Miss Understanding

Sunday. Our last day off. (Hint: this is going to be a very short and very boring blog.)

Of course, I woke up very late. Since I hadn't showered or eaten yet, I decided to skip a lecture on Hegel—not to say that I escaped the lecture completely: Julia insisted on showing me a Zizek video (and explaining it to my puny little human mind), "First as Tragedy, Then as Farce." 

Julia and I had hoped to force Mr. Hillyer to take us to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, but since we only tried to make the plans last night (oops), that ended up not working out. I started the day late, but I started it with a run around the Home Area (the part of Philadelphia we're allowed to explore unchaperoned). I Skyped with my grandma and mom, and later my dad and my brother, and read for the early part of the day. Then Donna, Gwennie, Andrew, Julia and I (Bryan was playing laser tag) met up with Mr. Hillyer for dinner at the poorly nicknamed "fro-gro" for Fresh Grocer. We had planned to revisit the Lil' Pop Shop, but Julia and I skipped the popsicle adventure so we could make it to a lecture on feminism. 

At the end of the lecture, we wrote what we discussed
in our small groups on the board

The lecture started with a definition of the word "kyriarchy," which is basically the patriarchy for all forms of oppression. Eliana talked to us about intersectionality and sexism, during which I had a mini-epiphany about gender. Basically, it was about how if I were to describe, say, Julia Mason, I would say she blah blah blah. See, I can't avoid calling her "she." It's how the language works: you must reveal my gender when you talk about me, but you don't reveal my race. Male or female, you can't detach yourself from your sex. We watched a film called Feminist Stories from Women's Liberation, which was about feminist movements and how they have been forgotten. Someone said that once people get comfortable, they give up the battle. After that, we had another productive small group discussion, where we talked about the goals of feminist movements, and about "chivalry" and gender "traditions," like women taking their husbands' names in marriage, and men holding doors for women. 

When we got back to the room, I saw a bug on the window. I assumed it was a cockroach, but when I told Julia about it and we got closer, we discovered a creature. 

An evil, horrible creature. It was small, but its wickedness-per-square-inch was out of control. It was some sort of demonic, man-eating insect. I have never seen one like it before today, and I hope I will never see one like it again. 

There were a lot of high-pitched noises, and Julia ran away for me to deal with it. (Thanks, Julia.) I tried to get the wretched knave on a tissue to scoop it out the window, but it escaped and disappeared in the room. Julia returned, and I had to deliver the terrifying news that the beast was on the loose. We rediscovered it, and in a fit of rage and terror, Julia smashed it with her shoe over me yelling, "don't kill it, try to get it outside!"

It died a noble death on the floor of our dorm.

(I showed Julia "Cell Block Tango" and its Disney parody earlier today, and "he had it coming" made an appearance multiple times today.)

Julia and I have had a really fun night. After enjoying a Google Translate version of "Let It Go," we had a breakdown of hilarity together that probably lasted about ten minutes and which included the invention of the word "stoops" as an expression of our intelligence level. There was some literal rolling on the floor laughing on Julia's part.

It was a pretty great day.

I spent a lot of my day using technology (I LOVE TECHNOLOGY) to contact my friends and family. It's hard, being disconnected from them for so long. I miss everyone I love back home very much, and I know that even though I'm running out of time in this class, I'm approaching a reunion with everything (my mom's waffles) and everyone (my mom's waffles) I've been missing back home.