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Thursday, August 2, 2007

Another day of trying to figure out what the crap I’m doing this semester. I went to a class called Teatro Hispanoamericano Contemporeano (Contemporary Hispanicamerican Theater), hoping I would enjoy it. I’m sure it will be a very interesting class, except that the students are all 8th semester, ready to graduate seniors and they will be reading one play a week with a quiz every two weeks. Plus they have a 15 page final paper. When I found that out, I knew it wasn’t for me. After that class I went to the Medieval Spanish Literature class again. We actually didn’t have class because all the first year Literature students had some kind of test/final over Spanish Grammar at the same time. But there were 4 other students in the class along with myself and one other extranjero. The professor came in a we all talked for about an hour. They asked me about New Orleans and how it is doing, what I thought about Chile, what I’m studying, etc. Then we talked about the epic Spanish poem Mio Cid that we are reading in the class. Well, they are reading. I decided not to take the class for a few reasons: 1. They are changing the time so that it would interfere with my volunteer hours. 2. They have class at 8:30 am on Fridays. 3. It was going to be way too much work.

So after a short panic because I still didn’t know what classes would take, I went to the computer lab where I ran into a bunch of other CIEE kids. We started talking and I sat down to try to iron out my schedule. I think I’ve got it all figured out now and I feel much better. Basically I’m taking 2 theology classes, one Education class, one Politics of Latin America, and the Poverty class.

After class I came home, ate, exercised, and showered. Then I went to a meeting at the CIEE office about volunteer opportunities and internships. After that a bunch of us went to a party a U. Católica for extranjeros. We drank Piscolas (Pisco and Cola) and ate Choripan, a delicious chorizo sausage on a bun. U Católica has an organization of Chilean students to organize events and trips for extranjeros. It was really fun and I met a lot of very nice Chileans.

After the party we hung out at a house for a while before heading out to the discotheque. The house we were at has students and other young people from all over the world staying there. It has 16 rooms, a couple small kitchens and a common room. We were all hanging out in the common room and I realized that we were truly an international group. There were kids from Chile, USA, Columbia, France, Sweden, and Korea. And everyone was speaking Spanish! A few times I looked around the room at the other kids from the US and we just smiled. It was completely surreal and amazing! Around 1:15 we headed out to the club. U Católica’s engineering program through a huge party at a discotheque called Blondie and we decided to take advantage of the opportunity to hang out with Chileans, so we bummed along. It was really fun and we danced until 3:15 am. We left early; everyone else was dancing the night away. But I was exhausted and didn’t want to sleep all day Friday, so I shared a cab home and crashed.