VEGuary Log 002

Just thought I'd give you a quick update on how it's going with the whole VEGuary thing. Not surprisingly, a lot more UPEACE people joined this than OcSober. I guess most people are more attached to their ethanol than their sarcoplasmic proteins. A good couple of handful of my fellow students decided to give up eating animals for 29 days, and mostly it has been going quite well. We have enjoyed the support of each other but also of the array of already-vegetarians. At a University for Peace, you can probably imagine that there are quite a lot (another similarity with CISV).

Thanks to Stephy's introduction (see previous post), I have personally gotten through the first 3 weeks without any scarring on my soul or physical symptoms. I've been tired at times, but that's not new. I've eaten more cheese (I bought six kinds (parmesan, cottage, cream, Gouda, fresh Costa Rican and Danish blue) at the supermarket one day in early February) but not extreme amounts. I don't know if I've lost weight but if so, not a lot.

The hardest thing has been the raised consciousness. As I don't have any (known) allergies, I usually eat whatever and spice it up with whatever. Now I can't. I can't add beef or chicken stock to the food, and I have not tasted my beloved nuoc mam (fish sauce) for three weeks!!! I haven't even opened my glass of Omega-3 fish oil capsules. And of course, there's the constant saying no to stuff. I haven't faced serious dilemmas like some of my co-Veguarians have, like host families cooking steaks specifically for them or being at an all-meat Latin American barbecue, but as this is my first time trying this, 'without meat' feels even more strange coming out of my mouth than into it.

On the school front, I just finished two weeks in the company of the knowledgeable, sympathetic and witty Gerald Caplan, one of the world's leading scholars in genocides. The topic was the media's role in the Rwandan genocide. I didn't know much about the 100 days in 1994 where between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Tutsi and Tutsi sympathisers were butchered, mutilated, raped, and displaced before, but I know a lot more now. Even if the whole story is so complicated that not even Gerald Caplan knows anything near everything (which he openly admits).

These weeks, I have a course with our Head of Department, French professor Victoria Fontan. She's a very interesting personality with a deeply sarcastic tone and generally a very pessimistic view of world politics on every level. Kind of refreshing, actually. The course is called 'Media, Terrorism and Insurgency', and I'm sure that all the students are now (if not before) on the CIA/Facebook watchlist after sharing questions about the readings on our course Facebook group (which include the communication strategy of Hezbollah and a collection of speeches by Osama bin Laden). Good times.

Oh, finally: In an hour I have a Skype "date" with a guy from CARE Denmark's office in Hanoi. We have been talking about an internship to finish my MA, and communication for a Danish NGO in Vietnam would not be bad. Tonight is just about sharing information about the programme and myself. I'll let you know how it goes.