So a week and a half in and I am happy as a bee, except today is the first day of school, so the lazy beach days and bar evenings are now going to turn into class stress and night exhaustion. First, the chilean system for extranjeros registering for class is absolute lunacy. We all go into a big room at an unseasonable time in the morning (especially since one of the girls turned 21 the night before) and have to register for 15 courses, out of which we will take 5 or so. They do this because Chilean professors have an amusing habit of canceling a class a month in, or changing it's time, place etc so there is a perfect possibility I could go for a month and then not be able to take it anymore. I would probably have a sense of humor failure. So in this big room, we have to go around to each department's table and then a student monitor from each department has to shuffle through a stack of papers and write down our names on the piece of paper that corresponds to each class. Then our chilean student assigned to us, goes round to each table and reshuffles through each stack to check we are actually in the class. Absolute madness and takes three hours. It's also not as if I am in a primitive society. I was on the bus the other day and there was a family of three children between maybe 5 and 9 years old and EACH of the children had smartphones (and as you all know, it took me forever to figure out how to make a call on mine). I think it just amuses the Chileans to make Americans sit hungover in a stifling hot room early on a friday morning.
My family here is wonderful, I live with a grandmother (adela), her daughter (roseanne), roseanne's two sons and the pregnant girlfriend of one of the sons, a friend of the family, and there are always at least three other people in the house. I also, really embarrassingly, found out yesterday at the baby shower for the girlfriend, this boy who has been in and out of the house constantly and i assumed was just another friend/cousin/uncle/etc, is actually another son of roseanne's. oops.
The family says my spanish is better than most of the students they have had in the past, but apparently my program used to have low spanish requirements and was full of sorority girls, and now it has high requirements and is full of bilingual lib arts/ivy league students and me. Off now for my 30 minute walk to class, I will never again complain about going to OlinRice. Also, Rosey, the libraries here close at 6 in the afternoon. and the coffee is instant and tastes like mierda. I can't decide whether this will make me super productive in the mornings and afternoons, or mean I never do anything. Probably the latter since it takes me an hour to read ten pages in spanish.
ciao gorditas
oh one last thing, we were warned about how politically incorrect the chileans are, oh god I have an example almost too appalling to post on this, it's about drinking like an african. However, on the plus side, I am well on my way to having a gay chilean bestfriend, which is surprising in this ubermacho society but delightful
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