Hooray for Friday! Walking out of my 9-1 class today and knowing I had the next 68 hours to myself felt great. It felt great even though I have no exciting plans for the weekend. In fact, I have lots of work to do, but at least I can sleep in and hopefully find an hour or two to go for a quick snorkel if the sun decides to show its face (it has been overcast and rainy here pretty much all week).
No real updates other than then usual mundane activities of cooking dinner, getting supplies, and keeping the apartment in order. I'm going to spend the weekend doing copious amounts of reading and perhaps even begin thinking about the two Globalization & Global Governance essays I have due on October 29th. Despite the verbose style of many of the writers I have to read, I am excited to learn more about the cultural and political history of the Caribbean. It's such a unique region. It is both united and fragmented in so many ways - many different national languages and cultures, isolated by water, with limited resources and populations, as well as varying political status, all united by a common history of slavery, colonialism, and continued marginalization. Thus Caribbean integration presents a truly vexing problem. On the one hand it seems impossible. How could so many differing countries, with the geographic, social, and economic problems they have, all unite into an EU-like organization? Yet, there is a sense of a shared Caribbean community. One of my Professors, who is from Grenada, considers herself a "Caribbean Citizen" and I'm sure there are many more like her in the region. How does one emphasize the commonalities and minimize the differences? That, to me, seems to be the task at hand and if the appropriate regional leadership materializes, I believe it is entirely possible.
Ok time for me to go and enjoy a bit of my Friday night. Tomorrow I'm leaning towards posting about some intriguing cultural differences I've noticed so far, so check back if you're interested.
No comments:
Post a Comment