Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Day 13- January 18th
First off Happy Birthday to my wonderful Stepmom! It's been kinda nice to be back at the Montarina after last weekend. It felt almost like coming home, but back to school as well. I had the best sleep probably of the entire trip Sunday night. Not that Balmers was a bad hostel; I was just exhausted and it felt good to shower and sleep in my own bed. Let's see, Monday we had class at 1:30 so I woke up early and went on a run. It's good though that we have later class on Monday's in case we want to stay longer on our weekend travels and possibly come back Monday morning, but then we'd just have to pay for the hostel an extra night. In class, Brinberg discussed our N.G.O. projects in class with us which we will be working on all semester and giving a 1 hour group presentation at the very end. I'm actually really excited for them. These projects are similar to a consultant-like field project where as a group we develop a business and marketing plan for a program to help vulnerable populations. We got to put our first and second choices, and I ended up getting my first choice. I was assigned to Rwanda, where we will need to be able to come up with a source of funding in order to help "Wings for Africa" build schools and agricultural terraces in small villages. Rwanda is still in a state of extreme turmoil because the government has forced the Tutsi and the Hutus, two groups that hate each other because of the genocide, to live together. We need to come up with an idea to help these groups reconcile and come together in some sort of joint economic venture. Due to the fact that Rwanda is incapable of producing any sort of cash crop to establish their economy, they're attempting to skip multiple generations and move straight to information technology. Brinberg told us that 10% of the total population speaks English, but all classes are taught in English which is an obvious problem right there. So I'm really excited to see what we can come up with and hopefully actually make a difference. Yesterday wasn't that exciting. We had a six hour class day so that was really long. I'm still getting over my cold so it was a little difficult to stay awake at times. It's been the coldest it's been in Lugano these past couple of days, but in comparison, it's not bad at all (in the 40's). A lot of people went out last night because we didn't have class until 1 pm today but I stayed in and just caught up on my homework and shows that I've missed. I've still gotta watch Grey's from last week lol. Today after class I bought my first personal item. I've been very good and not walked into any shop in Lugano except today! Haha it was only a pair of black skinny jeans which I actually need and they were 50% off for 20 francs. I wasn't even going in the store with the intent to shop, but my friend wanted to buy this coat she was in love with so I was peer pressured. But I figured if that's my first amount of money that I've spent not on food, drinks, or travel then I've been doing pretty good. The fashion here is just ridiculous like I could buy everything. Even the people you see on the streets who don't look like they even tried are so trendy. Literally I see little kids walking on the streets in cooler outfits than me. But I'll manage it's just enjoyable to observe differences in culture. They do not wear workout clothes or sweats here whatsoever, and I've yet to see one person who was even a little bit overweight. I was saying I think that they can tell we're Americans based solely on the size of our bodies.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment