Tuesday, June 29, 2004
Cape Town is a cosmopolitan little city. We climbed Table Mountain our first morning here- slowly and steeply. Last concert tonight, in the Groote Kerk (and I'm not sick for once- I croaked my way through the last 3). um...thats all for now....
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Saturday, June 19, 2004
Potchefstroom, a lovely homestay with two daschunds:)
Jim (our conductor) decides today (after 3 years) is "learn Flora's name day" (he's atrocious with like....a lot of life skills not related to music). He tells me, you know, I can hold conversations. I tell him, its ok, I don't talk much.
so, concert, reception, lots of wine.
Jim: Booze! Flora, theres booze! Drink some and then we can have a conversation!
right-o.
on to Bloemfontein tomorrow, then Grahamstown, Knysna, Cape Town.
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Jim (our conductor) decides today (after 3 years) is "learn Flora's name day" (he's atrocious with like....a lot of life skills not related to music). He tells me, you know, I can hold conversations. I tell him, its ok, I don't talk much.
so, concert, reception, lots of wine.
Jim: Booze! Flora, theres booze! Drink some and then we can have a conversation!
right-o.
on to Bloemfontein tomorrow, then Grahamstown, Knysna, Cape Town.
Thursday, June 17, 2004
SOUTH AFRICA
end of week one : things exploded today- not among RCS'ers, but between us and this Afrikaaner tour guide we had for Soweto. well, things started with awkward dinner conversations last night, but today all day, she said things a lot of people found very prejudiced and hurtful. I thought back to the asado in chile one of my first weeks- the squaring off between the pinochet supporter and the non, both in class together, and the different versions of history that just...are.
The world loosed upon liberal harvard- why being abroad is soooooooo important.
in other news, the older son of our host family here in pretoria is a leather jacketwearing, hair gel adorned, metal bracelet clinking, car-talking cigarette smoking guy who...reminds me far far too much like a certain ex boyfriend. and being me, I forgot to realize that though I could share the news with the girls I was staying with, they couldn't find it freaky in the same way mags or amy could. oh well:)
people are the same all over the world, people are different all over the world.
and I saw elephants! and giraffes! and rhinos!!!!!!!
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end of week one : things exploded today- not among RCS'ers, but between us and this Afrikaaner tour guide we had for Soweto. well, things started with awkward dinner conversations last night, but today all day, she said things a lot of people found very prejudiced and hurtful. I thought back to the asado in chile one of my first weeks- the squaring off between the pinochet supporter and the non, both in class together, and the different versions of history that just...are.
The world loosed upon liberal harvard- why being abroad is soooooooo important.
in other news, the older son of our host family here in pretoria is a leather jacketwearing, hair gel adorned, metal bracelet clinking, car-talking cigarette smoking guy who...reminds me far far too much like a certain ex boyfriend. and being me, I forgot to realize that though I could share the news with the girls I was staying with, they couldn't find it freaky in the same way mags or amy could. oh well:)
people are the same all over the world, people are different all over the world.
and I saw elephants! and giraffes! and rhinos!!!!!!!
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
"In a sudden flash you see the deep and immutable truth about how things stand, and cry out with it. And at once you feel that you might well have said exactly the opposite with no less justice, and no less sense of illumination"
-Frayn again
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-Frayn again
Tuesday, June 01, 2004
I think I'm going to have to write the soundtrack to my own life. I suppose its in keeping, mostly, with a general frustration with the inexactness of words that has been delved into this Spanish 185 semester. But really, how much of our emotions are channeled through the lyrics, the prose, the paintings of others- how much does that mean shadings are lost, distinction glossed over, until the story we see ourselves as composing, through the thoughts and phrases of others (for all we know, tweaked to fit a scansion), is no longer our own?
This is, to a certain degree what my thesis is about. To the degree that it is everyone's life. My own has been delineated by Billy Joel, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Heinlein (with the outlines of fantasies sketched by Nancy Drew and the Babysitter's Club). August, is to see what role rock played in Argentina's. But for the first time, maybe, or the first time I'm lucid enough to recognize it, I can't speak through others because I don't identify with their words. Maybe its Billy Joel never went to college, and neither did Heinlein's characters, for the most part. I can't entirely cringe away from my Authorial Voice because, nearly a senior, packing my bags, its all I've got.
But then, I never read Sweet Valley University.
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This is, to a certain degree what my thesis is about. To the degree that it is everyone's life. My own has been delineated by Billy Joel, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Heinlein (with the outlines of fantasies sketched by Nancy Drew and the Babysitter's Club). August, is to see what role rock played in Argentina's. But for the first time, maybe, or the first time I'm lucid enough to recognize it, I can't speak through others because I don't identify with their words. Maybe its Billy Joel never went to college, and neither did Heinlein's characters, for the most part. I can't entirely cringe away from my Authorial Voice because, nearly a senior, packing my bags, its all I've got.
But then, I never read Sweet Valley University.
