Expansive!
Every corner I turn leads me down a new path of discovery, with so much information flying at me. The environment around me has been so much different than I’m used to, forcing me to push the boundaries I normally cling to. I’m uncomfortable a good 86% of the time, which I probably should have expected. I feel a deep sense of otherness when I am literally blind to the cultural norms around me. Even though I’m here with school, I feel uneducated, and worried that I’m disrupting the area around me.
The museums have been significant to my experience as a whole. Actually having artifacts to connect natural history to are amazing, and the variety of mediums utilized to convey the themes are far greater than I expected. I could spend hours walking around and pausing at each art exhibition or commentary on society as a whole. The infrastructure itself had details nodding to a complex past and sustainable future. We could bounce between thousand year old churches and modern art installations, utilizing an impressive system of public transportation. I saw Van Gogh’s collection of self portraits and experimental films on the environmental preservation of Greenland.
Carson Thorpe 