Towards the end of the salsa party I attended with Germain, his friends, and classmates of mine, I started talking to a friend of Muslim faith. I admit I had had a couple of drinks (the sangria was delicious, and I was content to have finally found a place in Paris where you can buy Negro Modelo!), and I was curious about his thoughts on alcohol. I asked him if he had ever been tempted to drink alcohol, and he said never, and his religion wasn't even the primary reason. A family member of his was alcoholic, and I understood right away, because my grandpa dying of lung cancer, even though I was pretty young at the time and didn't get to know him well before, inspired me to never smoke cigarettes.
I was also curious about fasting since Ramadan concluded recently, and I personally have never fasted. He said the hunger was not so hard as it was to think positive all day long, which is a must according to him. It just all seems so unreal: the fact that millions of people go hungry every day, that millions of people fast for spiritual reasons, that still other millions people worry about what they eat...
This evening I had just finished dinner alone in my room (getting to really hate that!) when I listened to one of the BBC world news reports I had downloaded. Sitting there contently digesting my roquefort, apple and walnut salad, I listened to the reporter interviewing a woman in Ghana who had only been able to feed her 2 year old four biscuits and tea that day.
Needless to say I felt pretty guilty about all the fancy meals I've ever eaten, complete with wine and dessert....but Oualid pronounced some pretty wise words at the end of our conversation at the salsa club: that one should never feel guilty about eating, because all humans need to--just as long as one is thankful for it to whomever they wish (God, parents, the grouchy Parisian grocery store clerks who growl at you when you don't give them exact change).
I'm feeling slightly better about my plans to cook Thanksgiving dinner with Germain's parents. Nevertheless, the alcohol question still remains an enigma to me...but I still couldn't help but be thankful for having a great boyfriend with an extremely pleasant family, despite Germain's jolly drunken cheers-ing throughout my conversation with Oualid... :o)
18 October 2008
12 October 2008
Up at 5:30am...
Hello all, I haven't updated in a while but I thought I'd take advantage of the opportunity to catch up my blog since I'm wide awake and it's 5:30am......
Things have been heating up quite a bit the past two weeks, in terms of schoolwork at least. And a little in terms of the weather too, which is a strange because I thought it turned winter around this time. (Uh oh, I probably spoke too soon). Tomorrow I'm giving a presentation on how the developing world views the global economic crisis, and Tuesday I'll be turning in my first assignment. It is a report on Transparency International, a non-profit organization that addresses corruption in government and business, and for the purposes of the paper, what it does in oil-producing African countries. Which after all does not amount to much, really. In any case you can't really measure corruption; it's kind of like giving accurate stats about the black market economy. I feel like it's too early in the semester to really delve into evaluating NGOs, though. I've been exposed to the "resource curse" in Africa for three weeks now and feel like I lack the expertise to criticize...
Not to be too negative, but I suffered from a pretty awful migraine from about 6pm to midnight last night. I was just leaving after my shift at the Cajun restaurant, Thanksgiving Paris, when it started to kick in. The timing is about right, since I get them pretty regularly now. At least I hope it was the normal reasons...I would sure be devastated to find out that Judith (the chef)'s scrumptous employee meals of poached eggs & hollandaise sauce, dirty rice and pecan pancakes give me migraines!!!
In other news, I went to a salsa club on Friday with people from AGS (my school) and some of Germain's friends. It was both a classmate's and one of Germain's friend's birthdays. We had a buffet of paella and sangria, followed by several attempts to get Germain to dance with me. He lasted about a minute each time I lured him onto the dance floor. Nevertheless, I certainly enjoyed learning the "kumba" (???) which my Haitian classmate taught me how to dance!
Wish me luck...I miss everyone!!
Things have been heating up quite a bit the past two weeks, in terms of schoolwork at least. And a little in terms of the weather too, which is a strange because I thought it turned winter around this time. (Uh oh, I probably spoke too soon). Tomorrow I'm giving a presentation on how the developing world views the global economic crisis, and Tuesday I'll be turning in my first assignment. It is a report on Transparency International, a non-profit organization that addresses corruption in government and business, and for the purposes of the paper, what it does in oil-producing African countries. Which after all does not amount to much, really. In any case you can't really measure corruption; it's kind of like giving accurate stats about the black market economy. I feel like it's too early in the semester to really delve into evaluating NGOs, though. I've been exposed to the "resource curse" in Africa for three weeks now and feel like I lack the expertise to criticize...
Not to be too negative, but I suffered from a pretty awful migraine from about 6pm to midnight last night. I was just leaving after my shift at the Cajun restaurant, Thanksgiving Paris, when it started to kick in. The timing is about right, since I get them pretty regularly now. At least I hope it was the normal reasons...I would sure be devastated to find out that Judith (the chef)'s scrumptous employee meals of poached eggs & hollandaise sauce, dirty rice and pecan pancakes give me migraines!!!
In other news, I went to a salsa club on Friday with people from AGS (my school) and some of Germain's friends. It was both a classmate's and one of Germain's friend's birthdays. We had a buffet of paella and sangria, followed by several attempts to get Germain to dance with me. He lasted about a minute each time I lured him onto the dance floor. Nevertheless, I certainly enjoyed learning the "kumba" (???) which my Haitian classmate taught me how to dance!
Wish me luck...I miss everyone!!
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