Another Update
Well, here it is already May and I’ll be home in less than two months. Wow. The time has gone so quickly overall even though some days and weeks have seemed extremely slow. I just thought this would be a good time to do a quick update and let you all know what is going on in my head.
Things with the roommates seem to be going well after a somewhat rocky couple of weeks and an episode in which I probably could have conducted myself more respectably. The good thing is that I think we’ve all realized how important it is to communicate even about little things and go out of our way to be nice to each other, since we’re all stuck in our rather small and sometimes frustrating space together. It’s interesting and kind of funny to me that I came here to stretch my limits and experience living in another culture, and I’m doing just that, but the process has taken a rather different form than what I expected. I thought those learning experiences would be limited by the fact that I’m living with other Americans, but instead I’ve been learning about a facet of American culture that I’ve always sort of isolated myself from. And… I think I may be finally getting over the culture shock a little. The Americans in my apartment complex aren’t bad people even if they may sometimes be a little inconsiderate by my standards. But then, I’m probably pretty inconsiderate and selfish by the standards of some other cultures, and I suspect that I come across as obsequious to my roommates at times. I really appreciate the efforts they’ve all made to be understanding of what helps me cope in the wake of the aforementioned episode, and I’m trying my best to be understanding towards them as well. I’m amazed at what a difference it makes just to be thanked when I do something nice and to not come home to a stack of dirty dishes every day! I’m starting to understand how my mom felt throughout the time when my sister and I were both teenagers better and better.
School is still good. So far, I’ve gotten Distinctions and High Distinctions on all of my assignments, which I think Willamette converts to B’s and A’s, although actually Distinctions might be A’s as well, or at least A-‘s. Need to check on that. I just have to think in terms of letters and not percentages, because the scales are rather different. A Distinction is considered a really good grade, even if it maybe only 75-85%.
My other exciting thing is that I’m planning a trip to the Northern Territories! I have about two weeks between the end of classes and my finals (I lucked out and got them clustered together near the end of the finals weeks), so I’m going for a 10 day “safari” from Alice Springs to Darwin. It’s going to be me and up to about 20 other people riding in 4WD vans across the desert and camping in swags. Should be sweet. And we get to see Uluru and Kakadu, which seem to be two of the biggest attractions up that way. If anybody knows about Uluru, no, I’m not going to climb it. My understanding is that it’s a sacred site to the aboriginal people who live in the region and they consider it disrespectful to climb it (not to mention that it’s dangerous), but they’ve kept it open for climbing because there is so much pressure from the tourism industry. Seriously, it sort of amazes me that this is okay. Would Catholic cathedrals ever be subjected to that kind of pressure to let tourists desecrate their crosses, or talk loudly during mass, or whatever? Anyway, enough about that. The real point here is that I’m really excited about this trip but also a little nervous because it will be my first time doing anything like that on my own.
Okay, that’s probably enough of an update for now. You guys all rock my socks!