So… protests are cool and all, but when they impact my ability to take classes I kind of wish the president would speed up this whole reformation and resolution process. Today we met with an academic advisor from the University of Chile (one of the three universities at which we can take classes this semester), and basically, his advice was take one of about five classes or stay until January. Ummm not happening. It looks like my hope of experiencing a public university in Chile may have been crushed for this semester. It makes me sad because the students from the University of Chile that we have met so far have been super awesome (see: Amaranta, our super cool Chilean guide friend). However, I’m not sure I want to take classes that will most likely be made up entirely of gringos in order to be in the fun public school atmosphere. Alas, I have resigned myself to the idea that I will take all of my classes at La Universidad Catolica (UC or La Catolica for short), which is fine because it is a great school, and as I learned today it has a beautiful campus.
Before I had my dreams of public school in Chile crushed by my academic “advisor”, we started the day at the San Joaquin campus of la Universidad Catolica. San Joaquin is about a 30 minute metro commute from my apartment, and it is in sort of a sketchy neighborhood, but I thought it was totally worth it. The campus has lots of passageways and a lovely courtyard with a fountain that would be a perfect place to eat lunch. It was also the location of this morning’s Spanish diagnostic test. I think I am still a little rusty when it comes to Spanish grammar, or that’s how I felt upon completing the 5 page long exam. However, I’m not too worried because if I don’t do well on this test the worst that happens is that I get put in "Spanish for gringos" to improve my Spanish grammar. A little refresher never hurt anybody. It will be good to see where I am at though, because thus far I have no clue how prepared I am going to be for my classes in the Chilean universities. I am starting to freak out a little as I flip through the course catalogs. All of the classes sound really complicated and difficult, and I fear that my hopes of taking a linguistics course here might be destroyed by the fact that I really don’t understand Spanish that well in comparison to the native speaking students. I guess we’ll just have to see.
Anyway, the rest of my afternoon was spent hanging around the CIEE office in downtown Santiago and walking around the area with a few new friends. It was pretty relaxed. After we had our advising meeting, a few of us decided to go shopping in a Chilean department store that was having a liquidation of their stock. I got some seriously good deals but still probably spent too much money. Oops. I’ll need to be more careful in the future to limit my spending to souvenirs and more lasting items. I was going to go for a drink with the three of them, but since I am still in recovery from my illness, I thought it would be better that I return home. It’s a shame since they are all so nice, and I think it would have been fun, but no matter, I’ll just have to make up for it in good times this weekend when I am at full health again.
On the home front, I am becoming a bit of a homebody here. I’m not sure how it happened, but I like being in the apartment with my host mom. She takes good care of me, and conversing with her is relaxing. She also now calls me "Caryncita" which I find very endearing. This isn’t to say that I don’t want to go out, merely that I like being home as well. Tonight we actually got to eat meat! It was very strange though, as it was a hamburger patty with salad on top of it. Not quite what I had expected, but I’ll take it. She is also planning to introduce me to some of her friends this week, so I can go out with them and meet more Chileans. The two girls are 18 and 23, so that could be fun I think. It will be nice to spend more time with the Chileans, and I think it will definitely help me learn more Spanish. I’ll let you know how it all goes…
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