Tough stuff

Today's lecture was about violence against women in developing countries. I don't know why, but this touched me more than usual; I think I'm quite used to hear all kinds of horrible stories but today was a bit different. Maybe it was because the number of women facing violence every single day is so overwhelming or maybe it was because our teacher isn't shy showing pictures and giving specific details. Or maybe it was the fact that many states themselves are approving and even encouraging all that. I don't know.

I was also stunned when some of my class mates, originally from India, didn't have the slightest knowledge about this and either did they show any particular interest about it. For crying out loud, they didn't even know where Mumbai is!

One happy thing happened though; the first part of my portfolio was officially accepted and in fact I got 100% marks. Yeewww! It's only a tiny part of my assessment but still.

I also tried to go to my first English lesson. Well, just my luck: the teacher never showed up. Better luck next week I guess :)

And about that Fuse Mentoring, I've decided to drop out of it. The bureaucracy around criminal record check up is amazing and it'd take still about 6 weeks to get it done. Then it's time for Christmas holidays and soon enough the Easter holidays (which I'm definitely not going to miss because of some family reasons). The commitment for mentoring is 6 months so basically I'd run out of time. The coordinator told me that most international students can't do it just because of that. So maybe I'll figure out something else, maybe not. We'll see.