February 13, 2025
Half-Asleep Thoughts
Last night, 15 minutes before the blogs for that day were going to be read, I was laying in bed half asleep when I thought to myself, “hmm… I haven’t done a blog in a while.” I jolted awake and scrambled to find the blog schedule, paranoid that my name was going to be on the list for today and I had only 15 minutes to come up with something presentable. I was semi-relieved to find that I was blogging the next day. After heading down to dinner and listening to some very thought-provoking blogs, Arushi announced that blogs tomorrow would be at 8:30 AM. After she said that, it immediately left my mind until later that night, when I once again woke from my sleep with a rush of anxiety and pulled out my computer to type something down.
It’s easy to forget about the blog posts when we have so many other things to keep up on. Projects for our organization, projects for GCIL, mentor meetings, team meetings, toolbook meetings, and I’m not even in the group that has to do more stuff on top of all this for the writing credit! I’m not complaining though; all of these different aspects build on each other and force me to not just learn about things in a classroom setting, but also to practice them in the real world. It does make for a very busy schedule though. And busy schedules tend to make me forget about things like blog posts, which is not a big deal. But being so busy also makes me forget to slow down and really reflect on everything happening around me. To take everything I’m experiencing and hold it, examine it, and reflect on it.
I still remember the car ride from the airport to the hostel on January 1st. In those predawn hours, as we passed by huge billboards for water brands I’d never seen before and fruit vendors pushing their carts into position before the morning rush hour, I felt like a sponge. There was so much new information coming at me, and soaking it all in filled me with excited energy, even after that 14 hour flight with very little sleep. Every new sight took my breath away and filled me with a million questions, and every honk reminded me that I really was halfway across the world, further from home than I had ever been before.
With all of these projects going on and 5 weeks of GCIL solidly behind me, It’s easy to just go with the flow, especially now that we have a continuous routine we’re following every week. It’s easy now to just accept the things I see around me and just go about my day without thinking too hard about anything besides the project I’m currently working on. But even though it is probably the harder route, I think I need to rekindle that sense of wonder that I had on the first day, that first car ride. I need to keep asking questions about everything around me, and not accept things at face value. Maybe this means looking out the car/train window on the commute home instead of looking at my phone. Or maybe it means going to office hours to ask questions about things I saw that day. No matter what I do, the important thing is to always try my best to be in the moment, and never stop being curious.
By,
Amelia