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!!