You Aren't Whatever You Say You Are

After way too much searching and touring, I finally found a place that I can be comfortable with.

I immediately got that "yeah I can live here for the next 2 years" feeling when I walked inside. I thought about whom I would live with and how we would actually speak to each other and live like a family instead of 4 distant strangers. I thought about how we can wash clothes together instead of 3 times a day. I thought about how I can wake up in the middle of the night totally depressed, and just across the hallway someone who cares about me will be there. I thought about how we can just buy one gallon of milk instead of 4 quarts, one loaf of bread instead of 4, and one carton of eggs instead of 4.

This was enough to make me skip past spring semester and summer holidays and be somewhat excited to start my first semester as a junior. (Then I remember the homework I have due next week and the week after that and this semester just can't go by quickly enough.)

Speaking of this semester, it is only the second week of school and I feel as though January is the longest month ever. My drive and determination for schoolwork just continues to dwindle with each semester that passes. I keep having this "I just want to stay in my bed all day and do nothing" feeling, and I do not know what to do about it. Still, I have managed to keep myself too busy for my own liking with both apartment hunting and maintaining an above average social life.

I am actually just returning from an event that was very interesting. It was put on by CSA and it was a forum called "Are you as Caribbean as I am?" It was essentially a battle between those who were born and/or raised there and those who have probably been there maybe twice but are still exposed to the culture because one or both of their parents is from a Caribbean island.

Does that make them any less Caribbean? Of course it does. How are you going to claim to be from somewhere that you have never been? Or somewhere you know nothing about geographically, economically, or politically? Sure you may know about the food or the morals because your parents instilled that in you, but you are not surrounded by it 24/7 and never have been; so the only thing you can prove is that your parents are from there.

from
- preposition
1. having as a starting point.
2. having as a source, agent, or cause

of
- preposition
1. containing
2. belonging to

The main point I was making, and will stand by, is that so long as you were not born and raised there, or at least raised there, then you personally are of Caribbean descent (be it Haitian, Jamaican, Guyanese, Trinidadian, Bajan etc.) but you are not from the Caribbean. You simply have it in you. So to consider yourself 100% Caribbean is seriously pushing it.

And no, it is not going to show in a blood test that you are Jamaican, don't be silly.