Theory into Practice: Preparations for India

Here's a photo of me, at my desk at home. My flatmate instructed me to look interesting :-) This is pretty much where I'm sitting right now, trying not to get too distracted from the task at hand - writing something about Nonviolence in Iraq before I leave for India.

The purpose of the trip to India is to find out if I'm the right person, or I should say one of many suitable people, to put the theories of Nonviolence into action. Eighteen of us from around the world are getting to know one another by email as we prepare for the first stage of the Nonviolent Peaceforce recruitment process. It's comforting to find out that most of the group are not dissimilar to me - the differences being where they studied Peace & Conflict and what sort of NGO they have worked for.

Already we have been given numerous papers on the application of nonviolence to Sri Lanka, updates on the current conflict, immunisation/insurance type information and a personality test! For the next week, and possibly month, we will be tested with role plays about situations of real conflict, challenged by our own cultural insensitivities and will hopefully begin to build a supportive community.

I'm very nervous, of course.

Blogging On

There are many advantages to having a nerd for a boyfriend - one is that you get your own blog sight organised in approximately 2 minutes. It feels kindof self-important to have pages of the internet devoted to silly old me, but I once read that blogs are as much about a form of therapy for the blogger as they are about communicating with others. Anyhow, I thought I'd try it out as a way of documenting the next phase of my life, and showing pictures of what I'm up to, without overloading people's inboxes.