Levels of Exitment & Project Week

I hope this makes sense. I tried to get some related points across - about the difference between first and second year, excitement, project week, and how that relates to our situation right now.

This also relates to my previous post and to project.

I've noticed that in a way the second year in muwci is less exciting than the first one. Not less fun - but less exciting - and that has a logical explanation.

When we first come EVERYTHING is new.

At the beginning almost every time you meet a new person on campus you think "Maldives! wow! so cool", or "Norway, that is so exciting!"

Also everything you see around the college and in it - is completely new. India, the boarding school, the UWC - it overwhelmingly exiting.

What I have noticed this year is that things are much calmer for me. Of course I was excited when we we were expanding and 100 new people joined the community. I'm also very excited about my two-sort-of-new CI's which are very challenging, about being a coordinator and a second year in general..

But it is so different from the first year! instead of being taken care of you are now the senior.

The amounts of work and the fact we live in this artificial ideal community affect that a lot. Somehow I feel, if we even had just one day off - we could have appreciated it more.

That's why I'm really excited about project week. I hope that could be our little break, after which we come back with renewed powers.

But I suppose quite some people do not feel the same as I do, since around 50% of our batch stays on campus. I guess that's also a break, having free time to work and spend here. But it does relate to the first part of this post - the excitement.

I think Project week is *the* opportunity to get off campus for a while! go out.. see some other places. I think it is one of the things that excite me the most here and give you a chance to explore other places and experiences.

the real world

Well, in almost every way I think - muwci is not the 'real world'.

It is a tiny community of carefully selected people. 200 people who are very different indeed, yet most share some common qualities - not only wanting to come to a UWC.

Only the fact that we don't have discipline problems in this school is unrealistic... and that's just a tiny detail out of many more. It is, in a sense, a very idealistic community, in the sense that it is trying to be ideal.

I wonder what living in a very-clearly unrealistic world for two years does to us.

Because sometimes I feel it is somewhat unnatural. That when you go out, when you go to school, when you go back home and when you take part in afternoon activities - it is always the same people and always the same place you encounter.

Back home you have so many different circles of friends - from school, from the youth movement, from your far away childhood, from dance lessons or basketball, and on top of that all you meet knew people and you spend time with your family. And everything you do is in different places and atmospheres - you go out and you go to another city or to someone else's place or to the beach or to a party or to a wedding or a fest or a movie...

and here when we go somewhere it's almost always Pune - again with the same muwci people.

I think it obviously makes our relationships more intense and close. We experience so much together - some things that others could probably not understand.

But in a way it also makes the end so intense. I don't think I will ever again live with these kind of people in such a place that keeps you busy busy busy all the time with them.

And the goodbye is so weird also - how do you just leave your home for two years? your HOUSE-mates in a way, the people that functioned as your classmates, your friends, your housemates, roommates, coordinators, teachers, students (to each other, yes) - the people who most of the positions in your life for two years?

I'm not sure what is exactly philosophical about this post. I guess it's the contemplation over our life?

In some way I want to say this is not the real life. Real life probably starts when we leave here again...

I cannot say this place is not amazingly great, enriching, teaching, developing and challenging... it is all of that. It has changed me a lot.

I think I'm pointing out that it might also have negative sides to it - maybe in the way of doing it. I don't know how easy it will be to recover from this different dimension called muwci and how it will be possible to connect it back to our previous lives.

The Poor of Your City Take Precendence

The full quote (a Jewish proverb) :
"In the case of a Jew and a non-Jew, the Jew
takes precedence; a poor person and a wealthy person, the poor person takes precedence; a poor person of your own city and a poor person of another city, the poor of your city take precedence."
(The English parallel: Charity begins at home)

Just some points that crossed my mind regarding this...

* I can testify, that personally the easiest thing is to agree. It makes sense. I do care for my close environment first. I do care for my friends, the school, whatever is happening right here and right now the most. In school they always tried to prove us this - by showing us how the newspapers always report on different accidents and incidents abroad and you are always more compassionate towards the Israeli or the Jew.

* I wonder what the origins of this feeling are. Are they rooted so deeply in us because of our nationalistic education? (and I'm not talking about Israeli education specifically, but generally about most of us) why do we have different degrees of caring and compassion for different people?

* I can think of some reasons. Maybe our mind requires this kind of categorization. Arabs (in my case) are usually "against us" - so we care less about them. Americans are generally supportive of us, that means we should probably be in their favour most of the time. If we had to judge every single person individually in order to make up our mind or form some sort of impression we would probably go crazy (and won't have enough time.)

* I understand cultural identification that makes us feel closer to different groups of people. Yet one thing strikes me - the randomness of this identification. Had I been born an Arab I would probably place Jews or Israelis at the bottom of my compassion list. What a small coincidence determines something we feel so strongly about!

* Finally I want to look at the Economic aspect of this saying, for it does not only talk of moral support or cultural fraternity. It talks about the poor. It talks about people who disadvantaged or underprivileged - and prioritizes who should be helped first, who is more equal or more important.
And that makes me think - is this attitude what causes the enormous gaps between let us say Western countries and Eastern Countries? Developed Economies and Undeveloped Economies?
How did a manage to grow having my quite normal, safe life with abundant food - so used to this being so normal while in other parts of the world people are starving? What causes us today to see this is kind of normal, or distant?
Has this maybe something to do with this attitude, this proverb...? Our affiliations...?