At Home in the World

I am reading this book for my Ethnography of Oceania class called "At Home in the World". It is actually a really good book, it has really hit me home, and I have been able to relate to it a lot. Though I think I am suppose analyse the ethnography of Austrialian Aborigines, and ignore the philosophy of what is a home. But I suppose it goes hand in hand. Seems every where in the world a culture oppresses another culture until practically annihilation or amalgamation. Europeans on Native Americans (side note: found out yesterday from a friend that Indians actually means 'people of God' which Christopher Columbus called them, and India was not called India at that time), Chinese on Tibetans, White Australians on Australian Aboriginals, men on women. Humans just love to oppress.

But sorry that wasn´t really the point. The book touched on how home is not where the house is, home is where you feel at ease, having a sense of being at home. I am starting to have such a sense here. There seem to be different phases you go through (basing on myself) when you move to another place. You at first have a sense of the excitement of being in a new and different place. Everything seems amazing and wonderful and you notice the differences between the place you are and the place you are from. Second, the novelty begins to wear off. You begin to notice the similarities between the new place and your home country. The exhilaration of being in this new place begins to die out, but not completely. Because at the third stage you accept the similarities and you accept the differences and really begin to 'live' there. You have made a home in this new place and go on with your life.

I really felt it yesterday when I went for a walk around campus. I walked with Tom to the science building, which I had a weird deja vu when I walked into the place because last winter I had a dream of Iceland and dreamt this science building. In the dream I was going to all courses in Icelandic but inbetween the classes I would meet with one of my profs and he would explain everything that he said in class to me in English, to help me learn the language. I walked through the building which had high windows on the one side and a stair way going up the wall on the opposite. It was blizzarding out side the snow blew across the large window. It is strange that I dreamt this building when I never saw it before.

But on our walk, we went behind this building and there was a little wetland there, with ponds and a boardwalk. This area is used for the biology students here. There were long grasses and other plants growing there, and this reminded me of my walking adventures along the Credit River in Mississauga and along the Otonabee in Peterborough. It connected me with places where I felt at home from my home country. And when you´d look up out of this little piece of wilderness you can see you are surrounded by Reykjavik.