I just had a really annoying experience. I was heading out to go to the local supermarket called Jordans and I decided that I should see if there is a quicker way down to the main road than the normal way I go. So I decided to ask this group of locals, all young men, who hang out near my apartment if I could get to the main road by going right instead of left. They said yes and showed me how to get there, but then told me they needed a six pack of beer from Jordans. I asked them what kind they wanted and they said "Banks." Fine, I thought. Its not that much trouble for me and they did just show me how to get down to the main road via another route. I thought of asking for money for the beer at that moment but figured I could just get it when I returned.
Long story short, I returned with their six pack but they said they couldn't pay me. I didn't want to ask why, because I figure the last thing a white person should do is ask a bunch of locals why they cant afford something, so I just asked them if they'll pay me back later. They said yes (obviously lying) and I walked away pissed off. Its not the money I am upset about (the six pack was $6.50 U.S.) but rather the lack of respect and what this means for every time I have to walk past these guys on the way to school now. But on the other hand, I can't tell if I've been had or if this is a normal exchange of advice for another friendly service. I really doubt this, but we shall see.
Anyway, all you people who are reading this, don't worry about my safety - I've walked past these guys many times without problem. I don't believe they will start bothering me because of this. If anything, they're less likely to since I didn't get in their faces about the money. That said, I do worry about them thinking they can get free six packs off me whenever they want. Next time I go to the supermarket, I am going to make sure they aren't outside.
Ok, time to start thinking about dinner. I am going to try making shrimp scampi tonight (my mother's suggestion) so I need to read the recipe and get all my tools together. I'm looking forward to this because I've grown really tired of chicken and pasta lately! I hope it will give me a boost of productivity to start my second essay tonight, but we shall see.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Thursday, September 23, 2010
The Weekend is Here!
It's Thursday night, which means my weekend has officially begun! I know, everyone who works for a living that reads this blog, feel free to hate me. I would too if I were you.
My weekend got off to a great start too; normally I would have to wait until 8pm (when my last class ends) for it to begin, but today my 5-8 class was canceled because they had just done a lot of painting in the graduate studies building and we were told to go home because of the fumes. So, I got to go home at 5:30 and begin my weekend a couple hours earlier than normal.
This is a good thing cause I'm pretty beat, even though I have class only three days a week. Its not the classes that get me, its the mountains of reading and all the assignments that are awaiting my attention that are mentally exhausting. So far I've been doing a pretty good job of getting a head start on my assignments (I already finished one essay) and performing triage on my reading lists. This weekend I am going to finish another essay (leaving 4 for me to do for the semester) and catch up on some Caribbean history. For those of you that are interested, here are the essay topics I am doing for my Globalization & Global Governance class. The first one is the essay I've already finished.
1) Account for the rise of global governance. What are the challenges to deepening multilateral cooperation?
2) What do you understand to be the salient ideas and assumptions that made for the “Washington Consensus”? (Don’t go past 1990).
My other plans for the weekend are pretty simple. I'm going to do a quick run to the local grocery store tomorrow and if the weather is nice out, which it hasn't been in a while, I will head out for a quick snorkel. A swim sounds really relaxing right now and I found out the other week that there's a beach literally 2 minutes from my apartment! I've gotta go try it out.
The other big piece of news that happened this week is Nora booked her flights to come visit! She'll be visiting from October 31st-November 7th, which is a good time for me because it's right in the middle of the semester, when I'm likely to need a break. My plan is to do as many of my major assignments before she gets here so that I can have some free time to explore the island with her. This means a lot of work now, but it will be worth it once she gets here!
That's really all that happened this week. Ever since school started life has been a lot less dynamic. That said, I still like it here even though I am starting to get bored with the food I am able to cook/buy and I am getting frustrated about my lack of cable TV. I would really like to be able to sit and do my work with football on in the background, but alas, it seems the cable company really just wants me to be extra studious this semester.
One last thing before I go: I was reading Nicholas Kristof's Op-Ed today in the NY Times and in it there was a link to a really awesome movement called The Girl Effect. You should visit their site (http://girleffect.org/) and watch the first video they made, which is on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIvmE4_KMNw. If you're moved like I was, I encourage you to donate or spread the word.
