They go so far out of their way to not offend anyone and be civil and modern while at the same time being completely racist, mostly against Muslims. Open racism against Muslims is completely socially acceptable, but it is preferable to veil everything else. They speak three languages, but only acknowledge 2. In general, the way they make decions and reason things are completely incomprehensible to me.
On a similar note, I passed a little fair the other day, and the carousel's 8 bit music machine was playing "Dixie".
I also made the mistake of going out with a bunch of Russians. First thing I learned is that any night club that a Russian wants to go to is probably not one I want to go to ("Obi-Wan, you should not have come.") Also, Russian women are extremely aggressive ("Chewie! No!") and strike without any warning ("It's a trap!").
'No' is not something, that they are used to hearing. Fighting them off was not working ("Captain, Our shields cannot repel firepower of this magnitude!") So I had to make an undignified retreat (fake to the bathroom and make for the door).
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| She may be cute, but she'll kick your ass. |
I just spent about 4 hours organizing my schedule. I am going to try to do the whole MBA and abridged bachelor in one year. Even two full programs is only 13 class sessions a week, each one 2-4 hours long. So as long as I start studying and working on my masters and bachelors thesises now, I should be able to do it. That also means that next year will be easy by comparison. Also means that I have classes like "Finance for cocaine and sex addicts," "marketing substandard loans: regulatory evasion and statistical manipulation" and "parting poor people from their money" right next to "Contemporary Sexual ethics" "Embracing suffering: fasting, abstinence and penance" and "spiritual asceticism".
As far as I know, I'm the only American studying in the faculty of business, out of several hundred of us in the international program (there are over 40,000 students of which %10 are international.) This means that sometimes group work gets a little tense. The Chinese and the Japanese don't always get along, then there's the Pakistan/India, Palistine/Israel, Ireland/UK, Ireland/Ireland, African atrocity (var.), Russian/Central Asian, and Russian/any country they've occupied, tensions. The first rule was, "For safety's sake, there are no patriots allowed in the Library." This only barely proceeded, "No food or drink near books or computers," "Smoking indoors is forbidden," "Please treat East Europeans, South Belgians, and brown people with the respect you would normally afford to people," and "While in the library, please treat Muslims with the same respect you would normally afford the Irish."
So far, I've been hanging out woth mostly Chinese and Poles, but we'll see.
Food situation is OK, though I would KILL for a small thing of Tony Chachere's. Belgians don't believe in seasoning their food. Luckily I live next to the asian/african/indian stores.
Anyway, I'm going to run.


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