Livin' on a Prayer

Thursday, February 04, 2010 10:55 AM

Whoaaaaaaaaa yeah I’m halfway there.  I’ve gotten the official dates of my internship so I now know it will run for 12 weeks starting March 15^th and ending on June 4^th, as in four months from today.  Do the math and you see that tomorrow marks four months that I’ve been here so that puts me squat in the middle.  I am planning on staying for a couple weeks or so perhaps after I finish to do some traveling or something so if you’d like to join me and come climb Kilimanjaro, go on safari in the Serengeti (one of the wonders of the world) or enjoy some of the finest beaches in the world that are located on Zanzibar then start booking your tickets now – you have the dates.  Or, if you want to maybe see some of the real, non-touristy parts of Tanzania too, I figure by the time I’ve been here for eight months I should probably know a thing or two and could serve as a guide.  I don’t expect anyone to really take me up on this offer besides maybe my dad, but if anyone wants to consider it, you are welcome.

On to other business… I did find out my official dates, yes, as you can see.  I also found out that I won’t be living with a homestay but rather in the VIA group house or something like that which I think is basically just where they put all of their volunteers who may all be Americans or may come from all over the world, I’m not exactly sure.  I’m also still not sure what work they’ll have me doing there and they haven’t really responded to my email yet asking what it is specifically they’ll have me doing, but the reality is that I’m locked into this thing and I’ll do what they need me to do so me knowing doesn’t really change much though it would make explaining everything via blog much easier.  In the meantime, they continue to find a new batch of paperwork for me to print out, sign, scan and send home every time I think I’m done.  It’s been easier and easier to lose sight of the actual internship as I get buried in all of this bureaucracy but I’m taking care of business so hopefully I can finish with this one day and then actually focus on the real task at hand.

Right now, the task at hand is final examinations.  As of yesterday afternoon, I have officially completed all of my coursework here at the university and by 3 PM today I will have finished with all of my lectures.  That means nothing but five more final exams and then my time here as a student at UDSM is complete.  Yikes.  I actually finished one course already when I took my final exam for my Kiswahili class on Monday which turned out to be significantly more difficult than we had anticipated.  I do have a confession to make though and that is that the grading scale here is actually very different from that of UBC or UO or probably anywhere else you can think of.  To get an A, you only need 70% or above.  B+ ranges from 60-69% and just B goes from 50-59%.  Don’t get me wrong though, you still get the same grade you deserve and you earn it.  Even at UBC where A- started at 80%, I still got the grades I deserved based on my knowledge of the course and the effort I put in here.  What I’ve learned basically is that the letters are just about universal though the standards change.  University of Oregon plays the letter game where you get an A if you work for it but if we’re being honest, an A effort is not the same as a perfect paper and scoring 20 out of 20 on an assignment is something that just shouldn’t happen.  Here, it doesn’t except in maybe our CIEE class which is sticking to the standard American grading scale.  The teachers have high expectations, ask challenging questions, and unfortunately all time their assignments and tests for the same time so even though you may only need like 40% to pass a class, the workload can be overwhelming and not all students succeed.  These are serious students here though and they are first and foremost students before they are anything else.  Class matters and the number one activity of most students I’ve met here is studying, not working or drinking or playing music or anything else.  I’m at an advantage because English is my first language and I can’t imagine the challenge for the other students (even the other international students) but it’s been really interesting to be in a place where school is taken so seriously (even if many of the foreign students think it’s a bit of joke).

Five more university examinations and then I’m done here…  Unfortunately, three of them are worth 60% of my grade and one of the other ones is worth 50% so it’s not like I can be completely saved by the rest of my coursework grades but I’ll just do what I gotta do.  It’s so weird to be in the last month and it feels so sudden though.  I’ll probably be done with exams by the 20^th which is hardly any time away at all.  If I looked back and read some of my old posts, it would look like time was crawling but now that we’re here in the final month – and it’s not even a full month – things are getting real pretty fast.  We lost one of our own last Friday when our good pal Kelly had to go home.  She had to leave early because her term at home started this Tuesday and it’s her last semester before she graduates so she can’t really miss it.  Still, it just happened so suddenly and was kind of hard to believe.  It made me realize quite a few things and I couldn’t help putting myself in her shoes, thinking about what it would be like to just be leaving this place.  Even though I’m only halfway done, I still couldn’t help thinking this and I realized that I’m just plain not ready to go yet.  There are still too many unanswered questions and I’m just now finally really starting to like, appreciate, and be comfortable with my surroundings.  I welcome the change that’s coming though now I’m not just running away from something because I do actually like it here.  We miss you though, Kelly, and Dad, that was an inappropriate use of the “like” button on facebook.  (For details, see my status from last week.  Also, I posted some new photos so check them out.)

