winter quarter begins

Winter quarter here in Seattle has begun with rain, rain and more rain and wind storms. It sure beats being snowed in at my father's house, but it ruins my shoes and puts my cigarettes out.

I am having a really good time in my classes. It's nice to be back at the University of Washington and around people educated in my field of interest.

Today started in the Israel class, we began very logically with pre-common-era civilizations, Mesopotamia and Egyptian civilizations, the Canaanites and Israelites, asking lots of questions, who the Israelites were, about the Hebrew Bible in terms of its historicity, looking at different historical evidence including the religious texts, looking at the progression of Israelite religion from Monolotry to Monotheism and the influences that created what we now consider Judaism (Zoroastrianism, who would have thought that Persian religion had such an impact on Judaism of today?). We tried to identify who Israelites were and where they were at various times. The head of the Near Eastern Languages and Culture department came in to lecture to us, it was like a special treat.

In the Ethnic Nationalism class, we also started in a very logical place, primates and hunter-gatherer humans. We looked at primates' social behavior, their social networks and mating habits. We examined the concept of in-people and out-people and the genetic disposition of humans to create in-groups (their own group) and out-groups (outside groups). Our genes don't determine what group will be considered an out-group, that comes from experience and socio-economic influences, but we are biologically coded to cling to our group and defend against outsiders.

The second hour of that class, we looked at human responses to questions of racism and group mentality. Looking at various studies and surveys, it appears that humans (in this case, white Americans) tend to defend their "group" more when they are mortality salient. When people are conscious of their mortality (when they had previous been asked to write an essay about their ideas of death), they were more likely to favor members of their own group. These are just conclusions of the study, I don't really want to write an essay here about it (I highly recommend reading it), but I thought it was really interesting and frightening at the same time when applied to modern politics (war on terror).

I also received notice of my language exchange partner (volunteer program to help international students practice English with native speakers) for the quarter, a Japanese girl named Ai. We are supposed to meet soon! Should be nice, since I am not taking Japanese courses any longer, I'd like to keep my Japanese skills sharp. This program is designed to allow students studying a foreign language to practice with native speakers of that chosen language, at the same time, helps international students who want to practice their English with us Americans. I really love doing it because I don't think international students have much support when they come to Seattle, and the people in the foreign exchange offices probably don't have the same kind of time and patience that some of the volunteers might have. Also I just think it's fun to make new friends from different places. I hope to be assigned a few more students in my other languages.