A Star from Mosul

I've been so busy at the university these days.. I wake up at 7 and sleep at 11PM or 12, I am not having naps and usually come back home with a headache and decide to skip lunch. I'm losing weight and I hate it.

I try to organize my day better but it just isn't working..

We have half an hour of rest between lectures which last for an hour and a half, I'm supposed to eat and rest but I spend half of it explaining things and giving each student the written-lectures he wants to copy.. The students do not write notes during the lecture because as they say, they can not focus on the material and write at the same time, so I usually walk around with a bag full of papers and give them to whomever wants them.

If I'm absent-minded for a moment the lecturer becomes amazed and starts telling me how I've "never done that before".. I have to always be prepared for a quiz, to do well, and have to admit that it's my fault if I don't. I have to be the first to finish, I have to know the answer, the correct answer and the best answer ever for any question. My questions have to be really clever or I'll get "Oh Najma, it really shouldn't be you asking this question".

I still like and enjoy the university, but it's becoming too much of everything lately.. Summer is coming and it'll be even more tiring.

I'm afraid I might get to the degree where I'll yell at my friends for the silliest reasons.

Tomorrow is the 1st of April, the university day. It's usually a day for celebrating, no lectures are given. We're supposed to have one lecture tomorrow in the morning, and an exam, but the students decided to skip the lecture and the exam and stay home.

Not wanting the students to feel cursed for having me in their class, I decided to skip it too.. Yesterday my friends said they're afraid to skip the exam, and they will go to college, so I SMSed the other girls and the sister of one of the boys and told her to tell him to inform the boys.. Later, the girls decided to skip the exams, so again I SMSed everyone..
Now can't I whine a bit?

Remember this little girl? PCRF has managed to arrange for a free surgery for her in June, at the University of Michigan.

They're going to Jordan in the beginning of May to get their visa and fly to the US. They have relatives in Jordan at whose house they can stay, but they do not have relatives in the US.

I thought I might find some Arabic speaking readers who might be willing to house the girl and her mother in either Dearborn or Detroit area. PCRF said there is a house for people who attend the Medical Center there but both they and I would like to have volunteers.

Thank you.

Remember, remember
The 5th of November
The gunpowder treason and plot..

I know of no reason
why the gunpowder treason
should ever be forgot..

I watched V for Vendetta, a movie my cousin's been encouraging me to watch for weeks now, and only recently gave me the DVD for. There's so much to comprehend, I really need to see it again.

We're being fooled by the government.. We know it, and we do nothing about it.

A young woman is raped, the government does what? Give those who's raped her some medals their feeling might have been hurt because of the accusation you know!
Criminals not only go unpunished, but also praised and honored. Hooray for the government.

I'm fine, and so is college. I'm less motivated to study, but as soon as I start, it's easy to go on. I also feel like there's not enough time to study all I've got to study, especially after our schedule had been changed. I talked to the head of the department about this problem, our schedule is very badly organised, but he said there was nothing he could do about it.

Our class went on a picnic last Thursday, only I and one girl went, and about 23 of the guys! Well, to be honest, three other girls and one boy came, the Christians in our class, but to our surprise, they did not sit with us. This has never happened in front of me before, I can't figure out why they did this.
They only sat with us for about 15 minutes during which some of the boys started to discuss racism and the others trying very hard to change the subject and shut these ones up.

At the beginning, we decided not to go at all, since we were just two who considered the idea of going, and that was a very small number relatively. But on Thursday morning, the boys came to us and almost begged us to come, and so we did.

We walked to a place full of palaces of Saddam and beautiful views, it's very close to our college, while one of the boys took his car and 4 other boys to buy food and drinks and find a good spot to picnic in. It really was a good place that they chose but as always, there SHOULD be a fight on where to picnic, it's a must! We walked and searched for half an hour and almost chose another place (the reason why they picked that one is because there were girls we knew so we wouldn't feel awkward with only boys around) but we went back to the initial place after all to please the i-don't-want-to-sit-in-the-sun party (Such a long adjective!!).

The important thing is that we had fun, boys are so different from girls, they know so much poetry, of so many different kinds. I didn't understand most of the Iraqi kind but I enjoyed how fluently they said it.
I wanted to walk a bit with my friend and leave the boys to enjoy their time as they wish, the boys had put their mobile phones and cameras in our purses because they were moving around and playing football so we decided they'd give us a ring on one of them when lunch is ready. We walked for a bit, I found my cousin, his friend and about 15 girls sitting somewhere!! We're so different, and yet so alike! But they rang us after we've only been walking for about half an hour.
We went back to some more poetry, political jokes, and long long chants for Saddam (said by my favourite classmate, previously mentioned D!) until all the boys came to lunch and eating started. We had Kebab.. it was very nice. As expected however, and since most of the students think of me as different, they asked me if I was vegetarian before they bought the Kebab!

After finishing, we gathered the Pepsi cans and disposable dishes and took them to trash, and the remaining bread to the poor. That's one thing I really liked about those boys, they didn't even complain about doing that.

We took many photos, whether by mobile cameras, digital cameras or photograph cameras.. And every time we find a nice place for a photo, D would run shouting like a 5-year-old and find the best place to stand, while a more responsible classmate searches for the cameraman.

They acted the roles of the some of the lecturers, including our Programming lecturer, who obviously so frequently praises me "Excellent Najma, excellent excellent Najma".. Some of the lecturers have very funny habits I've never noticed and only notice after they talk about it. I concentrate on the lecture so much I rarely find something to laugh at, while the boys can hardly stop themselves from laughing.

Labels: college, picnic