Donbyte Twilights

Donbyte Twilight

           Well hello there, my name is Don. You probably have forgotten me by name, but I am that slender kid that looked top heavy because of his massive curly hair. I am about 6 ft tall and 180 pounds with a glowing smile (the glow typically comes from a computer screen). I am now a busy kid in college, which, combined with a little bit of apathy, is the reason that you haven't heard from me in such a long time. Let me tell you about some of my life since the last time I have sent you an e-mail.
              My summer would be the first logical place to start even though it was relatively uneventful. I worked on a masonry crew for the second consecutive summer. It was disappointingly slow due to a lack of new houses being built, but all the same it was work that kept me in shape and earned me money. I also took an American history class at AU. I did very well in it and enjoyed it, and you can't really beat a winning combination like that. As for my summer, that is pretty much it.
              Now I move onto this school year. As you might recall, last year I roomed with three other people in two rooms. Though this proved to be fun, it was distracting and very full, so this year I am back to living with one other person in one room, which is working out very well. For the most part we both keep to ourselves, and that is nice. I can't remember many things about last semester that are worth mentioning except that it was just okay. It wasn't a particularly good semester, but I plan on making that up this semester.
              As you might already know, Manchester has a Jan-term, which is a month long intensive class between fall and spring semester. This year I expanded my horizons by taking advantage of Manchester's wonderful study abroad program and went to Ghana, Africa. The trip was a mixed bag of joys and disappointments, but I walk away still glad that I went. I was there in Africa for 14 days and did many neat things. We went to two slave castles and visited the king's palace in the Ashanti kingdom. Our group of 7 students (2 males and 5 females) and 1 professor had a private meeting with the governor (their equivalent anyways) of Accra. He told us how Ghana was doing and told us about politics and the economy, after which we had the chance to ask him questions. We also went on a canopy walk in a not-quite-rainforest. This is where we walked on rope bridges that were suspended between trees a few hundred feet above the forest floor. In addition to going high, we also went very low to depths of about 800 feet in an African gold mine. We experienced a lot of their markets, which I might say are very different than the ones here. They are out in the open and are very aggressive, especially since we are white. It took some time to get used to having everyone try to get us to come to their shop. But despite their aggressiveness in trying to get us to buy something from them, if we said something specific that we wanted to buy that they themselves did not have, then they would either tell us where we could go to get it, or what happened most often was that they would take us to another seller. One of the nice things about Ghana is that the first language there is English, so despite their thick accents this made communicating so much easier. One of the primary disappointments was that the promise of freedom never came. Every evening we got back to the hotel between 5 and 7 (typically toward the 5), and when we got there we were trapped. We weren't permitted to leave the hotel and walk around the local villages even though we were assured by the professor and others that where we were was one of the friendliest and safest places in Africa. However, there was one time when one of my female friends, named Colleen, and I got a hotel worker to take us to the surrounding areas. This was one of the nicest times of the whole trip because we got to see people in their living environment. As we walked around we were able to ask the guy questions about his way of living, and during this conversation he asked us questions about the United States, which is what I have been saying is the best thing that happened on the trip. This was the first time anyone had ever asked me questions about the states, and I enjoyed it. I had to think about how to answer in such a way that would relate my answers to the world that he is used to. For example, Colleen asked if many of the people built their own homes there. The answer was yes, and then he returned and asked us the same question. Colleen responded by saying that there were a fair amount of people who built their own homes in the States, but it quickly occurred to me that this answer would have given him the wrong impression. I believe that we have different views on what building means. For them it would go to the level at which they were making their own blocks for their houses, while I explained that the most people would go to in the States is to work with a designer and then hire. And trying not to imply that this is because we are lazy and/or rich, I explained how there were many legal codes that had to be met when building a house and that most people don't have the knowledge or ability to meet those standards. Like I said, overall I am glad I went on the trip. As far as pictures go, I will try to get some on the internet for people to see here soon, but it might be a couple of weeks before I can have that set up and send out the link. Before I close on Africa, I would like to share that while I was there my girlfriend (Mary Cox) and I reached our one year anniversary. Though it was very sad that we were half a world apart (she was in New   Zealand for her Jan-term trip), we are very happy to be together.
              I think this semester is going to be a good semester and possibly the best one yet since college. However, you will have to wait until after this semester to get an update on that. I have attached an image of my schedule to this e-mail so that you can see what I will be doing. As for this summer, I am in the process of looking for an internship, but I don't know where or what yet. I will try to send an update when I find out.
              For a nice non-college related topic to close with, I choose to talk about my 5 year old sister Mia, whom seems to be doing really well. Every time I go home she seems to be at a different stage or at least doing something noticeably different. She is growing up to be a wonderful girl with a wonderful personality. She does exceptionally well in school both academically and in interacting with her peers. When I am home we enjoy playing together, especially a new game called Bumparena.  It is overall a great joy to be apart of Mia's life and see her grow up.
              I hope that this e-mail finds you doing well, and I would surely enjoy it if you found time to send me an update on how things are going for you.


Don Lawson