1. I'm doing a much better job of appreciating the lifestyle I have and cutting down on the materialistic and superficial aspects of my behavior. Normally I have a pretty deep attachment to things and how they represent various time periods of my life, but since going on this trip and seeing people who had to live based not upon their material wealth, but via their personal experiences and interactions with others, I've been inspired to rein in my stuff and focus more on how I'm absorbing information and getting the most out of everthing I'm doing.
2. My passion for World Cup Soccer has shot out the window, and with Germany facing Spain today I'm hoping that Deutschland can pull through to the end and give me a show of my favorite team in Soccer City, tying together our delightful experiences in Soweto and my passion for the German language.
3. I've been following stories about reconciliation and conflict more closely, and I've been lucky to spot lots of positive South Africa stories thanks to the World Cup. Reconciliation as a solution is the inivisible that is becoming visible- prior to this course, it was an empty catch-all for creating a peaceful environment post-conflict. Now I feel strongly that reconciliation goes past that- that it builds new, positive relationships too. I feel so proud of South Africa reading positive article after positive article, and I'm very impressed with what a welcoming face the South Africans have presented to the world.
Some of the articles:
Brainstorming for my project, I've found it difficult to find an example of reconciliation as intense and widely felt as the post-Apartheid situation in South Africa. It seems that the willingness of the people involved to create a new country together made the reconciliation in this situation far more visible than in others in the U.S., particularly when the conflict is still occurring or has not had a definitive end (at least politically) like Apartheid did. I think it's going to be challenging to come up with solutions for some of the situations I'm considering because the application of my reconciliatory ideas may never happen. Luckily, because reconciliation is such a huge issue around the world and in many different scales, I will hopefully be able to draw from past successes or failures to describe what will happen or what should occur.
I'd like to conclude by mentioning how much I miss traveling already- South Africa was such a delightful experience in a country that is sometimes considered to be more dangerous than usual American destinations, and I feel more capable of traveling in unfamiliar territory and less developed regions of the globe. I've also looked into ways to get myself back to South Africa, through various volunteer programs and possibly working with monkeys, which I find enormously fascinating. Until then, I'll have to admire from a distance.
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