Brussels and Thesis

February has held many fun activities for me, foremost among them a weekend trip to Brussels with Albert and Katie. We engaged in typical Belgian activities - eating (way too many) waffles, drinking Belgian beer, and sitting outside as much as possible during the glorious sunny weekend. Along the way we even came across the smallest house in Brussels:

and encountered a building that was missing its insides:

There were more fun pictures from Brussels, but unfortunately they're on other people's cameras. At any rate, it was great to see Scott and Vicki (whom we stayed with) and to meet Gregory. Brussels on a sunny and warm weekend provides the perfect environment for wandering around and exploring.

Besides adventuring, I've also been working on my thesis, which has changed its topic again (a bit). Because the newspaper I wanted to analyze was not readily available in this part of the continent, I decided it would be better to analyze something that I could refer to while designing my research. (This avoids the problem of me showing up in London in May only to discover that the insert of the paper I want to analyze isn't included in the archive, or something similarly horrifying.)

Thus, I am now going to do a discourse analysis of the Ugandan youth newspaper Straight Talk, which is nice because it specifically focuses on HIV prevention. This one has an online archive and the people who run it in Kampala are willing to email me additional issues, which I am very grateful for. So, barring any other methodological considerations, the plan is to stick with this subject matter and move onward from here. I'll keep you posted...