Spring 2015 - Day 41
As we all know, I spend most of my days at sea blogging, and this time was no different. I did a lot of blogging up until my class in the afternoon.
In drawing we did really difficult things that involved only drawing all of the intersections within a space. I did not enjoy the exercise at all.
After dinner I went to the gym and straight from the gym I ran to the Union for the panel. The LBGTQA group on the ship was holding a panel to discuss LBGTQA travels in the countries we were visiting, their experiences traveling, as well as just discussing LBGTQA culture in general.
It was absolutely fascinating. I think that if I had to choose another degree and career path I would choose gender studies and gender psychology. I find the world and culture of LBGTQA people fascinating. The fact that someones brain could identify differently with their physical body is so interesting. And I am not just talking about who people are attracted to sexually, I mean those who are transgendered or identify as genderless. That world out there is vast and I love learning about it.
They handed out a sheet with various terms that those who are not within the community generally don't know. The most interesting thing I learned was that people whose experience of their own gender matches the one they were assigned at birth are called Cisgendered. So I was born female and identify as female so I am Cis. Then I learned that who ever came up with the words took many of the prefixes from chemistry. So trans means 'to cross over' while cis means 'on the side of'. So interesting.
After a crash course in the vocabulary they talked about pronouns. Did you know that there are gender neutral pronouns? I didn't. But they exist. Can I remember them right now? No, I can't. Whoops. That is what I get for not writing them down.
The whole panel was very interesting, I loved learning about the personal experiences of all the people on the panel. I was so glad I went, it was so interesting.
After the panel was post-port reflection for Vietnam. I hadn't been to a post-port for any of the other countries because up until this point I hadn't felt like I needed to reflect on anything that I did. But I definitely needed to reflect on Cambodia.
We broke into smaller groups and each shared various experiences. There were 4 different trips that went to Cambodia but we all saw and did similar things and we all came out of it affected in similar ways. It was during this realized how I felt about going to the Cu Chi Tunnels and seeing the little kids selling things all over Cambodia. It was reassuring to know that other people had just as strong adverse reactions to what they saw. It made me feel less alone and better about how I was feeling.
It's usually hard to vocalize negative feelings but I have found that, if you can manage it, it helps you come to terms with them and turn the negative feelings into a positive growing experience.
