I went to eat lunch in Campus Center yesterday. I happened to be sitting by the window reading a book and when I looked up, there were people gathering on the plaza outside. I watched them set up speakers and people hanging out. Naturally I had to go see what the hubub was. It was an anti-war protest. Okay, and I'm not going to lie. I knew it was going to happen and that's why I chose to eat lunch there and to happen to be sitting in that particular spot.
I wanted to see a protest because I'd never seen one, and besides, my brother saw the Republican National Convention riots. I was behind. (Up until that point I'd been ahead because I sat jury duty) Plus, SPU is a hippie school so might as well go watch them right? What else are you going to do when you have homework to procrastinate?
When it looked like they were getting started, I went outside and about laughed. First, they had this guy play a song on a guitar and sing about how horrible it is that we're in a war and how we shouldn't support the troops or whatever. Then, this girl got up and read this whole thing about what they all did at the aforementioned riots at the Republican National Convention. I really really wanted to interject a few comments, but I kept my thoughts to myself. To be perfectly honest, the whole protest thing was rather disappointing. I don't know what I expected to see, maybe something straight out of the 70s but it definitely didn't happen. After a few more little speech thingies, they all grouped up, grabbed signs and started chanting about how we shouldn't be in Iraq. They then went marching off across campus. The Campus newspaper today said that there were about 100 people, but there was no way there were that many unless they picked up people along the way. There were maybe maybe fifty people. Generally, I just shook my head and supressed a laugh at the whole thing. Yeah, if you ask most of the students on this liberal campus, they will tell you that they don't support this, and we should get out of Iraq. Yet, do they care enough to do something about it? not really. The hippies do though. This event was sponsored by a group on campus called "the Anti-war commitee" My question is, what do they do when there is no war?
Last night was Russian movie night. The movie was called "The Barber of Siberia" it's really long (i.e. 3 hours) and it's typically russian (i.e. Rather depressing) but there's enough good stuff in it to definitely make it worth the watch. Plus, it's mostly in English and there are some well known people in it such as Julia Ormond and Richard Harris. The best part was when I went into the room where it was being held. I asked the grad students (in Russian) if it was a good movie, and they were like "yeah, but it's long" and they spoke slowly and they said one word for long and then decided I may not know that and so used another (Understood both) I nodded as they spoke and said something about how I'd heard it was a good movie, and then one girl randomly goes "How do you know Russian" because this is America and these are grad students from Russia and they teach beginner courses and so most Americans they know don't speak Russian. And so I said "I lived in Russia last year" and they asked me my name and I don't know it just made me feel special. I miss rapid-fire Russian.
The only other news really, is how irritated I was in my English class today. Not that that's news, but this time it was at the students, not the professor. We've studied some books on the ideas and theories of Postcolonialism and now we're reading fiction. So today we're sitting in class and he's just about to let us go. "Any other questions?" And people start asking the most ridiculous things ever! like "Do we find out about this in the book?" And I'm like just sitting there thinking "why does this matter? Read the book and you'll find out" and then someone else asked a question about something really insignificant like "Is such and such important later?" I'm like "are you all idiots?" At least we're reading fiction now which is more along my lines. I get into the whole analyzing the symbolism thing and stuff, so I'm going to be enjoying the rest of the semester. At least, I hope I will.
No comments:
Post a Comment