a year ago

at this same program, i was doing grammar exercises and writing short 1.5 page essays every week in the slow grueling effort to learn and speak italian. i was basically speaking english with my friends, but using italian words. I was having a lot, likely too much, fun on the weekends (and lets be honest, usually weeknights too). I was finding academic shortcuts and loopholes.

This summer, i'm taking 2 of the most thought provoking and globally relevant courses I've probably ever taken in my life in any language. The language of the texts I'm reading is so difficult, i can't even understand the definitions of most of these words in english. Heavy intellectual theoretical models about identity, intersection of culture, identity, language, and state, power structures, gender constructions in language, political corruption of the state and its cooperation with the mafia, societies that live under mafia control, the 'historic novel' and how fictional narratives based around important historic events become our own cultural memoirs of that time, extremely polarized literary academic disagreements over books like gattopardo, gomorra. instead of writing 1.5 pages, i'm writing 12 page final papers for 3 classes in 6 weeks, reading 18+ books (articles, chapters of other books) and watching on average 5 hours of film each week. No grammar. just sheer content and increased expectation of quality intellectual thought processes. fuck.

I dont know how much of that you understood. me either. Thats the sort of malgamush thats rattling around inside my head in not just one language, folks, but two. I've been here less than a week, and may or may not have already lost my mind. It could also be the fact that i'm hungover and in the library. who knows. add the deep sinking of feeling that is culture shock and you have a clear idea of how i'm feeling/doing right now. the culture shock feeling is not good....very very very bad in fact. makes you wonder why you do what you do, and why you didnt/couldn't stay, and what it would have been like. a bunch of useless what ifs, i guess.

I realized I never wrote a travel post about portugal. I'll try to put it up soon. I should take this pledge more seriously, but I'm in the mood to chat. (when am i not in the mood to chat...)