Ok thats enough of my preaching - time to go relax for a bit so I can begin my second essay tomorrow! Night everyone and hope your weekends get off to as good of a start as mine did!
My weekend got off to a great start too; normally I would have to wait until 8pm (when my last class ends) for it to begin, but today my 5-8 class was canceled because they had just done a lot of painting in the graduate studies building and we were told to go home because of the fumes. So, I got to go home at 5:30 and begin my weekend a couple hours earlier than normal.
This is a good thing cause I'm pretty beat, even though I have class only three days a week. Its not the classes that get me, its the mountains of reading and all the assignments that are awaiting my attention that are mentally exhausting. So far I've been doing a pretty good job of getting a head start on my assignments (I already finished one essay) and performing triage on my reading lists. This weekend I am going to finish another essay (leaving 4 for me to do for the semester) and catch up on some Caribbean history. For those of you that are interested, here are the essay topics I am doing for my Globalization & Global Governance class. The first one is the essay I've already finished.
1) Account for the rise of global governance. What are the challenges to deepening multilateral cooperation?
2) What do you understand to be the salient ideas and assumptions that made for the “Washington Consensus”? (Don’t go past 1990).
My other plans for the weekend are pretty simple. I'm going to do a quick run to the local grocery store tomorrow and if the weather is nice out, which it hasn't been in a while, I will head out for a quick snorkel. A swim sounds really relaxing right now and I found out the other week that there's a beach literally 2 minutes from my apartment! I've gotta go try it out.
The other big piece of news that happened this week is Nora booked her flights to come visit! She'll be visiting from October 31st-November 7th, which is a good time for me because it's right in the middle of the semester, when I'm likely to need a break. My plan is to do as many of my major assignments before she gets here so that I can have some free time to explore the island with her. This means a lot of work now, but it will be worth it once she gets here!
That's really all that happened this week. Ever since school started life has been a lot less dynamic. That said, I still like it here even though I am starting to get bored with the food I am able to cook/buy and I am getting frustrated about my lack of cable TV. I would really like to be able to sit and do my work with football on in the background, but alas, it seems the cable company really just wants me to be extra studious this semester.
One last thing before I go: I was reading Nicholas Kristof's Op-Ed today in the NY Times and in it there was a link to a really awesome movement called The Girl Effect. You should visit their site (http://girleffect.org/) and watch the first video they made, which is on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIvmE4_KMNw. If you're moved like I was, I encourage you to donate or spread the word.
Ok thats enough of my preaching - time to go relax for a bit so I can begin my second essay tomorrow! Night everyone and hope your weekends get off to as good of a start as mine did!
Sunday, September 19, 2010
The Past Couple Days
I last posted on Wednesday and since then some interesting things have occurred. First, I finished my hellish 9am-1pm, Monday-Friday class, which means I now have four day weekends that I can use to tackle the many large essays I have to write this semester. Most importantly it means I get to stop waking up at 8am (I'm really not a morning person) and instead I can get on a schedule that better suits me.
Second, last night I went out with a couple of people from my now finished 9-1 class. We went to Oistins for dinner, where I had grilled flying fish for the first time (delicious!), and then to St. Lawrence Gap, which is where a lot of bars/dance places are. It was a lot of fun even though most of the places were pretty empty - they aren't kidding when they say this is the slow season! I was told it will be more lively from December-February, so it might be worth going back sometime in that time span.
The first place we went to was called the Ship Inn and it was only the nine of us and a couple of expat and visiting British. The place is run by a crazy British guy who would come up to me and my friends, ask us what we wanted to drink, pause for a beat, and then get all pissed off when we took more than two seconds to reply. I've never wanted to call someone a "wanker" more than I did at that moment. Normally we would have left, but it was happy hour from 11-12, so all the drinks were half price. This meant a Jack Daniels on the rocks was only $6 bds, or $3 U.S. Quite the deal even if the drinks were small. We left there shortly after midnight to go to a place that had more people and more dancing, which is where we stayed for the rest of the night.
