Decisions, decisions

Today began like many of the others from this trip: with some serious throat pain and head pain. Thank you, lovely sinus infection. However, I woke up feeling happy to be going to the doctor for a pre-scheduled appointment at 10:45. My host mother and I took the metro to Salvador to get to my check-up, and we made the all-too-familiar walk to the depressing looking building that houses his office. This time we only had to wait about 10 minutes for the doctor, and there was none of the form-filling-out of the last time, since he had requested this appointment himself. I felt more comfortable striding into the doctor’s office and sitting in his chair this time, since I was pretty positive he wasn’t going to do the horrible nose throat test again. Indeed he merely peered into my nose and mouth and confirmed that I had a lot of congestion, and then he prescribed me another drug to take care of that. I also noted that this time he was wearing a full-on winter coat, which I took as a step up from his sweat suit from the time before. Anyway, he and my host mom spoke in rapid Spanish for a few minutes about her health and then we made an appointment for another check up on Friday. Ugh, so many appointments.

In any event, my host mom left me at the metro station to head to the office to work on a few things before lunch, so I took care of filling my own prescription. It was a very painless process, and I was even able to correct the pharmacist when he gave me 20 pills instead of 10. Something you should all know: prescriptions are RIDICULOUSLY CHEAP here. My prescription strength Sudafed (this is what I think it is based on a quick internet search) cost me $15 without showing any health insurance. Amazing. I then headed home because I had already missed my second orientation of the trip, which began at 10. Thankfully, I checked my schedule and I will actually be able to make it to the one at La Catolica! Such a deal. Since I was quite bored alone in the house, and I had nothing to do until we had class at 4:30, I took a nice leisurely stroll around the block for the next half hour. This time around I discovered a store where I can buy school supplies (harder to come by than you would think) and a delicious looking frozen yogurt store. Yum. When I finally got back, I only had to wait for about another half hour for my host mom to come back for lunch.

I’ll now skip to the afternoon class session, because everything in the middle is boring. I am just going to put it out there: I am a huge dork. I really liked today’s grammar refresher. I had forgotten how much I like the linear nature of the Spanish language, and getting a chance to practice grammatical structures and work on corrections reminded me of why I am here in the first place-- to learn more Spanish and to put all of my knowledge to use. Awesome. Plus, my headache and my throat ache had subsided on their own (partially thanks to some tea), so I was feeling much better. I also found out that I would be working with seven other people on an oral presentation on Chilean politics, which is good because of the four topics that was my first choice. I figure, I watch the news with my host mom everyday anyway, why not have even more to talk about with her? Our group is meeting up tomorrow morning to get things going.

Other than that, I received a couple of emails from La Catolica about general orientation information and class schedules, and I am starting to get nervous/ excited about taking classes there. Classes start on Monday though you aren’t required to enroll in them until the 12^th of August. I’m trying to narrow down what to take. I am also considering being a part of a program through the school called “Tandem” where you meet with another Chilean student once a week to work on your conversational Spanish. Should I do it? Let me know what you all think. Oh and I am also starting to consider what trips I might want to take this semester besides Buenos Aires with Jo in December (!!!) so there’s that as well. So many decisions.