Because You Asked For it

So everyone in LA is getting on me to update my blog. Quite frankly, I’ve been wanting to but I don’t want my life updates to be contrived. I want them to be organic and flow uninhibited from my rapidly moving fingers while my brain sits back in wonder. But that ain’t happenin. Both my fingers and brain are tapped out. The semester is almost over and I’ve been spending all my days in class/in lab/writing papers. To add to that, my life here isn’t nearly as exciting as life in Nan. I mean, every week in Thailand someone wanted my blood or the market fell apart because I changed my hair. Things are mellow here and, as such, a lot less exciting to write about.

Although this is a recent exchange I participated in:

Raymond from Norway: I like your hair (it was an afro)
Me: Thanks!
Raymond from Norway: It suits you
Me: I like to think so
Raymond from Norway: You know, cus you’re black
This is the same Raymond who told me that he heard that black people have all the moves. Dude is ridiculous.

But my interactions with him aren't frequent and, alas, my blog has been left lonely.

I now attempt to rectify that.

The highlight of the last couple weeks has been my English conversation class. Every week, I meet postgrad students from UNSW and lead conversations to help them practice English and become more confident (yea, you read that correctly, I’m getting paid to talk). I’m typically joined by Juan Pablo from Argentina, Francesco from Italy, Kamrul from Bangladesh, Mani and Fatemeh from Iran, Tatiana from Russia, and Chelsea from China. I absolutely love it. Sometimes we chat about what annoys us about Sydney (cost of living and unpredictable public transportation) or what we did over the weekend (flower festivals in the capital, jazz in the city). Other times we talk globally about politics, poverty, or the environment. Sometimes we get deep, and talk about the meaning of dreams, the possibility of utopian societies, or the definition of love. It’s really amazing hearing all the different perspectives and I’ve learned a ton. I’m really starting to think I might need to make this teaching English thing a permanent part of my life, I just love interacting with people from other places.

Speaking of people from other places, I take serious pride in the number of international artists in my musical repertoire. So I’ve been trying to learn more about Australian artists. I haven’t gotten very far, but I’d love to recommend to those interested: Katy Noonan (unfortunately my favorite song by her is a cover of Crazy by Gnarls Barkley) and the Black seeds (who are actually Kiwi but whose song Cool me Down is one of the best feel good songs I’ve ever heard).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWQsV_v02CY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZytEicHf6p4

In other news, the photos from the international student photo shoot came out!