm still a brat to my brother but I maintain it's good for him, keeps him humble. Mom and I chat about everything, aimlessly wander the streets and visit art museums. Dinner was my favorite time of day here, partly because of the food but mostly because of the witty and thought provoking conversations (a perfect chance to fulfill one's pun quota).
I bet I'm forgetting a million more anecdotes. I'll try to briefly re-cap the highlights: I went kayaking and saw seals, dolphins and penguins; went sky diving; practiced French with a gay Tahitian Frenchman, becoming quite enamored; got through a history of reproductive legislation in colonial and post-colonial Kenya; saw lakes of turquoise, ancient glaciers, terrifying Scottish highland bulls, and all sorts of exotic birds; and ate far too much fruit.
Love to all
I am in transit again, though in New Zealand not Kenya. I made a whirling jet-lagged stop State side for a week and then off on another fifteen hour flight to Auckland. All this seemed excuse enough to keep writing my long emails. I should note that I've been working on this letter off and on during my time in New Zealand.
Returning to the States was strange, and yet that word doesn't quite capture the feeling. Life wasn't as foreign as I'd anticipated but moved too quickly. I was relieved to be near the familiar yet unsure what familiar was anymore. I felt naked in Penn Station with so many penetrating eyes. The way people passed each other, cold, ignoring, rushing, not trusting. There were few smiles and no cheerful greetings between strangers. I didn't like it, but I as I walked around Queenstown I found myself doing the same thing. Unfortunately I don't particularly feel like going into my "re-entry" feelings and thoughts. If you're curious ask, but I don't know if I'll have answers – I'm still working out how I feel. This email will skim the surface of my psyche and no more.
Being in New Zealand requires much eye-gazing, there is much natural beauty. Yet with every rolling hill a part of me thought "this isn't Kenya" – sometimes I wish it was. New Zealand possess a different beauty. There are farmlands of orchards and row after row of vegetables. Trees huddle together for company or stand in solitary meditation on grassy fields. Cows relax in fields freckled with dandelions and woolly sheep nibble the greenery like flecks of salt on lettuce green hills. Wildflowers line the roads like so many onlookers at a parade, watching the cars whip by. I spotted Queen Anne's lace, foxglove, Scottish broom, buddleia, double daisies, and white clovers. All English flowers brought presumably by the colonists. Quaint you say? Pretty even? Yes, perhaps they do make a pretty picture. However these flowers are choking the natural flora, destroying the native environment. Furthermore, along with cows and sheep British settlers brought Australian possums, stoats and rabbits to New Zealand, a land without mammals of any kind (except bats). Lacking natural predators these animals went forth, were fruitful and multiplied at exponential rates. They killed off the majority of exotic birds living on both the north and south islands. There are currently 60 million possums in New Zealand and about 2000 Kea birds (the only alpine parrot in the world). Prior to human arrival (including Maori to some extent) those numbers were probably reversed.
Many of the trees remind me of the American northwest but everything else makes me think of England. It's actually kind of bizarre. We're in Christchurch right now and I could be on the outskirts of London. I feel slightly nostalgic walking around this city or driving through the countryside.
What I find most amazing about New Zealand is its diverse environment. One moment I'm driving through a pseudo English countryside and the next I'm in a Jurassic jungle. I could've sworn I saw a pterodactyl swooping over the hills. A few days later we drove through dry Southern California-like mountains en route to Queenstown. At one point we passed an especially tempting field of flowers and wild grass; I nearly asked to stop the car so I could pick a posy. However we had a set itinerary which we stuck to, it didn't include much time for wandering or posy picking. So many bookstores, so little time etc.
Being with my family was rather a treat. I rarely get to see Evan nowadays. His hair is longer than my mom's – and still that amazing copper color. Damn genetics, its not fair! We are an utterly ridiculous family. Puns are pseudo mandatory (at least one per person per day), so is quoting from Monty Python and/or Lord of the Rings (preferably at the location where the movies were filmed). The first place we look for wherever we go is a bookstore and extra points if it's a used bookstore. My dad and I gleefully count road kill, argue about politics and history over dinner and get excited about live blues bands. I'm still a brat to my brother but I maintain it's good for him, keeps him humble. Mom and I chat about everything, aimlessly wander the streets and visit art museums. Dinner was my favorite time of day here, partly because of the food but mostly because of the witty and thought provoking conversations (a perfect chance to fulfill one's pun quota).
I bet I'm forgetting a million more anecdotes. I'll try to briefly re-cap the highlights: I went kayaking and saw seals, dolphins and penguins; went sky diving; practiced French with a gay Tahitian Frenchman, becoming quite enamored; got through a history of reproductive legislation in colonial and post-colonial Kenya; saw lakes of turquoise, ancient glaciers, terrifying Scottish highland bulls, and all sorts of exotic birds; and ate far too much fruit.
Love to all
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