The Semester Begins

     So before I pick up where I left off, I would like to direct your attention to the top of the page where the description of my blog says that these are my random “but hopefully frequent” recordings... feel free to laugh at that. I had a good chuckle myself when I realized that “hopefully frequent” had turned into about once a month, if that! What can you do…
     Anyway, back to the “important” stuff. In my last blog, I mentioned that my new semester of classes had started while my parents were here. Unlike the intensive Spanish courses I took during January and February, this is more like a normal college semester in which I get to choose from a list of a decent variety of courses. For requirements, and just my general preferences, I chose Latin American Literature, Latin American History, History of Argentine Economics, Ethics, and Tango which consists of one class that tells the culture and history and the other class that actually teaches the dance. Of course, all these classes are conducted entirely in Spanish. So here’s the rundown on how all of those are going:

• My literature class I’m actually enjoying a lot. The professor is very reasonable in her expectations and knows how to teach students that still don’t speak Spanish all that well, and we’ve read some really some really good stuff that I actually enjoy reading.

• Latin American History…well, I think this is the epitome of a boring lecture course, plus the professor basically only talks about the economic factors, so I still feel like I know almost nothing about Latin American History.

• History of Argentine Economics - I thought I was going to enjoy the class a lot because the professor has a very charismatic personality, but it turns out her teaching skills are rather lacking. It doesn’t help that I didn’t know anything about econ to begin with, so I’m hoping to just make it through the class.

• Ethics is an extremely interesting class. We’ve studied different schools of thought about what “ethics” has meant throughout history, which has been really informative in that I can see in those schools the roots of many worldviews that are still present today. Plus, thanks to my background at Covenant and Grace, I’ve enjoyed analyzing all these from a Christian worldview.

• Tango…well, tango has been interesting. In the actual classroom part, we’ve had three different professors. I really enjoyed the first one and learned a ton from him, but the guy we have now is our dance teacher and he doesn’t know as much about the history or how to teach it. As for actually dancing, I’m having a complete blast, which is surprising because I had never before been interested in really learning how to dance. The only problem is the girl to guy ratio is at best 3:1, so most of the class is spent waiting around to see if a guy will ask me to dance and hoping that whoever that guy is at least somewhat know what he’s doing.

     The interesting thing about this semester has been my schedule. The classes only meet once a week for two hours, I don’t ever have class before 11 a.m. and on Mondays I don’t have class until 5 p.m. Plus, unless we have to make up a class from a national holiday, I never have class on Fridays. I’ve enjoyed this schedule in some respects because, if I actually get up on time, it gives me time to run in the morning, enjoy a longer time for devos while I eat breakfast (it’s amazing how much of a difference it makes when I take time to focus on God before I start my day!) and some days get some homework done before I head to the university. The only thing that I don’t like about the schedule is that it’s too easy to oversleep since I don’t have to get up for class, but then I just feel like I’ve wasted over half my day.

     Another thing I like about this schedule is that on some days I get to eat lunch or the ”merienda” with Ana and Cacho, and I’ve really enjoyed the time I’ve had to talk to them and here stories about their childhood, Argentine traditions, and a myriad of other topics that come up at meal time. One day, I had had a really good talk with Ana after breakfast, and she asked if she could write down my birthday to remember to tell me happy birthday in the years to come, then said, “Because, you know, you are leaving such a beautiful footprint on my heart!” That totally made my day and made me so happy to have been given the opportunity to share these months with this sweet old woman that has become like another grandma to me! Then, the other day, Cacho just basically said out of the blue, “You know, when you leave, we’re definitely going to miss having you around here.” Again, it totally warmed my heart!

     Another change that has come with this semester is that all of us American girls have started meeting for “Life Groups” with Abi, one of the young women who helps out a lot with the youth group. Every Thursday we grab a snack to eat after class and then share in studying the Word and a time of prayer. At first, I thought I wouldn’t like being in a group with only us “gringas”, but it’s actually been a blessing and a really cool time we get to share together.

     The last big change with the start of the semester is that our times to play soccer have now been moved inside on a hard floor (about the size of a basketball court) and we’ve started playing with more of the guys from the youth group. Playing in small spaces has been interesting since my favorite thing about soccer is being able to run and I practically don’t have room to do that, but it’s still been fun. One funny story is the first time I played, someone had passed me the ball and I lost control of it so had to change directions, inadvertently making my defender slip and fall on his butt, then (again by accident) I nutmegged the goalie for my first goal of the game. The guys were all impressed but I just laughed to myself knowing I hadn’t done anything on purpose! Another funny fact is that someone told me is that one of the older guys that comes to play goalie once played rugby for the All Blacks, a team from New Zealand that is one of the most famous in the world! The last funny story from “futbol” was after the second time we played, this time only with Anne and I (two Grace soccer players) with a bunch of guys, and one of them looked at me and said, “Jugaste mal hoy.” (You played poorly today.) I just blinked and was like, “Um, okay,” then just had to laugh because of how nonchalantly he said it…oh gotta love the Argentine directness!

Before I end, I’ll just give you all snippets of a few other humorous or interesting happenings from these weeks:

• Not leaving youth group until around five a.m. one Saturday and getting to Bailey’s house where we would spend the “night” only to find her host dad already leaving for work.

• Going to Recoleta (a part of town with a famous and huge cemetery), walking the wrong way, not really caring because we got some good coffee, arriving 10 minutes before the cemetery was going to close, seeing a somewhat creepy “living statue” and ending the day with some delicious “facturas” (pastries).

• Going to a birthday party of one of the youth group guys, meeting friends who aren’t from the church who wanted to practice English, and getting in a discussion about religion with an atheist (who after a million complicated arguments on our part, got stopped dead in his tracks by the question “Do you believe in good and evil?”).

• Playing the game “Telephone” in Spanish with the youth group.

• Making s’mores with Anne’s host mom (something she had always wanted to do but never could because she could never find marshmallows until my parents brought them from the States).

• Making brownies for the birthday of Felipe (a guy from youth group) which we thought didn’t turn out amazing but he absolutely loved them.

• Going to see Mati (yet another youth group guy) play in his band which is called Remake (yes, in English).

• Having a youth group lock-in from 8 pm to 8 am, which made us laugh because that’s only a few hours longer than normal.

• Ana teaching me how to make tortilla (no, not for burritos – here "tortilla" is an egg-based dish similar to an omelet) and a little bit about how to make empanadas!!

• Walking down the street and seeing a bus driving sitting at a red light, head on the wheel, taking a nap.

Well, in the legendary words of Porky the Pig, “That’s All, Folks!”…at least until next time. We can all hope that next time won’t be a month away, but hey, let’s not kid ourselves… :)