Another day

Well, it has been a few days. Since the last time I wrote, I went on a day trip to Maastricht (beautiful city, can see myself going back again sometime soon, heh) and had a nice canoe trip along the canals in downtown Utrecht. The fourth block has started and so I am back to having school and responsibilities.

I am not sure if it is the best thing to write about the rest of the things that have been going on because I don't have all of the facts yet but I am going to anyway because I am tired of all of this crap. I want to know why things happen in living arrangements. This experience has reinforced that, sometimes, I just don't understand people. Everyone comes from a different cultural, social, financial and personal perspective but I want to believe that there is a basic respect level that is standard. Basic things like cleaning up after yourself (though I understand that some people have different ideas of what that entails), keeping the volume down at night when people are sleeping (which is stipulated in the lease) and not vandalizing anything. Apparently these things are not actually agreed upon in the house. I got home from night canoing on Monday and there was a message written on one of the refrigerators (and not posted to, actually written in marker on the fridge).

It read, "I think it's totally normal that there's a certain point, like a limit, that when you reach you have to be destroyed". And I don't know how to interpret it, I don't know what it means. I don't know to what extent my previous experiences influence my reaction to what I interpret as being a threatening message written on a piece of shared property. And especially coming as an American, with the recent school shootings and increased awareness of warning signs... I dunno. I am upset. We are theoretically having a house meeting tonight to talk about it, not sure how that is going to go. But I refuse to let this kind of thing hinder my experience here. It is just frustrating.

Ah well. Time to write about asymmetry for my first assignment for Women's Studies.

-B