Week 10:

This week, I received an invitation from VN to join her for a MSA sponsored event at the lake shore campus.  I was pleased that it would be held on a Saturday afternoon, and agreed to meet her there.  The MSA had arranged for Tariq Ramadan, Oxford Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies to speak on the topic “Islamic Principles, Western Perspectives, and the Arab Awakening.” 

Unfortunately, when I arrived on campus, I found out that the event had been postponed due to the speaker not arriving on time.  VN had found out about the delay earlier in the day and had tried to reach me, but I missed her email.  I was disappointed to miss this event, because I anticipated it being a situation where I would be the odd person out, and would be taken a bit out of my comfort zone.  I went to the room the event was scheduled to take place in, but because the event organizers had communicated via the facebook page, student attendees knew not to show up at the scheduled time.  I didn’t see VN, and it was unclear whether the event was delayed or cancelled, so I made the decision to return home.

This was to be my primary exercise for the week, and I used up much of the time I allocated for it in transit.  When I arrived home, I did some online research on Tariq Ramadan, who seems very interesting, but I don’t have much depth to report this week.