Debating The Day Away

Today marks the first whole week that I have spent at VSA. It also means a few changes in the schedule, mainly a change in the Areté that we will have after class. The only other change is that it is now "V Week" so all activities will be hosted by V House instead of A House (which hid the lamps that Gwennie found!) Next week will be S House's and they'll be hosting a game of Assassins, which Gwennie is certainly looking forward to.

In class, we (well, I) finished "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down". We had the entire class period before lunch to read, but I finished at 10. Monte has previously stated that I can blog in class so that I don't get too far ahead of the rest of my classmates, and since I had no other pressing matters to attend to, I started to write. We were planning to have a debate after lunch, but I wasn't allowed to plan anything since that would be an unfair amount of preparation.

Nothing really important happened during lunch aside from Katherine continuing the sign language lessons that I receive whenever I remember to ask. I'm improving my alphabet a lot, and even if I don't know the official signs, now I'll be able to spell any word I need to communicate, albeit very slowly. After lunch was over, the class was divided into two sections, one representing the Hmong perspective, and the other representing western medicine. The debate was fairly controversial within our class, but I felt that it was skewed towards one side because even after spending the majority of the week learning about the Hmong, it is an entire culture, so we can't know everything. The majority of us have been brought up learning about western medical and law practices, so we are a lot more well versed in them. 

So, since we have a new Areté this week, I started "Gravity Only Boot Camp". Before I arrived, I was wondering how the "Gravity Only" part of its name factored into the activity, but it just turns out that there is no weight lifting involved. I think I was hoping for a more exciting reason for the title, but I'm not quite sure what I wanted out of it. My main concern is that I have my 24 hours in a wheelchair at some point this week, and I don't quite know how that is going to work. The instructor was not present, so the proctor decided that we were to play four-square or Uno. So, the boot camp ended up not really being the workout that I wanted it to be, at least for today.

We had a SOFT night tonight, but this was "SOFT+" where there were extra options available. We could attend a screening of a movie (really just a projector playing against a blank wall) or go to a basic American Sign Language class. I was told that the class would just be learning the alphabet, which I learned during lunch yesterday.  I took advantage of my free time by blogging and starting on some scholarship essays, so that I could sleep early and be ready for the upcoming day.