La Vida Escolar

¿¡Hola como estaipo!? Finally I'm writing an original post, gone are the lazy days of copying and pasting an out-dated email. Now that classes have started...yeah I know, August 1st is a bit early for me...I can talk about them and how cool they are! Since figuring out that it doesn't matter what classes I take, as Macalester will accept any of them towards my Latin American Studies major (makes sense I guess, since I'm in Chile!). So here they are: Mondays at 9am I have photography in black and white. My first photography class ever and so far it seems super cool! I just bought a camera down here for 70.000 chilean pesos which is roughly $140. Hopefully I'll be able to sell it when I'm done...or be so into photography that I'll cherish it forever. As of now, I know more Spanish photography terms than English ones. My next class on Mondays is at 3:40pm: Oral and Written Spanish...boring. Then after that it's Mountain sports! This is the sweetest class ever because we get to go out on trips and climb mountains and go camping in the mountains we've climbed. Today we practiced climbing an artificial wall in the gym of la Casa Central...or the main campus building. I made it to the top of the wall, quite surprisingly, and finally learned how to tie a Boolean knot...kind of. On Tuesdays I have my sole music class, ethnomusicology. Basically a long word meaning, the study of ethnic music. We're talking about Chilean indigenous music now and I think most of the course involves talking about the music of South America. Tuesdays are nice because Ethnomusicology doesn't start 'till 3:40pm (can anybody say "Dormir!"). Come Wednesday, I have two classes: Modernity and Social Problems, which consists of studying the effect of modernity on country's development...which tends to be kinda negative if you live in a lesser developed country. This class is very discussion based, which doesn't bode well given the fact that Chilean students discuss/ talk quite fast so I have to ask lots of questions and I don't follow the discussions all the time (hopefully this will improve). Just so you know, GDP (Gross Domestic Product), in spanish, is PIB (of course!). Next on Wednesdays is good old Oral and Written Spanish (otra vez) which is just as boring as it was on Monday. Then, Thursday arrives and I wait until 5:20pm to travel to Valparaíso to attend my class called Action and Solidarity" which is basically a class structured around volunteering in a local municipality school and planning activities for the kids. I'm a fan. For this class we will work once a week around the noon time, outside of class, at a school playing with kids mostly I think and not working too hard. After this class, I'm free 'till Monday (yes you have correctly deduced that I don't have classes on Fridays). So it's a tough here in Chile...but I manage.
Alright...one other thing, not so pleasing, that I've encountered while being a student in Chile, involves just how I get around the city, too and from school. Los Micros or Microbuses or short buses or slightly longer buses or what have you. First, the positive: should you be a student, it only costs 150 pesos to get on (150 pesos is like $0.29...so not too shabby). Now BEING that I'm a STUDENT it should cost me that very manageable amount every time. My student ID card ("tarjeta escolar" as they call it) is still being processed, however, the University has given me a very convincing, even laminated, temporary card. The Micro drivers clearly have not had a meeting to discuss matters such as these so I've encountered very inconsistent service. If you're not a student you have to pay 410 pesos...you could buy two empanadas on the street for that much (and those empanadas are pretty darn delicious!). I usually have to argue with the stubborn drivers, attempting to assert the validity of my temporary "tarjeta escolar", sometimes to no avail. Needless to say...I can't wait to get my real "tarjeta escolar"!