In other news, I saw the movie “Invictus” last week which should explain why I posted that poem a couple days ago.  I think it might be a few months old, but hey, it’s still amazing that I was able to see the damn thing given the realities of the circumstances we’re living under here.  It was a pretty good movie in some respects and it was directed by Clint Eastwood which I didn’t know until the end credits but I liked it so props to him.  The real reason I liked it though is just because I’m a big Mandela fan and I always have been.  Even if it was Hollywood-ized, Mandela really is a man who is one of my heroes and I have the utmost respect for.  The movie really inspired me mostly just because of this one otherwise unremarkable part in it where one of his bodyguards slips up and asks how his family is.  As you know, Nelson Mandela spent more than 30 years in prison away from his family and even though he is such a model human being and so amazingly stoic, it was incredibly tough for him to be away from his family and his children grew up resenting him for his political involvement and inability to be there for them.  When the guy asks him about his family, he just becomes depressed and decides he would rather just go back and sit down to think or something rather than go walking like they were supposed to.  It shows that even though he is an extraordinary man, he is still a man and he still has problems, things that bother him and emotions too.  If it weren’t for this, he just wouldn’t be human but because he is, that means that we are all capable of living like him to some extent.  It got me thinking a lot about just what our potential is as individuals and as a society as a whole and I’ve been feeling a lot more positive about things since I saw that movie.  Sometimes a little inspiration goes a long ways.

I think about my own problems and bothers in my own life which in some ways are so trivial because they only really matter to me, but to me they matter a lot.  Lord knows I’m an optimist, an idealist and a dreamer.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty critical too about a lot of things, but whether you could tell or not, I’ve always been optimistic about things.  The conflict for me know is that I’m trying to keep that idealistic state of mind and remain hopeful about the future but I’m also trying to be realistic about some other things too so it’s a conflict of values.  I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t seriously hope and dream that everything works out the way I wish it would in the end though this is something that is more than just me so I need to deal with some realities of the situation.  I still want to remain optimistic and try to live ideally to change the world and solve some problems because that’s just the way I think we all should do things but it’s a little contradictory to try and do things one way for part of my life and the opposite way for another part.  The truth is that if you live this way, full of high expectations and hoping everyone and everything realizes their full potential, you get disappointed often and a lot.  I’ve been able to shrug off a lot of disappointment in my life but some things are just harder than others to take and move on from.  Still, we do what we do.  Everyday we go out, try to do our best and hope that others do the same.  We go to bed every night knowing we may not have accomplished everything that we could have or wanted to, but thinking about how tomorrow is a new day with new opportunities.  We take solace in the fact that we have done well but we can do even better and will do even better.  There is always more that we can do and we appreciate what we are doing, but we’re optimistic that there is always room for improvement.

…Halfway through…

I’ve already came such a long way.  I know I’m not done but is there really twice as much ahead of me?  I look back on October and November and wonder who that guy living in my skin even was.  Things were so tough back then and I could have performed better, been stronger and just lived differently than I did.  I’m so glad to have a second chance here to do things right and see what else is out there.  I won’t take that for granted.  The best part about living is that we don’t have to make the same mistakes again and again.  We learn from them, move on, and do better.  My problems here have not been the shortages, the food, even the dorm which is actually a major source of stress in my life.  I’ve scapegoated too many things and made too many excuses.  The reality is that every one of these things could change but that wouldn’t fix my problems.  My biggest enemy has and continues to be my own mind.  I can live with everything else and I even have been enjoying those challenges lately but the hardest thing to conquer is in my own head.  It’s been with me everywhere and I can’t run away from it.  It terrorizes me as I sleep and is the first thing that greets me every morning.  How do you fight an enemy inside you?  For those of you who are able, I commend you, but sometimes my mind is just too strong to carry on.  It’s gotten the best of me more times than I can even count and harasses me daily, nightly, weekly, etc.  It’s caused others to lose patience with me and made me into someone I’m not.  Even when it wins and I lose, nobody really wins.  This blog has seen highs and lows, but I think if you look back you would see this struggle has been the defining feature.

I’m winning right now though!  That’s something worth celebrating.  I’m trying to keep in mind things like my resolutions or trying to keep up inspiration.  I’m trying to find ways to keep smiling and view life from different perspectives that make everything as beautiful as it really is.  I’m trying to remember the things in my past that made me who I was and lead me here to begin with.  I’m trying to remember the purpose I had, the drive, and what I was working towards.  What’s good is that I’m better at this than I was and I’m doing significantly better at living like this without trying to fight so hard to live this way.  I’m not done yet though.  There’s still too many unanswered questions and too many unknowns.  So many things just haven’t been addressed yet and I don’t know if it’s going to take four more months, but I’m fortunate to have that opportunity.  I guess this is my reflection; the one I wanted to work on a while ago but never got the time to or lost the motivation before I got to the computer.  “Livin’ on a Prayer” really has nothing to do with it… I just think it’s a cool song.  “Rock the Boat” would have been just as appropriate.

Here I am again though.  I’ve said what I can think to say and now I don’t know what comes next.  This is good though.  I’m happy now, legitimately (giletimately).  I’m sorry I’m not going to be coming home sooner and I’m glad my friends and family are such respectful and patient people to be alright with me running away like this on my own and will still be there when I get back.  I appreciate that.  I found some time to get this all typed out though and put some new thoughts down though this only really shrinks my looming to-do list by one task.  Time to move on though and try to be better.  Peace.