Third, I've finalized my class schedule, I swear! I am taking five courses this semester and four next semester. While this means I am going to have a LOT of work this semester, it means that I don't have to come back a year from now to take classes. Therefore, I can finish all my classes by next semester, write my thesis over the summer, and then leave around a year from now to go back to the U.S. and find an internship to finish out the degree. Doing it this way means I can write my PhD applications from the U.S., which will be useful if I have to go for interviews, as well as save some money by potentially living at home.
One thing I forgot to mention on Wednesday was that at the reception after the Canadian minister spoke I finally got to meet the Charge' d'Affaires from the U.S. Embassy. His name is Dr. Brent Hardt and we spoke for a good twenty minutes about a range of things, including the fact that he just took his youngest son on a tour of Hamilton College! I tried to persuade him that Hamilton is a great choice for his son, but we'll see if that turns out to be the case. His son is an aspiring architect, and I'm not so sure how good of a program Hamilton has in that field.
That's all I can think of for now. I'm sure there are some things that I'm forgetting, but I'll just toss those into the next post. Have a good week everybody!
Second, last night I went out with a couple of people from my now finished 9-1 class. We went to Oistins for dinner, where I had grilled flying fish for the first time (delicious!), and then to St. Lawrence Gap, which is where a lot of bars/dance places are. It was a lot of fun even though most of the places were pretty empty - they aren't kidding when they say this is the slow season! I was told it will be more lively from December-February, so it might be worth going back sometime in that time span.
The first place we went to was called the Ship Inn and it was only the nine of us and a couple of expat and visiting British. The place is run by a crazy British guy who would come up to me and my friends, ask us what we wanted to drink, pause for a beat, and then get all pissed off when we took more than two seconds to reply. I've never wanted to call someone a "wanker" more than I did at that moment. Normally we would have left, but it was happy hour from 11-12, so all the drinks were half price. This meant a Jack Daniels on the rocks was only $6 bds, or $3 U.S. Quite the deal even if the drinks were small. We left there shortly after midnight to go to a place that had more people and more dancing, which is where we stayed for the rest of the night.
Third, I've finalized my class schedule, I swear! I am taking five courses this semester and four next semester. While this means I am going to have a LOT of work this semester, it means that I don't have to come back a year from now to take classes. Therefore, I can finish all my classes by next semester, write my thesis over the summer, and then leave around a year from now to go back to the U.S. and find an internship to finish out the degree. Doing it this way means I can write my PhD applications from the U.S., which will be useful if I have to go for interviews, as well as save some money by potentially living at home.
One thing I forgot to mention on Wednesday was that at the reception after the Canadian minister spoke I finally got to meet the Charge' d'Affaires from the U.S. Embassy. His name is Dr. Brent Hardt and we spoke for a good twenty minutes about a range of things, including the fact that he just took his youngest son on a tour of Hamilton College! I tried to persuade him that Hamilton is a great choice for his son, but we'll see if that turns out to be the case. His son is an aspiring architect, and I'm not so sure how good of a program Hamilton has in that field.
That's all I can think of for now. I'm sure there are some things that I'm forgetting, but I'll just toss those into the next post. Have a good week everybody!
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Quick Update
Hey All,
So quick update of some interesting things that happened recently.
1) I forgot to mention this the other day, but yesterday I saw my first Barbadian green monkeys. I was walking up to my apartment and I saw these odd looking creatures with long tails running down the street away from me. At first I didn't know what they were, but then I realized they must be a bunch of Barbadian green monkeys up to no good. I believe they had been exploring the trash offerings of a couple of my neighbors.
2) Also, on Tuesday I tried the campus cafeteria for the first time. I had roasted chicken with Marconi pie (Barbadian form of Mac & Cheese) and steamed carrots. For a little over $10 bds it was a pretty decent meal. That said, it wasn't good enough to get me to walk up the hill every day for lunch once I stop having my 9-1 class on the main campus. But it is nice knowing that there is a decent and inexpensive food source nearby if I should ever need it.
