What a difference a week makes!
This past week has had more drama than I can remember. On Saturday a blizzard hit Southern Connecticut and parts of upstate New York with a vengeful force, knocking down trees, causing extensive damage to power lines, leaving my entire campus without power. Power went out Saturday night: by Sunday morning we had only begun to guess the extensiveness of the damage. Trees were downed everywhere; I had to fight my way around a couple of straggling branches on my way to the library, but it was in vain because it was closed. Everything was closed. The entire town was without power. I called my parents and they came and got me and took me back to New York for a couple of days. Those who stayed behind either stayed in their dorms and their houses or huddled together in the library for warmth. By Tuesday power in central campus was restored, but the seniors and many juniors live in separate houses that rely on the town's power source still had no electricity or heat. My poor housemates were sleeping in the same room to stave off the cold. They could see their breath inside the house. In spite of the fact that the seniors were freezing their butts off , my university's administration announced that classes would be resumed on Wednesday, and that homecoming weekend would be happening as scheduled. This was not a popular decision, but what could we do? We're dependent college students. Occupy [my college's name] would not have been an effective strategy.
And then, Wednesday morning, on my way back to campus, I was in a car accident. Thankfully no one is hurt, but the front of the car is damaged pretty badly. I got back to campus in time for my afternoon class, and that night, after 94 hours without heat or electricity, power came back on for everyone else. Power is coming back on slowly for more remote parts of campus, and the rest of the surrounding town should have power by Sunday if not before.
This entire week my brain has been going WTF. At everything. This blog post was supposed to be about reverse culture shock in a more indirect way: I'd be going through my daily life and noticing subtle changes I hadn't before. Upon noticing how my powers of observations have changed, I would reflect, very poetically, about how before I left for Taiwan I was naive to the Great Injustices of the World and now I am growing and becoming a Person, yay for me.
Now I'm just like OMG We have heat and light and electricity! Hooray! Back to my mountains of homework!
Sorry for the lack of insight this time around--it's just been one of those weeks.
See you all soon!
Marjorie
This past week has had more drama than I can remember. On Saturday a blizzard hit Southern Connecticut and parts of upstate New York with a vengeful force, knocking down trees, causing extensive damage to power lines, leaving my entire campus without power. Power went out Saturday night: by Sunday morning we had only begun to guess the extensiveness of the damage. Trees were downed everywhere; I had to fight my way around a couple of straggling branches on my way to the library, but it was in vain because it was closed. Everything was closed. The entire town was without power. I called my parents and they came and got me and took me back to New York for a couple of days. Those who stayed behind either stayed in their dorms and their houses or huddled together in the library for warmth. By Tuesday power in central campus was restored, but the seniors and many juniors live in separate houses that rely on the town's power source still had no electricity or heat. My poor housemates were sleeping in the same room to stave off the cold. They could see their breath inside the house. In spite of the fact that the seniors were freezing their butts off , my university's administration announced that classes would be resumed on Wednesday, and that homecoming weekend would be happening as scheduled. This was not a popular decision, but what could we do? We're dependent college students. Occupy [my college's name] would not have been an effective strategy.
And then, Wednesday morning, on my way back to campus, I was in a car accident. Thankfully no one is hurt, but the front of the car is damaged pretty badly. I got back to campus in time for my afternoon class, and that night, after 94 hours without heat or electricity, power came back on for everyone else. Power is coming back on slowly for more remote parts of campus, and the rest of the surrounding town should have power by Sunday if not before.
This entire week my brain has been going WTF. At everything. This blog post was supposed to be about reverse culture shock in a more indirect way: I'd be going through my daily life and noticing subtle changes I hadn't before. Upon noticing how my powers of observations have changed, I would reflect, very poetically, about how before I left for Taiwan I was naive to the Great Injustices of the World and now I am growing and becoming a Person, yay for me.
Now I'm just like OMG We have heat and light and electricity! Hooray! Back to my mountains of homework!
Sorry for the lack of insight this time around--it's just been one of those weeks.
See you all soon!
Marjorie
Okay--I have no idea why I can't make the text of the last paragraph a normal size. Does anyone know how to deal with this?
ReplyDeleteI think you have a formatting issue like perhaps you cut and pasted this from the original document that you composed it in. Also...don't use internet explorer. Use google chrome or some other (similar) type browser and hit the (remove all formatting button) after you block in your text. That should normalize everything.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad that you didn't get hurt in the car accident. People die all the time out here (it's a nightly thing on the news) because no one knows how to handle icy roads. And to be honest, Utahns drive like maniacs (way too fast for the conditions) and they are inconsiderate in sharing the road.
I think that's a "western" thing as they all feel like they are gods or something.
According to the news (NBC) climate change results have now come out that suggest that extreme weather will not in fact be going away. It is going to get worse and worse and worse. The people in our country who are denying that climate change is happening because of human interference are doing so out of greed. All I can say is that within my lifetime, at least, I will see a very different world than the one I saw when I was young.