Ashley- Am I naive, or is everyone else just paranoid?

It has recently come to my attention that I am much braver than I thought. Or maybe just stupider (two attributes that can oftentimes be used interchangeably, depending on one's perspective).

So, I live about twenty blocks away from my school and up to this point have been walking to and from the facultad every time I've had class. Not a big deal, right? Especially because I always see other women walking alone (even in this area) at night. Okay, so my classes don't end until 11pm, but that's really not comparable to 11pm in Norman, Oklahoma or Reno, Nevada. People are still out at restaurants eating dinner or meeting up for drinks. Well, I also did not think it was a big deal until I was talking to a couple girls in my history class. They were asking me about where I lived and realized that the subte is closed by the time class gets out, so they asked which colectivo (bus) I used to get home. I said, oh, I just walk. The expressions on their faces said enough that I didn't need to hear their next words, but they didn't know that and continued to bewilderingly ask "And you haven't gotten attacked or robbed?!" Well, that made me pretty uneasy. To solidify my decision to stop walking home, the subject came up the next day with Joyce, my roommate. She didn't realize I had been walking back and proceeded to give me the "mom lecture" about why it's so dangerous, blah, blah, blah. Even though I don't think it's as dangerous as these girls think, I can admit that it's probably not as safe as I had convinced myself.

At any rate, I now use the bus to come back home at night. It's as much for my personal safety as it is to appease all the moms of the world.