Peace House Letter #2

It has been almost a week and half since my arrival at Peace House and things have been going really well. This week we had our first full week of classes. We started out with our Urban Peace and Justice Issues class on Monday afternoon with JH Jr (for those of you who went on the Indy Fall Break Service with me in 2003 he was the director of Horizon House). It looks to be an interesting course, however seeing as John has not taught a course previous to this he still has some learning to do. But his varied experiences and enthusiasm help make up for that. Then on Tuesday I had my interview with KT from the State Museum. She is really enthusiastic about having me work with her and had really good things to say about Laura Rheinheimer (also from Goshen) who interned at the Museum over the summer. I also found out that the State Museum will be hosting an exhibit about Lord of the Rings the movie trilogy!! Which as most of you know really makes me happy, however the exhibit won't be installed until Oct 6, 2005, so I will have to wait till I get back from China. Tuesday evening was also very memorable in that I watched the movie Amistad for the first time. It tells the story of a ship of Africans captured and sold into slavery who overthrew their captors, yet were fooled into sailing to the States. The movie follows their legal battle to be returned to their homelands along the west coast of Africa and takes place in 1839. I had not seen the movie previously and found to be very moving movie but what made it even more interesting was that the language spoken by the Africans was Mende which is the mother tongue of Samuka. He translated to use several parts of the movie and both he and Miriam added a lot of insight. Then Wednesday we had our first class of Methods of Peacemaking with MM, which was really exciting. She has over 25 years of experience teaching law and working as an activist, so I think the course will go very well. The class also really connected with some of the themes brought up by the viewing of Amistad. I continue to really enjoy getting to know my housemates and we seem to be getting along very well. This week I also got to test out my rice cooker and vegetable steamer, discovering that it worked very well for both and seems to be a very valuable addition to our kitchen. Thanks to those of you who have kept me updated on your own lives, I hope things continue to go well for you (especially those who are also away from home).