Back in Bloem means back to lectures

     On Monday we got some free time in the morning to work on our assignments and blogs and essays. After that we went to Eunice school for our lectures. Eunice school is the number one school in South Africa. It's an all girls school so obviously it's number one! ;-)        We got to talking about "difficult dialogues". All about how to talk about race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, religion and class, to name a few.  It was very interesting because we were actually able to separate into our cohorts and talk about certain questions. One question was the challenges we face when trying to have a conversation about any of these topics. We also talked about how we can be accountable to ourselves and our institution to encourage diversity. While we were talking we brought up the issue of looking diverse on paper and looking diverse in our actions. For example, I know at JMU sometimes we get some people who only hang out with people who are the same as them. Even though we might look diverse on paper doesn't mean we a hang out and include each other all the time. That brought up a lot of discussion about how we can include others and become diverse in our actions. I was really appreciative of the fact that we were able to discuss as well as listen to what the mentors had to say on the topic. The past week we've just been listening and not able to talk about it. And now we are finally getting the chance to do so.       After that we had another lecture on higher education in Japan. We learned a lot about the culture and what makes Japan unique from the USA and South Africa. It was interesting and he gave us lots of time to ask questions. I think the mentors are finally taking our suggestion into consideration and allowing more student involvement in the conference, which is awesome.         For dinner we had a farewell session and a lecture on the No Student Hungry Campaign. There are students at UFS that are unable to afford to eat, so this campaign helps provide these kids food. It costs about 6000 rand for one student each year and they sponsor 100 students each year. I thought this might be a good fundraising idea for the dorm or in the Social Justice League to help and maybe raise enough money to sponsor a student.           After dinner we were able to sit in on the residence hall meetings. They were so interesting. At the beginning all the first years stand up and say "good evening ..." to each person on the hall council. The hall council is the one running the meetin and each person takes a turn sharing their announcements. They had a sports rep, treasurer, community service and a bunch of others. There were 7 all together including the residence head who's like the hall director. It was very structured and all the first years had to wear their uniforms to the meeting. No pajamas were allowed at all. So different from JMU! They opened with a prayer as well, which if we tried at JMU to do that, we would get so many nasty emails. At the end of the meeting they presented us each a bag. It's a messenger bag with Akasia written in pink on it. It's so cute and so nice.           Everyone was so nice and welcoming and I'm going to be so sad to leave. But I also can't wait to go to the beach and enjoy my last few days of summer! :)