Hey I received this from a friend of mine studying in Spain now...it rambles a bit, but I think it's a really interesting thought process on being somewhere "foreign." Enjoy! Thanks to Sasha for letting me print it!
Lynsee
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You have received this letter from me because I thought of you while writing it, or you were asking me about my current semester abroad. its 1419 words, which is about 3.5 double spaced pages at 1.25 margins in WORD. Thanks.when I first arrived in bilbao (basque country, aka spain), people were asking me to blog it up. And I was going to write to everyone about how different things are out here, but I got over the illusive excitement of being away from home. I am not going to write about how different things are here, because that has been less significant. Though Ive witnessed some aspects of spain which are different from the united states, you probably know most of them; like language, spanish rock, like different meal times, and food preparations, or all the movies are overdubbed... or different traditions like flamenco dance - which I have yet to see any of (although traditions dont make a place different if theyre no longer practiced there, it just means tradition X flourished in region Y during period Z and might have influenced A,B,C,D,E...). in looking at the small details we can find a world made of "differents" to live in, but every detail is a particular part of a whole.in EVERY country of the world there are: rich, middleclass, poor, black, white, red, yellow... religious, aetheist, jewish, christian, muslim, catholic, buddhist... real, phony, smart, ignorant, haters, lovers, pimps, prostitutes, straight, gay, transexual, drugs, drunks, trade, 'political' governance, corrupt politicians, scandals, secret societies, hidden agendas, business, all sorts of products (and if they arent popular somewhere - like computers in poor countries - thats because you just havent found the people who have them (same applies for things like secret societies)), factories, immigrants, illegals, workers, bosses, all sorts of relationship dynamics, letters, books, sciences, foods, vegetables, microwavable dinners, microwaves, cell phones, computers, internet, weapons, warriors, verterans, nationalists, separatists, racists, people wearing white SHEETS and pointy cone caps with holes cut out for eyes (at least in the u.s. and spain), academics, psychic readers, spiritualists, hippies, punks, hip hoppers, rap, rock, classical music, backpackers, hostels, hotels, travelers, porn industry, whore houses, radicals, rebellious youth, protests, old people hating on what the younger ones do, murderers, police, militias, happiness, sadness, fear, cognitive dissonance, CONTRADICTIONS! (like believing that something as condoned as retaliatory violence can bring "peace")... and much more - anything that you can imagine exists everywhere. The majority of different things that we see between countries/regions of the world are merely the different visual (and ocassionally non-visual when we feel them) levels of all of the above (and more) resulting from things like economies, governmental control, laws, international trade, freedom (at least an idea of it), violence, wars... that filter into the ways we act toward eachother and the social world. at the least, these are the most evident causes. For those of you who just thought of the whole political economy vs. cultural studies debate (does the economy guide the culture or does the culture guide the economy?), Im not hardlining to the political econ. side, but I do think a major imbalance can and does exist. If this doesnt make sense, take, for instance, a look at materials globally. We are often passed the idea (from travelers and people who have "seen" the world) that the 1st world lives the technological future of the 3rd world; we often see this in movies too. If technology alone can facilitate specific behaviors (for instance: race-cars --> car culture/auto shows (transportaion --> traveling/tourism/city-exp
ansion/business class on trains and planes), computers --> online business (or chatting, or gaming, or acquiring data), innovative tools --> efficient production), and specific technology passes in order from 1st world to the 3rd, then the technological future of the 3rd world will resemble the technological past of the 1st (so long as the 1st world can impose any constraints against the 3rd worlds technological development – which is what exploitation is all about). The only apparent technology difference that would then exist between the 1st and 3rd worlds (or two countries) is a window of time between the arrival of those technologies (with regards to this example). Thats more or less why we might go to a country in south america and think it looks like the US only 30 years ago! so, does the economy guide the culture or does the culture guide the economy? You decide.Of course we all know that this last example cannot always be the case, since there are some very innovative people out there who can take something and make something new of it; thats how spray-can graffiti got started, or all the variations of a bicycle that you might see today (tandem, recumbant, chopper...), or the nanotechnology that made the microchip that our gov.'s might be planning to bury under the skin of every human for convenience (RFID: Radio Frequency Identification; VeriChip; chips in illegal immigrants to solve overflow-immigration - MORE INFO on IMMIGRATION and THE CHIP @: http://www.spychips.com/press-releases/verichip-immigration.html). And when some new innovation does change the world, it then gets placed into an "appropriate" level in the hierarchy and distributed across worlds, from 1st to 3rd, accordingly (by those who control distributions), thus falling under the control of the economic reality. As for spain, Id say it falls short of the estados unidos at an approximate worldly rank of 1.4th world, in comparison to the united states 1st world, since computers are not as widespread (you can usually tell this by the amount of internet café's – also, the university Im at still uses those old cream colored no-named computers), the movies come out at later dates, and the whole anti-smoking nicorette gum campaigns havent quite kicked in yet, and I hear the united states develops more weapons than the spanish. We could look at statistics to determine where every country/place falls along the spectrum of haves and have nots (and there will be many countries that are very similar to one another), but we'll never know if the stats have been manipulated. Here is where specifics and details of "differents" become important; if we can notice these different things using our own intuitive senses, then we can begin to understand what those differences mean, and why they mean anything at all. more and more I am coming to see that people and places are all very similar, and that the "differents's" in the world are outcomes that can be manipulated. If difference literally meant that A cannot be made into B, then any A that can be made into B would not be differents. ice is water, and water is H20; its not their chemical composition that makes them different but their state (so we know so far); but all this depends on how you define difference. again… you decide.So. Here I am in bilbao, in spain, or the basque country (depends on who you ask – one thing for sure is that nationalism can still definitely be considered a global fad). Things are not bad for me at all, and I don't want you to get the impression that they are just because Im not writing about the wonderful tapas and the rioja wine. Taking this trip was the second best decision Ive made since I been at U of Illinois (the 1st best was dropping down to 9 hrs last semester!). Classes here… well, theyre not too different than classes back home… mainly bullshyzah; of course not always cause the material is bad (its like philosophy logic: if you talk to me about equations using sentences to describe variables, all of a sudden I like math!). Ive been speaking lots of spanish, speaking with the spanish, and tryin to x-span(d) my understandings and ish…To tell you the truth, I don't know it. Everything that I have just told you is simply an opinion, you can choose to take it or leave it. Im not asking you to even try to understand what Im saying if you don't understand, Im just offering you two cents to see if maybe you couple them the same way I do. And i don't feel totally ready to be writing about some of these things, but I have neglected to let people in on my experience, and would like you too to experience some of what I have, so here is where Im at now.
One love, eternal being, strings theory, piece
your boy
Sasha
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