3) Today in my Globalization & Global Governance class we watched a documentary called "Life and Debt" which is about the impact the IMF's structural adjustment loans had on Jamaica after they were implemented in 1977. It was a really depressing film, but one that I think everyone should see. It's available on Amazon for those of you that are interested. (http://www.amazon.com/Life-Debt-Belinda-Becker/dp/B00008NNPK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1284580622&sr=8-1).
4) I just got back from a lecture at UWI where the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs responsible for the Americas spoke about Canada's foreign policy initiatives and interests in the region. It was an interesting presentation and there is clearly a lot that Canada can do to help the region. Right now Caribbean-Canada relations are a hot topic in Barbados because CARICOM and Canada are in the beginning stages of negotiating a new free trade agreement. Normally this would be cause for excitement, but the Caribbean is having buyer's remorse about signing the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the EU, and under WTO rules, countries cannot offer preferential trade terms to one country (or set of countries) and then not offer the same terms to another country. Doing so would open the discriminating countries up to punitive tariffs and quotas. So, in short, Canada expects the same treatment from CARICOM that CARICOM decided to give to the EU in the EPA, but CARICOM is realizing that its decision to sign the EPA was a mistake and is trying to avoid replicating its terms in another negotiation. Its a very interesting topic and there will be more to come on this for sure.
Anyway thats all for now. I have to go make a veeery belated dinner and get ready for a marathon day tomorrow; I am going to have class from 9am-1pm, 2-5, and 5:30-8. It's going to be brutal, but thankfully this is a one-time occasion. Also, it will give me the knowledge I need to make a decision, finally, about how many classes I want to take this semester!
See you tomorrow!
So quick update of some interesting things that happened recently.
1) I forgot to mention this the other day, but yesterday I saw my first Barbadian green monkeys. I was walking up to my apartment and I saw these odd looking creatures with long tails running down the street away from me. At first I didn't know what they were, but then I realized they must be a bunch of Barbadian green monkeys up to no good. I believe they had been exploring the trash offerings of a couple of my neighbors.
2) Also, on Tuesday I tried the campus cafeteria for the first time. I had roasted chicken with Marconi pie (Barbadian form of Mac & Cheese) and steamed carrots. For a little over $10 bds it was a pretty decent meal. That said, it wasn't good enough to get me to walk up the hill every day for lunch once I stop having my 9-1 class on the main campus. But it is nice knowing that there is a decent and inexpensive food source nearby if I should ever need it.
3) Today in my Globalization & Global Governance class we watched a documentary called "Life and Debt" which is about the impact the IMF's structural adjustment loans had on Jamaica after they were implemented in 1977. It was a really depressing film, but one that I think everyone should see. It's available on Amazon for those of you that are interested. (http://www.amazon.com/Life-Debt-Belinda-Becker/dp/B00008NNPK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1284580622&sr=8-1).
4) I just got back from a lecture at UWI where the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs responsible for the Americas spoke about Canada's foreign policy initiatives and interests in the region. It was an interesting presentation and there is clearly a lot that Canada can do to help the region. Right now Caribbean-Canada relations are a hot topic in Barbados because CARICOM and Canada are in the beginning stages of negotiating a new free trade agreement. Normally this would be cause for excitement, but the Caribbean is having buyer's remorse about signing the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the EU, and under WTO rules, countries cannot offer preferential trade terms to one country (or set of countries) and then not offer the same terms to another country. Doing so would open the discriminating countries up to punitive tariffs and quotas. So, in short, Canada expects the same treatment from CARICOM that CARICOM decided to give to the EU in the EPA, but CARICOM is realizing that its decision to sign the EPA was a mistake and is trying to avoid replicating its terms in another negotiation. Its a very interesting topic and there will be more to come on this for sure.
Anyway thats all for now. I have to go make a veeery belated dinner and get ready for a marathon day tomorrow; I am going to have class from 9am-1pm, 2-5, and 5:30-8. It's going to be brutal, but thankfully this is a one-time occasion. Also, it will give me the knowledge I need to make a decision, finally, about how many classes I want to take this semester!
See you tomorrow!
