Students International

24 October - After finding my residence yesterday (and feeling quite pleased with myself about it) I did a few errands and then reluctantly went back to the hostel to tell them I’d be staying another week. It really isn't so bad but the room is quite tiny and due to the positioning of the power point and the fridge it means that I can't open it when it's plugged in or if I have anything else plugged in. The powerpoint is also falling apart from people have taking the plug in and out every time they want to open it up. I should be moving to a new room anyway - which will probably be worse than this one.
Whilst I was making myself some toast in the kitchen I met a young Bahaman (not Bohemian but someone from the Bahamas) who was very friendly ... almost TOO friendly. Later on I met him with a couple of his friends and they were also all very friendly too. We had a bit of a chat and it turned out they were all from a college down in Victoria and were up here doing a project on interfaith studies, I immediately thought, OF COURSE, they want to convert me to whatever it is they're doing! This never happened but I said that we'd go for a drink sometime. They invited me up to their room later on and there were six of them - all very young and all very international, there was Geraldo the Bahamian, (the other names I can't remember) a Spaniard, a Guatemalan (from Central America, because South America doesn't exist according to him), a Swiss, and two Canadian girls (one was a Vegan from Ontario and from Saskcatchawan) - we were chattingaway and they were very nice but there was something strange I couldn't put my finger on. They were all a bit political and very earnest - they asked how old I was and seemed surprised (i think they were flattering me) and then I asked how old they were and the answers ... 17, 17, 17, 17, 17 and 17 (which kind of explained everything to me). They were all at an international school and I think they must have been pretty gifted (although they weren't all acting like it last night) because they were alluding that they'd all be doing pretty special things afterwards although none of them semed to be takingtheir interfaith project too seriously. Very interestingmeeting though - and they're here for the next week along with me. One of them wants to buy me them some booze though, my ethics are not really strained by the action but I can just see myself doing it and then seeing him rushed to hospital with alcoholic poisoning after drinking a can of light beer and me beingsent to jail for 9 months .... Dilemmas, dilemmas ...