I think that title is pretty self explanatory.

In streetwize tonight I realised that I am bad listener. I mean I think that realisation has been coming for a little while, I mean I have had clues but tonight it was that aha moment where I could no longer deny it. Stretwise follows a format of singing songs that are yelled as we go along and then we ask a question, anything from what’s your favourite bible verse or fod or place to when did you last expereience hope or god or suffereing to if you had a maghic power or if you were an aimal what would it be. Then we read a bible verse and talk about it and then we pray. It is lots of fun, I love the variety of answers and the honesty of answers and the fun of answers but I realised tonight that I actually spend more time thinking about what I am going to say than actually listening to others. I never truly listen until I have answered. I think I do that a lot. When someone is talking I think I am always thinking about how to respond or what words of wisdom I could give. I have realised though that this is not what poeple want and really my words aren’t really as wise as would like to think. Maybe I should just learn to shut up.

I guess this has all come on because I have to do a presentation at uni tommorrow about listening. I have to present an experimental activity and a case study and give out a handout to my uni class. I am so nervous, firstly there is the teacher and the fact that I need to be good to pass, the second is that well everyone in the class is an adult educator so they will all be analysing my skills, thirdly well it is group work and of course I have been the dominating force in my group so I feel like their marks are depending on me as well and finally well the truth is I am not really very good litener myself so who the hell I am to teel anyone else about it. Bloody uni it I feel like all the assesments that I have doen have made me realise all the mistakes I have made, not only as an educator but as a human being. I just have to think. well it is only half an hour and then it will be over and it is my last class with these people so hopefully i won’t see them again.

I might finsish this with a good quote about listening.

Every person in this life has something to teach me – and as soon as I accept that I open myself to truly listening.

Two days without cigarettes, yay for me.

I can’t believe I have sat here all day and achieved nothing. Well I can’t really say nothing but not very much, well in regards to my assessment. Computers have become the ultimate aiders in procratination, to highlight my point I will write about my day.

So I sit down to write my assessment but first I just had to check my emails quickly, so I open up the net and there is the Sydney morning herald site, justy a quick read and then a long one, not that the royal wedding really interests me but you know I have to stay informed. Then I get to my emails, just to check and then to reply to the important ones and then you know the less important ones. Now it is time for a quick cuppa. I come back I decide njo I will read this time so I star reading but soon my eyes are feeling heavier adn heavier and the next minute I am sound asleep. Wake up, great it is lunch time, I go and eat food and then Hannah comes home so I have to say hi, of course and then watch some childrens television, you know as I am really not getting enough of it living here. Come back upstairs and start typing all is going well but soon I need a another cuppa and cigarette break. Come back sit down and remember that a great quote I readon the net but where so I start searching soon I find myself reading all my friends blogs and now here I am, I have no idea, really how it happened.

But I now I really have to go and study, well that is after another quick ciggarette break and cuppa………

Wow I have been so slack in blogging, I don’t know what’s been going on as I do so like it, really I do.

Well I guess the first thing to say is that I am feeling a little bit better since that previous entry, I mean I think I will probably have more days of feeling like that but I don’t think it will be a permanent state of being.

Second thing to say is that Martin is going to Lima tommorrow to put in our application, that is so exciting, stage three entered, it is such a relief to be moving. Please pray for us however you may do it.

Third thing to mention, well I don’t really know if thre is a third thing, maybe I will just quote something from “pedagogy of the oppressed” that I really like. Itis so great when you are reading uni books that are often so dull and so you know uni ish and you find something real and passionate.

“I am more and more convinced that true revolutionaries must percieve the revolution because of its creative and liberating nature, as an act of love. Dialogue also can not exist without a profound love for the world and for humans (he said men but I am changing it). Because love is an act of courage not of fear love is committment to others. No matter where the oppressed are found, the act of love is committment to their cause – the cause of liberation. And this committment because it is loving is dialogical.

I should be at church at the moment but the truth is I am feeling too depressed to go. I know that if I went I would probably feel better but that is the problem, when you feel down, you don’t feel like doing anything and the more you don’t do anything the more down you get and the less likely you are to do anything at all. I guess it is a good thing that I have to get up and go to work tommorrow adn then I have to meet my friend Brianna, but to tell you the truth I think that I would rather just stay in bed.

So what the fuck is wrong with me. I guess I am just really missing Peru, I am missing my friends there and the kids, I am missing the fact that I feel useful there, I miss the feeling that I matter and I am not just another person in my neighbourhood and on the train in the morning and I am missing Martin, more than I can explain, my whole body and heart and soul and mind just wants to see him and give him a hug and share his life with him.

I spoke to my friend Emily on the phone last night and she was telling me not to worry about him, that all the new volunteers adore him and that he is doing lots of stuff with his life, she told me that he had a basketball game on Friday and everyone went to watch with signs and stuff and I know I should be happy and I am, I really am but I also feel so resentful that everybody gets to share his life except me and I am the one marrying him.

I also found out that one of my friends had a baby. She is a very special woman who I met as a few of her other children were students of mine. Many of the people I know in Peru treat me differently, like I am someone with money from a different country there to help them but not Patricia, despite the fact that we really have very diiferent things we were equals and during my pregnancy and miscarriage she helped me more than anyone, trust me after 11 children she really knew. Anyway she had a little girl adn she called it Emily, I mean I remember once telling her that if it was a girl she had to call it that but I didn’t think she would, I was only joking but she did and I so want to meet her, I want to hold and teach her things and support Patricia like she supported me but I can’t and I hate that and again I feel so resentful that all the other volunteers get to and I don’t.

There is so much going on there with the kids and I want to know about it, I want to know everything but it is also so hard as I just end up missing it more. I went to bed last night and I just wept and wept, I am surprised that I didn’t wake up the whole neighbourhood It felt good though I don’t think I had really let myself do that since I came home. I wept because I miss it, I wept for all the people and the poverty that they live in, I wept for my baby and all the other struggles that I had, I wept for all the people that I met and may never meet again, I wept for the fact that I can’t change the whole world and I wept because of the shit that I have to go through just to be with the man that I love.

You know the problem with going and living in other places is that I will now spend the rest of my life missing somewhere. I don’t regret it though none of it and I just have to remember something my mum told me once. She said that we live in a world where lots of sad things happen and that it is good to feel sad for it, it shows that you care. She is right if I never cared for anyone or anything I wouldn’t feel like this but I refuse to stop caring.

In 1971 an interdepartmental Whitehall committee compiled a secret report
on smoking and health. Almost ten years later it was leaked to the press.
Its conclusions made depressing reading. A reduction in smoking would
certainly lead to a parallel drop in invalidism and premature deaths but,
the committee reasoned, such an improvement in the health of the nation would
be undesirable. If two out of every five smokers kicked the habit, we
should have to face the problem of caring for an extra 100,000 old people every year. Any savings in the costs of treating the victims of tobacco
poisoning would be more than offset by the extra retirement pensions that the state would have to pay to the survivors. Moreover, the report went on, if people stopped spending so much of their income on a heavily taxed commodity like tobacco, they would have more money to buy other goods such as imported washing machines, video recorders and cars. Over a five year period, a 20 per cent fall in cigarette consumption would produce a nasty deficit on the balance of payments. Therefore, on balance, the report argued that it would be better for the economy if people were left to smoke themselves into an early grave
(Booth, Tim (1988) Developing Policy Research, Aldershot: Avebury. p.52).

And on that note I am going for a smoke you all a higher pension. I will be back soon.