le 27 octobre:
- Going back through one of my old notebooks (notes from Real Analysis II) wow that class was hard. I'm overwhelmed just flipping through the notes! (Shout out to Laura Smith and Johnny Graves!) Then to Algebraic Geometry!! So lost. (Wasif!) After a couple pages of that it goes to "Complex Analysis: I escaped!" SOOO much easier!!!
Wow. My last year at Olaf was actually pretty cool! So many great people, so many great ideas, so many great memories! Merci beaucoup a tous!
Some great quotes from Complex Analysis:
"Here's a bold claim, 7." - Zorn
"by hook or by crook" - Zorn
"Get your head outa your ass. We're doin' Math!!"
- Reading the World Resources 2005 Report The Wealth of the Poor: Managing Ecosystems to Fight Poverty, and then seeing poverty first hand in a rural village in a developing nation, I wan to alleviate the plague of poverty which affects some 3 billion people! The report talks about the ecosystems that the poor rely on and the governance necessary for their development, but then also about tapping markets, technological advances, and globalization. But it's hard to fathom that living in a tiny village that has no electricity no legitimate roads, the nearest big city is 130km away but it takes 5 hours to get there, and very few people seem to even know where the country is located on a map.
As I said the other day, my family apologized because they had no food. Similarly, when I asked another volunteer friend how her fete de Tabaski was she said, "okay." - Celebrating a Muslim holiday here in Guinea means putting on nice clothes, praying, and eating a lot of food. When I asked her why her fete was just "okay," she said it was because her family didn't have any food, not even rice! This country has great land and plentiful rain; to not have any food is a travesty. I really want to help, but it's an overwhelming problem. For the moment, je doit prendre courage (I must take courage) and believe that I'm making a difference here and somehow it will also tie back to poverty reduction and food security...
- A guy came over today playing some American rap music on his phone and he asked me if I knew that language... of course, but I really wish I didn't. Not that I wish I didn't know English, but that I couldn't understand what the rapper was saying. Maybe I was desensitized to those kinds of lyrics when I was in the US and now being here, not surrounded by music, I've become resensitized, but it was just awful! Then he showed me videos of what I was thankful to have avoided yesterday - the slaughter of goats... It was an unfortunate visit.
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