Homestay

Hello everybody!

So, the last few days have been kind of busy and then I had some WiFi problems.

So, on Thursday and Friday we had classes. Thursday was all about journalism and media, but this time the classes were a lot more active and actually quite interesting. For example, we had to compare different countries' news on Egypt Crises and find out who/what was the source. I the evening we visited the Black Cultural Center and it was totally amazing. The lady who spoke to us was really charismatic, made a lot of jokes and she was form the South (I'm pretty sure it was Louisiana), so sometimes she said some very Southern words and it was so funny. In the same evening we also had a talent show, AGAIN. There were some new cool acts, like the boys'
"Desperado", but I personally think that the first version was better.

Well, on Thursday we had a class with Summer Forrester on the causes and consequences of war, were we formed 11 groups and each group was one country that is going through some kind of crises. The task was to think of 3 ways to stabilize the situation, then 3 points how to react to neighbor countries crises and finally 3 points after hearing everybody's other opinions. Our group was Israel and, since we had no better ideas, we finally decided that in the case of Iran using their (possible) nuclear weapon on us, we are going to call our big friend USA. That simulation was really fun to do.
Then we had a class with our program director Dr. Anatoli Rapoport. At the end of his class, we started to talk about the freedom of speech and where is the line between respectful and disrespectful expression of opinion, but we didn't have time for it anymore, so we continued the talk at our Daily Debriefing with our group mentor Erin.

The last class was the beginning of the module I've been waiting for the whole time - science. The class was really fun and very different from what I've seen  and experienced before. We had closed black boxes, which had  a marble in them, so we had to guess how the box looks like inside. Believe it or not - the moment we finally got to open those black boxes me and definitely some other people were very excited.

On Friday night we finally got to meet our host families and go home with them, so now we are living in families for the next 10 days. Me and Allie (USA) are living with the Hartman family (I've written about them in one of the first posts). They live in a private house in the Southern part of Lafayette. We both have our own rooms with big, comfortable beds, which is really amazing because I haven't had any privacy for 2 weeks, and we share a bathroom. My laptop didn't want to connect the wifi in the first evening, but yesterday it apparently changed its mind.

Yesterday we went to the 4H County Fair - an event where people bring their farm animals (cows, pigs, goats,..) (I'm not really sure what's the main purpose of it though). Kara and Joel had to help with the lawn mowing competition (?), so me and Allie went for a walk. Don't ever try to walk on the highway (well, not a big highway, but pretty close) under a burning hot sun. We spent time at Dairy Queen (lemon meringue pie blizzard is just amazing :D) and went back. Halfway to the fair Kara, her mother and Hannah were going to get lunch from Arby's (American beef fast food restaurant) and we tagged along with them. We ate at the fair and had some cake, since it was Allie's 18th birthday.

We spent the rest of the day mainly at Kara's mother's place, picked raspberries (emme, see sulle kindlasti meeldib :)) and just rested. By the way (that's mainly for Helen), I saw three horses!

Today we are going to do something near Lafayette and in the evening me and Allie are going to see "Heat" at Wabash Landing 9 (the movie theater). Oh, and next week we are possibly going to Cincinnati!