Boring Academic post mostly so I remember what happened...

March 17th...my first actual class since early December. Besides being a little bit nervous about directly enrolling in Argentine classes with Argentine students speaking and learning in Spanish that I may or may not totally understand, I wasn't totally sure my brain would even function at an academic level after such a long break. So how was my first day of school, you might ask? Well....

I arrive to the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) for my Social Sciences and the Environment class, which I am actually still on the waitlist for, with about 30 minutes to kill. Luckily Sarah is in my class, so as we walk in the front door, I am only slightly less overwhelmed than I might have been had I been alone. Posting the classroom numbers online would be silly and chaotic obviously, so instead somebody at UBA has elected to make a posterboard at the front with a long list written in tiny font directing us to our class. The halls are packed with students in semi-hippie-ish clothes, handing out flyers and pamphlets about workers rights or student bus fares or whatever they are passionate about. It is a club fair for a cause, and I feel like I am in the 60s protesting Vietnam or fighting for civil rights...except it is 2009, I am in South America's #1 ranked university, and of course it's all happening in Spanish so I don't quite understand what it going on.

We finally get to our class, which only has more graffitti and political posters, spray painted philosophical messages etc, on the walls. The professor comes in about 10 min late and we get started, a nice appropriately sized class of about 10-15 people for the space we have, I think to myself. I am wrong. As the class begins and the professor introduces himself, students trickle in late one by one. Now, in the US, if you are 20 minutes late for a class, you slip in and sit down quietly. In Argentina apparently, you walk across the room to your friends, kiss them each on the cheek to say hello, exchange a few words, and then sit down. The professor does not even bat an eye, and this continues to happen over the course of the next hour. There are now about 30 people cramped in this room.

And then, disaster: he tells us we are all going around the room to introduce ourselves, tell everyone our experience with environmental studies and say why we wanted to take this class. Ahhhh! Um...I took this class because it made me have no classes Thursdays or Fridays, and I know nothing about the environment except there's this thing called global warming happening? I can tell this will be the wrong answer, so I prepare something else in my head and no joke practice it at least 20 times, making sure I have conjugated the verbs rights and used vocabulary that does not make me sound like a 4th grader (and conveys a little more interest in the class). I present myself to the class, and phew now that that's over, I can relax. The professor begins lecturing, and to my dismay (and every other American in the classroom, about 6 total), I don't understand a word that comes out of his mouth. Well. Instead, I take the reamining 2.5 hours left of class to observe my surrounding. A couple differences between UBA and Gtown:

1. Mate. This is a type of tea Argentines drink literally everywhere, and they carry it around in these special cups and pass it around amongst their friends. It's everywhere, sortof the way everyone has nalgenes. As one student is talking to the professor her neighbors are passing mate in front of her face to the next student over, whispering over her voice and completely disregarding the fact that the teacher is trying to talk to this girl. This doesn't phase anyone in the class, so I guess Mate>Professor.

2. The amount of graffitti on the wall, I know I just mentioned it, but everything was seriously covered, stenciled rats next to ideological messages, mobilizing calls of action urging fellow students to unite for a rally on May 29th, and painted signs taped to the blackboard, which nobody takes down nad I assume we will just learn to live with. Halfway through the class there is a knock on the door, and a group of 5 students come in, give a speech about workers rights and how they need our money (I think thats what they said), and just walked around the class with a collection box. The crazy thing is, almost everyone put something in, and bills too not just spare change.

Despite my not understanding anything that happened, I really liked the class and the prof was really nice

My other class at the Universidad Catolica de Argentina (UCA) was a lot closer to a class I might take at Georgetown, and I definitely understood a good 90% of it (yes!!). There's a good amount of reading for both classes, and I'm still trying to figure out how much of it I really need to do (unfortunately, I think it's all of it if I want to understand what's going on in the class).

Other than classes, I've been busy traveling a little bit. We went to Mar del Plata last week, and yesterday three of us took a trip to el Tigre, a nice nature-y suburb of BA, just for the day. We had some steaks and just relaxed, which was definitely very nice.

Today I might dedicate to Wikipediaing everything I didn't know about Argentine history, so I can follow a little more easily. I also think I might look into getting a tutor, offered for free through the program, because people have said it really helps. We'll seee...

Ciao!