Sunday, February 26, 2012

peace and curry

I've been super-busy the past few days, but this was my Friday:

Today I skipped my pop culture class. First time skipping a class here!

Only it was so I could attend the full peace and conflict resolution workshop presented by Johan Galtung.


The lecture/workshop was really interesting. I don't want to go into too many details since I already wrote a lot of his key points in my notes, but I think, if nothing else, the simple example that he gave of conflict resolution between a husband and wife (because, as he said during the lecture, his methods apply to conflicts on any scale, whether micro or macro) was memorable as a basic lesson in resolution: both sides need to give up something, but they should both gain; rather than just settling for compromise, both should ultimately get something more out of the resolution.

After the lecture there was a meeting for the International Advisory Program. As a side note, the whole time we were waiting for the American groups to be called (since we were the last country despite being the majority) I kept thinking how much I wanted to do a "USA! USA!" chant when it was our turn...I'm glad all the other Americans were on the same page and started the chant anyway.

The meeting itself was...interesting. But making students write bi-weekly essays complete with in-text citations (on topics ranging from food to places to go...what sort of specificity is that?) along with status reports for something they only volunteered to do to make friends...isn't the best approach to keeping people in the program. My group's members have been to America before, too, so they already have an advantage; making them write essays that no one is going to read isn't going to help them, in my opinion.

Anyway.

After that I went to New Delhi for curry. First time going there for the dinner menu...though I swear the lunch menu is more filling. Totally could've gone for 1/4 of a second nan.

Friday, February 24, 2012

suki ya nen, dotonbori

Quick intro--I'm Kathy, and this is my second semester as an exchange student at Kansai Gaidai University in Hirakata City, Japan. I'll be posting and...well, back-posting all the stuff that I've experienced here.

My main reason for not starting a blog earlier is because I struggled too much to come up with a blog URL. I really have trouble choosing names. Either I just can't come up with one or I come up with too many and can't choose between them. I wish I could go all postmodern on my blog and not have a title at all (woo--), but it's really just that I'm super-picky.

But I did finally end up with this one. Actually, this is the second rendition of my blog, so I finally, finally ended up with this one.

Although I live in Hirakata-shi, Osaka. I tend to go to Shinsaibashi and Namba a lot. Mainly just to shop in Shinsaibashi-suji more than near Dotonbori...but Shinsaibashi-suji's too long of a blog name. So that's my reasoning for this blog name, really!

Maybe it'll also be motivation to go to Dotonbori more often, too.