So I need a break from the slightly decreasing pile of work that’s in front of me. I still have a good 200 pages that I want to read but I also feel my eyes getting bleary. The city is a curse and a blessing at the same time. Classes are set up here so you meet once a week for three hours per class. I essentially have class Monday night, all day Tuesday, and Thursday morning and late evening (with a break in between), and then Wednesday is Independent Study Day. One would think that leaves tons of times to do the readings, but its not exactly the case. Because the city is there, 30-40 minutes away by train, tempting you in. I’ve already went for errands both yesterday and today. I love being there. We were asked to describe what our first impression was of the city for one of our classes and I said “It feels like home”. It feels like everything I’ve missed in Pittsburgh. It’s inviting. And I really need to start allotting myself more structured time to do my schoolwork so I can go there more. It’s also hard for me because I’m so used to just taking Saturday and hammering through all of my work at Houghton, but we will be traveling for one of my classes frequently on Saturdays, including tomorrow, so it doesn’t really work in the end.
Yesterday was grocery day. This is a big deal and an extravaganza with my flat. Mom has taught me too well to try to plan meals and stick to the list, which never happens, so we end up with all of this food that we don’t need. And then you need to carry it back to the bus stop in backpacks and green bags, and from the bus stop to the flat. This needs to cease. Haha. My poor back can’t take it much more. But we are learning to be creative with our limited food making skills. And I love the fact that everything is fresh, like garden or just baked or just killed fresh. You can taste the difference.
Anyway, back to the story, we went grocery shopping and had this fiasco where we had to run from the train station to the bus stop with all of this stuff and we were the last ones on with all of these groceries so we sat behind the bus driver who talked to us for the sheer fact that he was nice and we were American. Everyone seems so intrigued to talk to the Americans here. He was asking about our studies and what state in the US we were from and then started to ask us if we party on the weekends. He went on this huge speal about how the night club system works here and where to go and what he loved as a Uni student. I started to wonder if that is the rest of the world’s perception of American students, that all we do is party, because I feel as if that isn’t the case. Maybe it was a little more true at Pitt, but students still got there work done and were not drinking or drunk every waking hour of every day. From there I started to wonder through what false lenses I’ve viewed other countries, even ones I’ve been to. All too often our preconceived notions skew our interpretations of communities and individuals. What a shame. It’s like we’re missing out on who a person truly is.