Work & Poverty

Okay i've found a flaw in the study abroad scheme. If you are foreign and you go to an American University then they are not going to be sympathetic to the fact that you're last month at University is also your last month in America. My god are the piling up the work. I've got nothing but deadlines until I go home. Meanies. I even have an exam at 6pm the night before I go home. I just want the sun to come back so I can bury my troubles away in the sand while I go and have a swim in the sea. Sadly though it is now a bit cold and I've had to put away my florescent pink shorts and tie-dye top (hah) and gone back to the London way of dressing. I even had to buy a coat. All the stress of my beach deprivation is getting to me and I have a stonking headache. I couldn't understand why it wouldn't go away but then I realised I had popped two vitamin supplements rather than ibuprofen...! Tonight I had a really lovely chat with my boyfriend though which made me smile. He's currently in Vanuatu looking after turtles. I love talking to him for many reasons, but mostly it really amuses me that that our conversation traveled time. I spoke to him at 7pm on a Thursday and in Vanuatu it was 12pm on a Friday! I always think it puts some real flaws into those end of the world movies when they say the world will end on a set day... anyway i'm rambling.

Yesterday evening I went along to a Poverty Simulation experiment for my Deviant Class. The idea of a class was that we would be placed into a family and we had to live out a month (3 hours) as if we were them. To do this we had to go to work, pay the bills, buy food, go to school, take my virtual  father in law to the hospital to get his medicine. It was really interesting though for the most part and it definitely did open my eyes to what some people go thorough.... but then the other more immature side of me just couldn't take it seriously, for example, in one week (represented by 15 minutes) I was sold crack- cocaine, had all my possessions stolen, twice. Then our house got reprocessed and I got sacked from work. In a week. I mean come on! It was a good experience though, even if I did get a little to carried away (I citizen arrested the crack dealer then stole all his money). It was also cool that my pretend father was a marine who traveled the world so I kept getting side-tracked with questions for him. Tomorrow evening I have been invited over the house of the president of local United Nations chapter for dinner with her and her husband. I'm secretly hoping this means home cooked roast potatoes. It'll be lovely though i'm sure and they have been kind enough to let me interview them for a ten page paper I have to write this weekend. Keeping busy, keeping busy.