First Week of Normal!

Yes it is! I have all of my classes figured out, which is why I haven't been posting anything--I've been running around Buenos Aires finding readings, classrooms, and schedules.

For two weeks we've been having workshops on Spanish. I found mine rather useless because they taught us how to conjugate in past tense (maybe it would have been good to learn this before enrolling in the southern hemisphere of Harvard, people?) but it was challenging for the kids in my class who were still working on...present tense. They kind of stress me out because I'm confused as to how they expect to pass their classes and/or function in a Spanish-speaking country.

So, for comparison, this was my schedule last semester. 21 credit-hours of ridiculous.

and this is my schedule for this semester. I have a class on Thursday, but it's a Spanish class through my program and it makes me really angry so I am going to pretend it isn't happening. Since I'm mature and deal with things well. It was originally at the same time as Literature and I was told I wasn't allowed to take Literature. After I'd missed two classes of Lit, my adviser emails me and tells me that maybe we CAN change it if I come in and ask nicely. He was super angry that I hadn't gone (but he said I couldn't take it?!) and told me that if IFSA was going to let me change my special grammar class I would have to go to USAL directly and plead for my life with them to let me take this class. And pretend that I'd been to filosofia and that my life wouldn't be complete if I didn't get to take that class as well.

The IFSA man made me agree that I was changing the Spanish class against their recommendation and then told me to take a different one that wouldn't conflict with my classes. (this was a lie and caused later drama.) Then I walked to USAL and, after sweating in the waiting room for 15 minutes, the exchange student representative looked at me like I was crazy and told me that of course I could take the classes, as long as I didn't skip any more and registered right away. (IMPORTANT NOTE! I am now the proud owner of an USAL email address: allison.iuliano@usal.edu.ar be jealous.) However, I couldn't register for filosofia. This concerned me a lot. The next day, when I went to ask where the classroom was, I off-handedly asked if I could register for the class or if I, as an exchange student, wasn't supposed to take it. This amazing woman named Carolina helped me register (which you aren't supposed to do, apparently) and found someone to literally hold my hand and walk me to my class. I was super late and sat, terrified, in the back of the room. We had a short break after which we called roll, and of course I wasn't on it. I had to announce that I was an exchange student (like it wasn't obvious) but the professor is super chill!!! I used one of my cool new Argentine words, which is apparently not very polite. I looked terrified when he explained it to me as using "son of a bitch" to a professor in English. But he said it was fine if I used it around him.

He is not very similar to my UBA professor. Pegoraro is his name. He very illegibly in chalk scribbles "turn your phone off" on the top of the board every class and flips out if he sees anyone using a phone. He yells about how he doesn't text during class, so we can't either. Argentine students do not like this at all. He is rather intense...and I am super glad to have such a funky professor!

AH I don't know what else to tell you about! Right now Aldo's sister Daniela is visiting from Montevideo. She is awesome and I am going to secretly be very sad when she leaves, because she is the only person that talks to me a lot--since she doesn't have tons of exchange students and I haven't been living with her for a month. UMMM maybe I'll make a post about the weekend later? It wasn't super exciting. I only did one culturally valuable thing. But pictures will make it more fun. SOON SOON SOON!!!