Thursday, May 11, 2006

My sister is in Japan...she likes it, but not the fish eggs. i have started university...let me just say this and get it out of the way: its dreadful. i'll survive the two months that these courses last, and maybe take some courses in september in spanish, that would last 4 months, but i can't see myself spending any more time here than that. it kills the soul, i tell you. its made me realize how desperately i want to NEVER BE RICH (everybody else here is). Oh, the contrast! For example: ...in the afternoon, i travel here on a city bus, surrounded by fat sweaty women with hairy armpits, sacks of sweet smelling oranges, wide eyed children on laps, sullen wrinkled working men, reggeaeton music blaring from the speakers, animated spanish conversation in the quick, consonant-sparse language of the lower classes...in the evenings, i travel home on one of the universities private buses, surrounded by a world that is opposite from my afternoon world in every concievable way. Glowing iPod and cellphone screens. Whispers. Empty looks. Fruity perfume smells. Radio Disney on the sound system. i can't...stomach it. i hate myself for living it. Higher education is not worth this way i feel, like a traitor to...to who? i think its ironic who i identify as my "people"...ironic because of how oddly i fit into that group, but I feel more at home with them than with this crowd. i realize what this comes across as...complaining. i know i have the opportunity to study, the opportunity that many of my friends in Bastión would appreciate dearly. It sounds shallow, to them, for me to explain why i don't like university. i know what this would sound like to their ears, so i don't say it. i guess that why i blog in ENGLISH...it's someone i'm not allowed to be all the time.

8 comments:

Unknown said...

Bethany,

Your post made me think of the poem “Maud Muller” by John Greenleaf Whittier.
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2464/maud.html

Kent
Aka Pamela’s Dad

Brent said...

you've been thinking about japan without my permission?! typical bethany, so typical!
hey, you should wisit your sister this summer in j-town. call it a missions trip or something-you know the drill eh?

Brent said...

i would just like to point out the awesomeness that your sisters in japan. does she have friends?

Benjamin said...

hey
i got your post card.
thanks alot.
i got so excite finding your letter in a pile of junk i had when i came back after 2 weeks away.

Benjamin said...

hey
i got your post card.
thanks alot.
i got so excite finding your letter in a pile of junk i had when i came back after 2 weeks away.

Janice said...

bethany my love, i adore youor blog. i feel like you're this deep ethereal spirit and i just want to sit and soak in your perspectives. it's lovely.

Unknown said...

ah my dear bethany, how I miss you! Have you started writing that book yet? When ever I start spouting something along the same line to my friends here, they look at me like I have spent too much time in la biblioteca! So I have developed lots of coping techniques! Something I REALLY miss though... MK's!!!!!!!!!!!! There aren't any around for miles and miles! okay, have I established that I miss you?? TQM!!

° ÐãVeØ ° said...

I miss you Bethany.
Everytime I read this blog, I am amazed by you.
I know you'll get through all this on top. And smile.