Today felt like a long day for me in lecture and I think it’s because I just wasn’t having the same thoughts as everyone else. Our focus for the day was on presence and identity. For presence we meditated a little bit, which I typically do at night before I go to bed. You just clear you mind and focus on things around you or your breathing. We then said what our presence is usually focused on and mine is typically on family and friends where as others are more so on the self. The main take away for everyone today was that to be present and useful all you have to give sometimes is yourself. Just a few minutes of listening can be more than enough.
After a while we started to talk about identity. Aaron had us make a web with 5 things about ourselves that we think define ourselves. Then we were talking about how those things are perceived or viewed here in South Africa. We had such a long conversation on what it means to be privileged. I was really struggling right her because everyone was talking about it in a far different way from how I would define it. They were having the typical view of being rich and always getting what you want, but I’ve always considered privileged to be when you are able to complain about unnecessary materialist things your privileged because there are people out there who can’t complain about those things either because they’ve never experienced them or because they know better then to complain about something they can never have. If you can complain about something that means you’ve either had it or you have the possibility of getting it. So I’ve usually considered myself privileged but the others in my group say that they’ve never or rarely consider themselves privileged. I also realized during the reflection part that I just have far different values from others. What I consider important or even just the way I define a value compared to how someone else defines the same value. When we were talking about typical American stereotypes I was having a bit of a flashback. A few days ago tension was being felt or rumors or something so we had a group meeting to discuss such things. I pointed out how I don’t always like to be with some people because when in public and private they have a tendency to yell random swears or dirty words just because they can. I said I didn’t like this because it feeds into the stereotype and then one in particular got all defensive on me saying that no matter what they did it wasn’t going to change anyone’s stereotypical views of Americans. Even after pointing out that that doesn’t mean you have free reign to do what ever you want because you don’t think it matters how people are going to view you they still were upset with me. What I really meant was the stereotype of me. If I’m hanging out with someone who swears at the top of their lungs then I feel like people will just assume that I also swear at the top of my lungs. Then I’m not even sure how it was that we got to on to this topic (I forgot), but we were talking about one of the home stay families that has a really nice house. She doesn’t like to spend money herself upgrading her house even more and we thought that this might be because she has a nice job and her house is even nicer so upgrading people might start to think of her differently and that say that it’s because of her job not because of her hard work ethic. This sort of made me think about how I myself don’t like to spend money on myself. Although I can think of many reasons why I don’t like to a possibility might be because I don’t want people to think I just have money cause I’m native.
It was after class that I started to get sort of upset. Everyone was going to Mzoli’s for lunch, which is a meat factory more or less that does BBQ. Then we were going to ask Godfrey to just drive us to the long street market instead of back to the lodge, but the problem was that someone had to drive back to the lodge to drop me off. Jane gave Shane and I 40R so we could eat something else somewhere else but the problem was me. Since Shane is sick now to I was worried that he wouldn’t even want to go out to eat so I was just going to end up sitting in the lodge by myself. Every time I suggested just going and sitting while everyone else ate they were all like no no no no no. I know that this isn’t how they meant it to come off to me, and I might just be weird for thinking this way, but I felt like people were taking pity on my since I had to have special treatment. Maybe pity isn’t the right word but I don’t like being the center of attention for reasons like “Oh going to Long street would be so great, but Lindsay has to be dealt with first. I would love to leave her behind but that’s not nice” I know I’m weird for thinking that way.
Once at the Long Street market after lunch though I had great time. I bought a sweet gift for my bro, and a cool street wire gift for my older sister. Along with a sweet gift for my little sister. I just loved the atmosphere of the market and I got to perfect my bartering skills even more. I helped Cat get this giraffe down to 40R from 100R. I’m super great since I still have skills left over from China bartering. I just really can’t believe that tomorrow is Friday. This week has just blown by me faster then the last two weeks, and Dylan’s eagle scout ceremony is in a few days!
Mmm Mhmmmm (head nod)
