Classes

Well, this week was as stressful as I'd been anticipating. I went to four, 3 hour long classes at UCA, the private Catholic option. This included two classes for foreigners (but still taught in Spanish by Argentine professors), Argentine Movements of Social Solidarity and Church and State in Latin America. The other two classes were actual Argentine classes, Theology I and Personality Psychology. First of all, paying attention for three hours at a time is hard in English and almost impossible in Spanish. Yesterday I had 6 straight hours of class, and it was terrible. Some professors speak in a way that is just hard to understand, even if they aren't talking really fast. Also, it is apparently common here for students to talk amongst themselves (talk, mind you, not whisper) while the professor is talking, which makes it hard to concentrate. Anyway, the Solidarity class seems pretty cool, and every one or two classes is a kind of field-trip to visit various social service organizations in BA. The professor for Church and State was the easiest to understand and also had a Powerpoint, but I'm probably not going to be able to fit the class into my schedule in the end. There were four Americans in the theology class, and the professor seemed very understanding and ready to give us extra help. There were also several super friendly girls who talked to us during the break and gave us their phone numbers in case we needed anything. However, the material seems a bit dry / review. Psychology was the most interesting class by far. The class was split into lecture (teorica) and discussion section (practica), except the discussion section wasn't taught by a young TA but rather a different 60 yr. old professor. There were two 20 something PhD candidates who helped out too though. Anyway, I didn't understand everything the professors said, but I could tell they were really great teachers, if that's possible. I caught some really interesting and inspiring stuff about psychology, effort, learning techniques, etc. They were very passionate and seemed knowledgeable. During the practica part we split up into groups and did this fun exercise where each group had to describe the room from a different point of view (e.g. toddler, firefighter, etc.). We also were put into groups to present on different course authors over the semester, so that will be good for meeting Argentines. All the people in the class knew each other because since they are in the same track they have all their classes together over the 4 yrs. They were very animated and into the class, but not really friendly towards us foreigners. A couple people were drinking mate, and the professor kept randomly walking to the back of the class to drink some of it in the middle of lecturing. It was quite bizarre. Anyway, the class seems really good but I'm nervous because Psychology here is extremely psychoanalytical / Freudian. The reading is very theoretical, and it took me almost 2 hours to read 30 pages on "The Self-Conception of the Ego." Another weird thing is that we had to go down to the photocopy center and BUY the syllabus. Books are really expensive here so most classes use photocopies instead, but it's not like in Madison where everything is all bound up together and organized for you. I literally had to go to the library, find this old book from the 50s, check it out, bring it to the photocopy center, and pay for the photocopies. Kind of a hassle. The finals in my classes are either 10+ page essays with an oral defense, or oral exams where you expound on a course topic in front of a panel of professors. Intimidating. Really really intimidating.

So, next week I have classes to try at two more universities, plus my mandatory program grammar class starts. It's just that now I don't know whether to go back to the good classes at UCA or try other ones, because all the schedules overlap and I didn't even get to try 2 classes I had registered for at UCA because of schedule conflicts. And "try" here is not a little 50 min. talk--it's 3 hours of mental torture, so I'm not all the psyched to go to 10 classes or something in a week.

I visited my host mother in the hospital three times this week, and she's doing better and will be returning home Monday, which is good. I also went to an Argentine movie that just came out, Amorosa Soledad (Loving Solitude/Loneliness..roughly). It was actually fairly easy to understand, and it was about this girl living in BA so we recognized scenes and customs, which was cool. Tuesday I went to soccer practice again, and it was more fun because there were more people. Also, two of us from the program went out for pizza and beer with an Argentine girl from the team after, and that was really fun and she gave us lots of advice.

Good things of the week: I finally found real butter in the grocery store, and I used about half a stick last night on two rolls. I also saw my first strawberries at this market today and splurged on them (although they weren't very good). Nothing like stress-eating! At least I have a reason to put off all the worrying because Danny arrives in 10 hours! Although I won't believe he's actually coming until he's standing in front of me...