WIkipedia's 24 hour black out

In case you have managed to go blissfully unaware of the current politics of the United States, there is currently a legislation in the works that would hinder the openness of the internet. In response, Wikipedia has blacked out for 24 hours. Even the Wikipedia page for the "leader of the free world" President Obama is un-accessible: Barack Obama - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Google, fortunately, has decided not to completely black out. Instead, they just blacked out the Google logo for U.S. locations: https://www.google.com/

The internet needs to remain a free and open space. Google, Wikipedia, and a number of other sites are vital to the functionality of the modern world. SOPA (the legislation) would take that away, and that is unacceptable.

'via Blog this'

Barriers: Part 2

As I was staying with a Muslim family, I thought it appropriate that I fast during my time there as well. Jessica, Whitney, Vanessa, and I all went into the weekend anticipating the long day we would have on Saturday. As it turns out, fasting really isn’t all that hard. After the early breakfast (sunrise/start of the fast was at 6:12am) I went back upstairs and slept for a few more hours. When I got up again I went down to the Saturday market where there were rows of tables with handmade crafts such as jewelry and canvas paintings, as well as a lot of very tempting food. At noon Jessica served as the model for a bridal scarf (aka a midoora) pinning demonstration.

From there we took the young children from Jessica’s house to the playground until the next call for prayer rang out across the neighborhood. While we were at the playground a funeral procession marched by. In Muslim tradition, funerals occur within 24 hours of the death. To do this, as I’m sure you can imagine, Muslim communities are very tight knit communities. This is the only way to allow for funerals to occur so quickly. The men march the body to the graveyard, and the women pray separately. The separation of sexes is not due to a hierarchy; in fact, Muslims believe in the equality of men and women; rather it is a matter of respect and privacy. After the funeral, food is brought to the family of the deceased. This is especially important when there is a female widower; it is against custom for the widower to be seen by a strange male for 4 months and 10 days. This is to protect her in case she is pregnant so there can be no dispute as to who the father of the child is. As such, neighbors, friends, and family have to be around to help her.

My long winter break

So today I came to the startling realization that I have been home from South Africa for two months now. The time has gone by far too quickly, but that has a lot to do with the fact that I'm keeping myself entertained. Yet there are things that I had planned on doing that I can just tell I'm going to manage to run out of time for. For instance, I was supposed to go to NYC but my grandmother got sick so I'm probably not going to manage to make it out there this time around. Perhaps over the summer. Meanwhile, a group of friends from Babson have spent the past couple of weeks in Ghana and reading their tweets have made me miss South Africa. Also, NCIS LA was playing an episode where  the team was in Romania and that made me really just want to hop on a plane again and fly out to where ever.

In the mean time, it is a new year, ready to be filled with at least as many adventures as the last one. That being said, I realize it will be hard to match last year. In 2011 I managed to go to 2 new continents, see my first ocean other than the Atlantic, get passport stamps from 3 new countries, make many new friends and connect with an old one, and go to 6 new airports. How do I plan on topping that? I'm not quite sure, but if I had it all planned out now then it wouldn't really be an adventure, now would it?

But I still have about another month until I leave. During the next few weeks I will be busy getting prepared for my excursion to South Korea. I'll be planning different weekend trips to take, trying to learn a bit of Korean, working full time at my favorite internship yet, reconnecting with friends I haven't seen in what feels like FOREVER(!) and trying to enjoy my last bit of time at home as a 20 year old (I come home pretty much in time for my birthday)