and more pictures!!
Finally flickr is agreeing with me. Go check out the new (but few) pictures there.
I totally maimed my interim assesment for dance today. Ouch. Good thing it doesn't count for a grade. I just got all nervous and couldn't figure out which drum call was which. See, every time the master drummer plays something new (and sometimes it's extremely subtle, especially with literally 5 other drums/rattles/bells playing at the same time AND people screaming) the movement changes. You have to know which dance move goes with which master drum part, and have to be able to react quickly to the change and keep with the beat, which is VERY difficult cuz it's not the good ol' standard 4/4 we're all used to in the West. Anyone who's taken West African dance knows what I'm talking about. Luckily, I've danced well in her class pretty consistently, so she wasn't that mad. She just told me I need to understand the drums better (true that), and let it go.
Speaking of drums, I just found out I can bring mine on the plane back home with me! This saves a TON of money on shipping, thank goodness. I've already bought one beautiful kpanlogo drum, which I got to design (with a nine-pointed star and jungle scenery with a bird), and will be buying a rattle and double bell (which can fit in a suitcase), kagan (tall skinny supporting drum) and kidi (short fat drum). These make up the basics of a West African drum kit (minus the sogo, but that drum is HUGE to be carrying around, it's expensive, and whatever you play on that can be played on the kpanlogo, even if it does sound a bit different).
Been reading a lot here. Read all of The World According to Garp yesterday. Have also read Congo, The Notebook, The Guardian, When Women Had Wings, Travelling Mercies, and a good chunk of The Priceless Pearl. Everyone in the house trades books when we're done, and we also can check out books from out study abroad office. Pretty cool.
This thought suddenly struck me after reading "Garp" yesterday. There is a big bigness surrounding me. But what's scarier is the big bigness inside of me.
Hmm... how do I explain that? I suddenly felt huge and simultaneously smaller than a speckle of dust. There is so much one person can do. So many thoughts and hopes and loves and dislikes and memories contained in one human. At the same time, when just a few things are missing, I feel so empty, despite all the rest that I do have. We humans are so fickle. Give us all the riches in the world, but one sour grape and we go ranting and raving about how tortured we are. Give us the love of a hundred people and we still pine over the one that won't love us. That big bigness inside of us seems to only be fillable by ourselves.
For some reason this reminds me of the infinitely many problems with infinitey. For example, look at the infinity hotel. It has an infinite number of rooms, but when you go to check in, all the infinitely many rooms are occupied. So you propose that the person in room 1 move to 2, 2 to 3, 3 to 4 and so on for infinity, so that room #1 is open for you! There is always room in infinity. In fact, you could then move person in room 2 to 4, 3 to 9, 4 to 16, etc etc, thus creating infinitely many more rooms. But at the same time, there are some infinities that are bigger than others. Between 0 and 1 on a number line, there are infinitely many points. And from 0 to 2 there are also infinitely many points. BUT there are infinitely many more infinitely many points from 2 to 0 than there are from 0 to 1. Still following?
So, we are infinity within infinity. And there are all sorts of problems with this. Ugh. So crazy. My head hurts a bit right now, but I think it's cuz I've only had 2,000 cedis worth of waakye (beans and rice with tomato sauce) and one piece of corn today. Not much food, especially for having been awake over 12 hours and having danced/drummed/walked in Africa. Ha.
I'm excited for this weekend. I know of no other place where I would go on zany adventures every weekend.
Did I mention that I uploaded more pictures?
One more thing: Remember that chain letter a while ago about what little kids said about love? One is making more and more sense everyday. This little girl said that people forget really easily, so you have to tell them that you love them all the time. How true. Strange that a 6 year old so concisely made more sense than so many poets and painters. Anyway, I love you.
I totally maimed my interim assesment for dance today. Ouch. Good thing it doesn't count for a grade. I just got all nervous and couldn't figure out which drum call was which. See, every time the master drummer plays something new (and sometimes it's extremely subtle, especially with literally 5 other drums/rattles/bells playing at the same time AND people screaming) the movement changes. You have to know which dance move goes with which master drum part, and have to be able to react quickly to the change and keep with the beat, which is VERY difficult cuz it's not the good ol' standard 4/4 we're all used to in the West. Anyone who's taken West African dance knows what I'm talking about. Luckily, I've danced well in her class pretty consistently, so she wasn't that mad. She just told me I need to understand the drums better (true that), and let it go.
Speaking of drums, I just found out I can bring mine on the plane back home with me! This saves a TON of money on shipping, thank goodness. I've already bought one beautiful kpanlogo drum, which I got to design (with a nine-pointed star and jungle scenery with a bird), and will be buying a rattle and double bell (which can fit in a suitcase), kagan (tall skinny supporting drum) and kidi (short fat drum). These make up the basics of a West African drum kit (minus the sogo, but that drum is HUGE to be carrying around, it's expensive, and whatever you play on that can be played on the kpanlogo, even if it does sound a bit different).
Been reading a lot here. Read all of The World According to Garp yesterday. Have also read Congo, The Notebook, The Guardian, When Women Had Wings, Travelling Mercies, and a good chunk of The Priceless Pearl. Everyone in the house trades books when we're done, and we also can check out books from out study abroad office. Pretty cool.
This thought suddenly struck me after reading "Garp" yesterday. There is a big bigness surrounding me. But what's scarier is the big bigness inside of me.
Hmm... how do I explain that? I suddenly felt huge and simultaneously smaller than a speckle of dust. There is so much one person can do. So many thoughts and hopes and loves and dislikes and memories contained in one human. At the same time, when just a few things are missing, I feel so empty, despite all the rest that I do have. We humans are so fickle. Give us all the riches in the world, but one sour grape and we go ranting and raving about how tortured we are. Give us the love of a hundred people and we still pine over the one that won't love us. That big bigness inside of us seems to only be fillable by ourselves.
For some reason this reminds me of the infinitely many problems with infinitey. For example, look at the infinity hotel. It has an infinite number of rooms, but when you go to check in, all the infinitely many rooms are occupied. So you propose that the person in room 1 move to 2, 2 to 3, 3 to 4 and so on for infinity, so that room #1 is open for you! There is always room in infinity. In fact, you could then move person in room 2 to 4, 3 to 9, 4 to 16, etc etc, thus creating infinitely many more rooms. But at the same time, there are some infinities that are bigger than others. Between 0 and 1 on a number line, there are infinitely many points. And from 0 to 2 there are also infinitely many points. BUT there are infinitely many more infinitely many points from 2 to 0 than there are from 0 to 1. Still following?
So, we are infinity within infinity. And there are all sorts of problems with this. Ugh. So crazy. My head hurts a bit right now, but I think it's cuz I've only had 2,000 cedis worth of waakye (beans and rice with tomato sauce) and one piece of corn today. Not much food, especially for having been awake over 12 hours and having danced/drummed/walked in Africa. Ha.
I'm excited for this weekend. I know of no other place where I would go on zany adventures every weekend.
Did I mention that I uploaded more pictures?
One more thing: Remember that chain letter a while ago about what little kids said about love? One is making more and more sense everyday. This little girl said that people forget really easily, so you have to tell them that you love them all the time. How true. Strange that a 6 year old so concisely made more sense than so many poets and painters. Anyway, I love you.