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Settling Down to the Routine
Hey all,
So there are two reasons I haven't been posting as much as usual recently. First, when I get home from class at 8pm I am usually too tired to compose anything. The chance that I can put together coherent sentences is slim (tonight being an obvious exception!). The second is that I am starting to settle into a daily routine, which while giving my life a bit of stability, is also quite uneventful and uninteresting. So, I do not want to bore you with petty details such as what I had for lunch today or minor musings about the weather.
Basically I've just been trying to stay on top of my school work while planning ahead for the rest of the Master's program. It turns out that my plan to take 4 courses this semester may be up for revision as new information has come to light that might make taking 5 classes this semester and 4 next semester the prudent move. I should know by Friday what I am doing and will communicate my final plans in another post.
The readings for class are interesting but there's an absolute ton of them. I would be able to get through more of the articles if I didn't have to prepare each meal, clean, and go shopping frequently. These things, as I'm sure all of you adults are aware of, really eat into your time and energy (especially in this heat!). So for now I just do the best I can knowing that this hell-class ends on Friday and therefore I will have my mornings for schoolwork starting next week.
That's all I can manage for tonight. I'll try to post some more about cultural observations or what living down here is actually like in the future.
All the best from Barbados,
Stephen
So there are two reasons I haven't been posting as much as usual recently. First, when I get home from class at 8pm I am usually too tired to compose anything. The chance that I can put together coherent sentences is slim (tonight being an obvious exception!). The second is that I am starting to settle into a daily routine, which while giving my life a bit of stability, is also quite uneventful and uninteresting. So, I do not want to bore you with petty details such as what I had for lunch today or minor musings about the weather.
Basically I've just been trying to stay on top of my school work while planning ahead for the rest of the Master's program. It turns out that my plan to take 4 courses this semester may be up for revision as new information has come to light that might make taking 5 classes this semester and 4 next semester the prudent move. I should know by Friday what I am doing and will communicate my final plans in another post.
The readings for class are interesting but there's an absolute ton of them. I would be able to get through more of the articles if I didn't have to prepare each meal, clean, and go shopping frequently. These things, as I'm sure all of you adults are aware of, really eat into your time and energy (especially in this heat!). So for now I just do the best I can knowing that this hell-class ends on Friday and therefore I will have my mornings for schoolwork starting next week.
That's all I can manage for tonight. I'll try to post some more about cultural observations or what living down here is actually like in the future.
All the best from Barbados,
Stephen
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Some Cultural Observations
As promised, here are some observations about Barbadian culture that I've made so far:
1) People here are exceptionally polite. When students arrive to class in the morning they say "Good morning" as they walk in and everyone else responds in kind. The first time this happened I lifted my head from the book I was reading because I thought the teacher had walked in and was going to start class. Nope, just a fellow student wishing me a good morning. How nice!
2) Barbadians are very very reserved people. There is none of the gregarious, spicy, jubliantness that most people associate with Caribbean people. That is not to say Barbadians are boring or bitter people. In fact they are quite interesting to talk to and seem to be generally upbeat (although there is the typical Caribbean pessimism about the state of public affairs). But there is none of the cultural craziness that one would find in Jamaica or Trinidad. There are many hypotheses for the unique Barbadian culture, but most scholars attribute it in some way to the 300 years of uninterrupted British rule over the island. For this reason, Barbados is known as "the most British" of all the former UK colonies in the West Indies.
3) Barbados is a very religious society. Most people go to church on Sunday, which makes doing anything else on a Sunday nearly impossible. I had heard that Barbadians were religious, but it didn't hit me as to just how integral a part of the society it was until earlier this week in my Globalization & Global Governance class. A student started out making a point about one thing or another, which spawned a group discussion. When the discussion-originating student wanted to follow up on his comment no one was listening to him so he let fly a local saying "Don't worry, I am the least of the Apostles." I inquired as to what exactly he meant by that and he said it was a local way of saying he's clearly not worth listening to.
