The Class Situation

Che boludos (that;s slang for hey dummies)
Well it's been a while since I've written anything because this has been such a hectic time. A bit stressful at times. I started my UBA classes last thursday and ever since it's been non stop. Here's why:
I was deciding between 4 UBA classes which I should take. I thought 2, since I took two classes at UAM(the Madrid university) and was fine. Little did I know the reputation of UBA. The school system is very different here but basically UBA is the best school in the country and one of the best in South America. It is a public school and free and most everyone there seems like they really want to learn. The first class I went to was a seminar about reciente argentine history from a historical and historiographical perspective. I could understand the teacher pretty well, except for a few big vocab words, and the class mates were very friendly the us foreigners (2 koreans, 1 german, and 1 other "yankee"). The only problem was that the teacher explained that the class was about perspectives looking at history and she wasn;t going to deal with the actual history becuase "we already know it." As we went around the class introducing oursleves I realized almost everyone was fnishing their 5 year long history major (ie pro's in argentine history). For this reason I felt out of place, so I thought eh I don;t think I;ll take this class.
The next class was Social Geography. I chose this topic cause Argentina has very interesting geography and it probably has interesting affects on their society. The content was fine and dandy but the teacher was impossile. Although my classmates were in their 1st or second years and new to this material as well, I couldn;t barely understand a word the professor was saying. He would trail off at the end of every sentence, years of smoking had turned his words into raspy, uninteligable jargon, he made jokes that the class only knew were jokes when he laughed at them himself and he would pase around the room half the time with his back to the class talking to the wall. That was a miserable 4 hours. O yeah, and the classes are 4 hours long, so that makes a difficult class even more overwhelming. I was so glad to get out of that class and I told myself no way am I taking that class. That was the end to spending from 9 am to 9:30 pm at UBA for one day (8 hours in class without a break). I went back home, went to bed, only to go back to UBA at 9 am in the morning.
My next class was in a huge auditorium type room about argentine histroy III (1916-now). The first thing the strong voiced male professor said from up on his mini-stage in this auditorium us something along the lines of "You all are the future historians and leaders of this country. This is the best university in the country and we expect a lot from you." shit. Again, I was a little misplaced in this class.
When the UBA classes were on pause, since I didn;t have another one to go to for 3 days, things got complicated at my program, IES. I decided that I only wanted to take one class at UBA (turns out portenos only take 3 classes at a time, so for a foreigner to take 2 classes was a lot) (In madrid I took two, but the madrileños took 7! So I had it a little easier) I went into IES frist thing on Monday morning and asked to change my schedule. I got into a class about Cultural icons in Argentina. I bought the texts and found out we had to read about 70 pages in spanish for the next day. whew. I started reading.
The next morning I woke up at 5:30 am and went down to immigrations where I was suppose to get my visa. After waiting in line for 6 hours I managed to get my student visa. I headed straight over to my new class in IES for which I had been able to do about one fifth of the reading for. I found my class mates taking a quiz on the reading. Luckily I was excused from the quiz since I joined late. I sat in class for 3 hours and then headed back to UBA to try out the final class. I looked at the syllabus when I got there, about 5 straight pages single spaced of readings.... The teacher sat in front of about 75 students with a microphone and mumbled about what we were gunna study. I stayed for a while and looked at words she said taht I didn;t know and then left early. I spent another couple hours there waiting in line to get the texts for the first class which wasn;t looking so bad anymore. The next day I started reading the texts for the class and that brings me to now. I am almost done reading the texts and I have the class tomorrow morning at 9 am. WHEW!!
Anyways, that is why I haven;t been around for a while. Probably not very interesting to read about, but I wanted to document this hectic week to remember it.

Luego,
Kati