Another post, unrelated to Samoa

Today has been an extremely strange day. I did not get a lot of sleep last night and had an early morning class that I needed to go to in order to turn in a paper that is worth 40% of my grade.
The night before I spent with Chris, I cooked dinner for the two of us - a chicken dish with red and yellow peppers, tomatoes, thyme, oregano, wine, capiers, and some parsley served with rice and a glass of white wine. I was really proud of my meal. Although it was not perfect, it definitely was something I'd never done before and I felt extremely accomplished. We both felt a little silly, having cooked a meal together and sat down drinking wine and listening to music - we felt like we were acting like adults but neither of us really felt very adult like. We finished the meal eating ice cream (from the container), talking and I cleaned up the kitchen.
Then we went out for some casual drinks with Brian at the Matterhorn. The night was really great, just the three of us talking late into the night, sitting in the outdoor bar area next to a fireplace with the smell of smoke swirling around us.
So I went to sleep in a very comfortable and good mood. But this morning, things were just very strange. Not bad or unsettling, just strange. Maybe it was the lack of sleep or the fact that I had another weird dream about Zeus, but everything sort of felt funny today.
To start I arrived at the library around 8:15, to print my paper that I had to turn in. I was surprised to find it fairly empty (I got there early because typically I have to wait on a line for the next avaliable computer). After printing up my paper I went to find some coffee. The man I ordered from at first acted like I didn't exist, which was very bizzare. I stood there waiting to place my order and he was right there, but he didn't say anything to me for at least a minute. Then it was like he suddenly noticed me (even though I was in plain view?) and asked for my order. He proceeded to make me the most watered down, milky coffee I've ever had. I think maybe he was tired and had some sort of vendetta with early morning customers, but it left me with a weird taste in my mouth (not related to the bad coffee).
In my tutorial for my psych class, I handed in my paper and half expected her to send us on our way (which she did last time) but instead made us stay the entire 2 hours to watch the movie "The Eleventh Hour." It's a movie all about how the world is falling apart, global warming, oil and coal, blahblahblah. Normally I don't really mind those movies, they're very informative and I tend to agree with them. I watched a very cool movie about Cuba and how it had a mini-economic crisis in the 90's and how they resolved that issue. So, in no way do I disagree with these movies, but recently I feel like all my classes have been about the carbon footprint of America and how wasteful Americans are. I know that it's very true and it's a sad truth, but I'm getting really tired of it. All this talk and I see no sign of action. This movie in particular was just people talking at you about how horrible America is and how horrible the world is going to be and it kept saying, we need change, we need change, we need change but it never amounted to anything, they never presented progressive steps that could be made. It said things were being set in motion, but mostly it just said that we're fucked if we don't do something. It was uncomfortably long, and just flashes of sad images, of destruction and of animals that will go extinct. It made me feel horrible for being America and made me wish that I wasn't inheriting such a shit world. Further, I hate the expression "it is what it is," which I feel like so many people tell themselves in a lot of various situations. The world we're living in "is what it is." I can't imagine any situation so stagant and stable that you just need to accept it for what it is. I think, if you really want something to happen or to change, then you can take it and influence it. The same applies to history, what happened in the past, happened but that doesn't mean you continue to dwell on it or accept it as fate to happen again. As I was taught from a young age - you learn from your previous mistakes so as not to make them again. I wish the world was capable of seeing and understanding that. Understanding that throwing a plastic bottle in the garbage instead of the recycling bin has repercussions.
Anyway, to stop my rant, you get the idea... the movie left me feeling even more in a funk than my impassive coffee server.
I left the class with an hour to kill until my next class so I went to a cafe that I like to buy a sandwich and sit and read in. I think it's called the "Mount St. Cafe" and it's located on the bottom floor of the Student Union building. I bought a sandwich, some fries, and a spirte and sat on a couch to read my book. I was really hungry and had assumed that 11 o'clock was a perfectly reasonable time to have lunch, but when a server brought my fries over he looked me in the eye and in a sort of disdainful voice said, "here are your breakfast fries..." I sort of gaped at him as he walked away. Fries at 11? Who knew that was such a crime.
I read my book until 12 and went to my final class of the day. This tutorial (for my sociology course) is literally set up for the dumbest people in class. My teacher went over what went wrong with the most recent essays we had turned in. He pointed out things like "don't restate the question we gave you in your intro" or "make sure your paragraphs are longer than 2 sentences." I don't know what kind of essays these people are writing, but I wrote stuff in that format when I was in middle school. I was so appauled at how useless the information was that I read until we started talking about something more relevant. From then, the class was interesting, however yet again a good chunk of time was spent bashing Americans and western culture. I think that although I agree with it all, it's hard to have something that is part of you, something you can't remove from yourself or disassociate from yourself, bashed so openly and so frequently.
So I walked home, trying to play the read-while-i'm-walking-game (which always fails because I always run into something or someone). Right as I neared home I stopped reading, who knows why, but just as I chose to close my book and I was getting into the rhythm of my path home, I noticed a tiny little green bird lying in the middle of a busy sidewalk. I stopped and stared at it and in turn a woman next to me did the same thing. I felt like this little bird had somehow awoken me and this other woman up from the daze we get when we walk familiar paths down the street. We both looked at the bird and then looked at each other and then around us. Everyone was just walking by, some people (if we hadn't been standing over the bird) probably would have stepped on the tiny little thing. As we stood there wondering what to do, a rather tall man stopped by us. It was so bizzare seeing him realize what we were doing. I saw his face before he saw us standing there and the bird on the ground and his face after, and it went from emotionless and cold to concerned and, in a way, more human. He immediately stooped down and scooped the little bird up into his enormous hands and we all looked at each other unsure of where to put the little bird. The woman wanted to put the bird up high for she thought it may have fallen out of a nest, I suggested putting it in some bushes or a park so it would be on the ground (able to get some insects and stuff if it could eat those) and it would be out of the way of human traffic. We all started walking together, the man striding next to the woman and I ahead of them. I wanted to continue with them, but I knew there wasn't much else I could do and the man seemed to have taken the little birds life (literally) into his hands, so I just went home.

I think what has been the theme of the day is human detachment. We're all so capable of placing ourselves into comfort zones, walking the same path everyday, going through the motions of the day and thinking within our own realms that when change occurs or is necessary, when a little injured bird is suddenly placed before us, it's jolting and confusing. I'm glad there are people like that woman and that man who make the decision to stop their daily path in order to put a little bird safetly under a bush in a park.