Sunday, April 24, 2005
Emptying Drawers
Yesterday my Peace Corps recruiter called me to check up. I hadn't responded to the e-mail she sent earlier and she just wanted to make sure I was okay with the Caribbean seeing as it wasn't my first choice. For the record I am. Also yesterday I received my medical kit in the mail. I have yet to read through all the information, but trust me, I'm about to get myself poked and prodded and tested for everything under the sun. I had an interview with one department in DC, I'm trying to set up another. Turns out my resume was sent to a few people at the Red Cross. I think I blew the first one, but oh well. We'll just have to see what happens.
I was up early on Saturday for a class field trip. We spent the morning and into the afternoon driving around Dallas on a charter bus. We drove through neighborhoods we had been studying and saw how they had changed. It was odd, if anything (picture a big white charter bus driving through bario streets at 11am on a Saturday morning, inside a bunch of college kids staring out the windows at people leading their everyday lives. Anthropology...) and proved to be an experience I will not soon forget. There's a reason we pay for this education stuff.
I am so worried about my future right now, about my next step, about my overall future. Everyday (minute) I am faltering, I am learning. I'm not praying enough, and I'm definitely not meditating or listening enough. I may be making progress towards the big picture but some days you really have to try hard to convince me of so.
In the eyes of the refugee though, who am I but someone who is able to make my own decisions. I am able to worry about my future possibilities. Just that I have possibilities, I have choices I can make.
I wrote much more last night. More than two hours of writing. I posted it but then decided to host it somwhere else and link to it. It hasn't been a good week, for one reason and another. Senioritis. Americaitis. Lethargy. Take your pick. So if you have some time and want to read more from inside of me, click here if you're interested in any of the following: James Bond, The Book of Matthew, Paul Newman and Robert Redford, or some Old Testement prophecy.
"And when you sleep
You find your mother in the night
But she stays just out of sight
So there isn't any sweetness in the dreaming.
And when you wake
The morning covers you with light
And it makes you feel alright
But it's just the same hard candy
You're remembering again."
¶ 4/24/2005 03:00:00 AM
I was up early on Saturday for a class field trip. We spent the morning and into the afternoon driving around Dallas on a charter bus. We drove through neighborhoods we had been studying and saw how they had changed. It was odd, if anything (picture a big white charter bus driving through bario streets at 11am on a Saturday morning, inside a bunch of college kids staring out the windows at people leading their everyday lives. Anthropology...) and proved to be an experience I will not soon forget. There's a reason we pay for this education stuff.
A part of the trip was stopping and meeting with a medical anthropologist who was on the board of a refugee center in East Dallas. He told us about the many refugees in the area and the history of refugees in the city. Many have come from South Asia (Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam) or Africa (Sudan); but there were groups from everywhere. You know you read about these groups everyday in the papers, hear about them in passing. Listening to this man talk however I for once actually started to just consider the idea of a refugee and I became very sad. Sad in a way I hadn't felt before. Sad in the way that no matter how many cute girls I was tried to position myself around during the day (that's another form of sadness=lameness), after that nothing mattered. I just kept thinking about the idea of the refugee. Not the immigrant, who leave their country with visions of upwards mobility and a plan of hopeful success. But the refugee: forced out of your home, maybe never to return, maybe all of a sudden, with no prospects or ideas of where you will go or what you will do...or who you will become.
I am so worried about my future right now, about my next step, about my overall future. Everyday (minute) I am faltering, I am learning. I'm not praying enough, and I'm definitely not meditating or listening enough. I may be making progress towards the big picture but some days you really have to try hard to convince me of so.
In the eyes of the refugee though, who am I but someone who is able to make my own decisions. I am able to worry about my future possibilities. Just that I have possibilities, I have choices I can make.
I wrote much more last night. More than two hours of writing. I posted it but then decided to host it somwhere else and link to it. It hasn't been a good week, for one reason and another. Senioritis. Americaitis. Lethargy. Take your pick. So if you have some time and want to read more from inside of me, click here if you're interested in any of the following: James Bond, The Book of Matthew, Paul Newman and Robert Redford, or some Old Testement prophecy.
"And when you sleep
You find your mother in the night
But she stays just out of sight
So there isn't any sweetness in the dreaming.
And when you wake
The morning covers you with light
And it makes you feel alright
But it's just the same hard candy
You're remembering again."
¶ 4/24/2005 03:00:00 AM
