My change of nationality

I am really enjoying the subject material of my International Organizations class. Daniel is very knowledgeable and its great to only have two students in the entire class. Our class time consists of more conversation than just dry facts and figures.

After class, I volunteered at CADEC from 12 - 4. I am getting better at understanding the gist of conversations, but it requires so much concentration that sometimes my head hurts. I don't know if I have ever had to work so hard to understand something in my life. I have come to find that I am completely a visual learner and I really have trouble with audio learner. It literally goes in one ear and out the other.

I have found my project at CADEC. Because of my limited language skills, I have resorted to manual labor that needs to be done around CADEC. As aforementioned in my blog, I have pulled all the weeds and now I am working on laying more brick on the outside patio area. You can see the incomplete patio at the bottom of the picture. I have been working on this project for about 6 hours now and the workers are very happy with the progress but don't understand why I want to work in the 90 - 100F heat. I started thinking about this today (I do a lot of thinking while working because it is one of my only quiet times throughout the day). At the risk of sounding racist, I think I prefer manual labor for some of the same reasons that Mexicans in America prefer manual labor. Sure they might have other reasons, but Mexicans may prefer manual labor because of their language barrier. It doesn't require much vocabulary to tell someone to move this or clean that. Most instruction can be completed through non-verbal acting gestures and pointing. I guess I never thought that some of the Mexicans toiling in our country could be very intelligent people that choose manual labor because it is the only thing they know how to do in a foreign land. I will certainly look upon all foreign workers in a new light from now on.

After work, I came home and did even more homework. This study abroad experience is slowly turning into as much work as getting a Biology degree (all things considered). I went running with Jardel, Amanda, Gabi, and Oktu for about an hour and then returned home for dinner. I gotta get some more sleep, up tomorrow at 6:30!