SECOND WEEK AND GOING STRONG

I want to dedicate an entire entry to the events of this weekend (i.e. the wedding of my wonderful cousin Geoff) and therefore will do a quick update on university life in this entry.
I have just finished my second week of school and am feeling wonderful! (although slightly tired). It has been challenging living off campus, since this makes it harder to meet people, but I am feeling very grateful since I am not constantly surrounded by 30 other people willing to be accomplices in procrastination. Slowly but surely I am meeting people in my classes, people with whom I have something in common.
Though I am majoring in International Development, since it is my first year I get to take a broad range of courses. In addition to my development course, which I will elaborate on in a second, I am taking a first year psychology class (all the basic theories and people), a philosophy class (practical reasoning, with an amazing prof!), a history class (conquest, resistance, and revolution...with a big emphasis on colonialism), and a beginner's Spanish class (good fun and a very funny prof).
My development class is starting out slowly, but I have a very passionate and experienced prof, who is putting a great emphasis on bringing the poverty and inequality in the world into perspective. And although he puts great emphasis on the huge poverty in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, he also draws attention to the inequality that exists in wealthy countries such as the States and Western Europe. In our last lecture he very emphatically stated that the life expectancy of an African American child born in Washington in 2002 was less than that of a child born in the Indian state of Kerala - not quite a statistic you would generally associate with the U.S. One that is equally shocking, but on the other spectrum of wealth is that Bill Gates' net worth is now US$51 billion, which is more than the gross national product of 139 of the world's 190 countries.
I will continue to post interesting statistics and theories on poverty and development, and if you are really interested I can easily send the slides from my lectures, just let me know.
Apologies for the absence of pictures on this entry...I don't quite feel like bringing a camera to campus and snapping pictures like a tourist, but there will be many pictures on the next entry.