4) Violence in Barbados is a big deal. I do not mean to say that violence is a problem in Barbados. What I mean by that statement is that violence is looked down upon and rare, so that when a violent act does occur it is the talk of the country and disgust is rampant. Now most people in the world consider violence a bad thing. But in many countries it is part of the culture (beating of wives, honor killings, etc) or becomes just an accepted part of society (see the U.S. and its thousands of murders every year). In Barbados, violence runs contrary to every aspect of the restrained culture. So, when eight days ago six people were killed in an attempted robbery, it was the talk of the country. The front page of every paper ran the story in big print - in the way a terrorist attack in the U.S. would get covered by American newspapers. And the shock did not disappear after a few days. Yesterday, at noon, there was a nation-wide moment of silence in honor of the victims.
5) My last observation, so far, is the tight-knit sense of community here in Barbados. There is a real sense of common struggle due to the small population, geography, and lack of natural resources. And, because there are so few people, there is a great expectation placed upon every young person to succeed not just for themselves, but for the country. People here are immensely proud of the relative prosperity they have built for themselves, but they realize that it could disappear within a generation if there isn't a constant struggle to get their domestic institutions right and promote Barbados in the global economy. They know that there would be no gentle landing into a comfortable lifestyle if they became complacent with, generally speaking, how things are.
Those are the main observations I have made so far. I am sure there will be more in the future and I am sure that the above five will undergo varying modifications as my knowledge of, and experience with, Barbadian society increases.
1) People here are exceptionally polite. When students arrive to class in the morning they say "Good morning" as they walk in and everyone else responds in kind. The first time this happened I lifted my head from the book I was reading because I thought the teacher had walked in and was going to start class. Nope, just a fellow student wishing me a good morning. How nice!
2) Barbadians are very very reserved people. There is none of the gregarious, spicy, jubliantness that most people associate with Caribbean people. That is not to say Barbadians are boring or bitter people. In fact they are quite interesting to talk to and seem to be generally upbeat (although there is the typical Caribbean pessimism about the state of public affairs). But there is none of the cultural craziness that one would find in Jamaica or Trinidad. There are many hypotheses for the unique Barbadian culture, but most scholars attribute it in some way to the 300 years of uninterrupted British rule over the island. For this reason, Barbados is known as "the most British" of all the former UK colonies in the West Indies.
3) Barbados is a very religious society. Most people go to church on Sunday, which makes doing anything else on a Sunday nearly impossible. I had heard that Barbadians were religious, but it didn't hit me as to just how integral a part of the society it was until earlier this week in my Globalization & Global Governance class. A student started out making a point about one thing or another, which spawned a group discussion. When the discussion-originating student wanted to follow up on his comment no one was listening to him so he let fly a local saying "Don't worry, I am the least of the Apostles." I inquired as to what exactly he meant by that and he said it was a local way of saying he's clearly not worth listening to.
4) Violence in Barbados is a big deal. I do not mean to say that violence is a problem in Barbados. What I mean by that statement is that violence is looked down upon and rare, so that when a violent act does occur it is the talk of the country and disgust is rampant. Now most people in the world consider violence a bad thing. But in many countries it is part of the culture (beating of wives, honor killings, etc) or becomes just an accepted part of society (see the U.S. and its thousands of murders every year). In Barbados, violence runs contrary to every aspect of the restrained culture. So, when eight days ago six people were killed in an attempted robbery, it was the talk of the country. The front page of every paper ran the story in big print - in the way a terrorist attack in the U.S. would get covered by American newspapers. And the shock did not disappear after a few days. Yesterday, at noon, there was a nation-wide moment of silence in honor of the victims.
5) My last observation, so far, is the tight-knit sense of community here in Barbados. There is a real sense of common struggle due to the small population, geography, and lack of natural resources. And, because there are so few people, there is a great expectation placed upon every young person to succeed not just for themselves, but for the country. People here are immensely proud of the relative prosperity they have built for themselves, but they realize that it could disappear within a generation if there isn't a constant struggle to get their domestic institutions right and promote Barbados in the global economy. They know that there would be no gentle landing into a comfortable lifestyle if they became complacent with, generally speaking, how things are.
Those are the main observations I have made so far. I am sure there will be more in the future and I am sure that the above five will undergo varying modifications as my knowledge of, and experience with, Barbadian society increases.
Friday, September 10, 2010
TGIF!
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 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.
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