School..... aka battling the photocopiers.

Long time no post, I´ll have to remedy that for the future. School started last Tuesday the 25th and has already gotten intense in just a few short days (and we even had a holiday on April 1st to commemorate the start of the Falklands War, as opposed to Vanderbilt we have LOTS of random days off). I have to say that attending class is what is keeping me most grounded and being the only exchange student has forced me to integrate myself extremely quickly into the university community... that and the fact that professors here all seem to be obsessed with group work so I´ve had to scramble to meet classmates since day one.

I´m taking 4 courses, a full load here, and have to be there from 8 to 1 everyday. Let´s just say that´s taking some getting used to as the last time I´ve had to get up at 6:30 on a regular basis was during student teaching.

....ok back... yes, I know tomorrow turned into two weeks later... each class is 3 times a week for about two hours. As opposed to the US, all students enter into a major (I´m doing teaching English as a second language, I know I know weird but really I don`t know anything about English phonetics or grammar I promise) from day one and only take courses for that major. The course schedules are all fixed so that all students in the first year of a major take all the same courses together and then stay together for each of the next 3 years... which means that it feels like high school all over again because we`re all together for 5 hours a day. Although I`m not sure this makes for the best classroom atmosphere, in terms of integrating myself into life here it has helped tremendously. At the beginning I think my classmates were scared of me since at this university being an exchange student is almost unheard of, but now that we`ve gotten to know each other much better I don`t feel awkward or any different from them. And I can`t tell you how many translation questions I`m asked each day (whenever the professors ask if everyone has their dictionaries all the kids around me just point to me and say they have the mobile version ;)

Photocopiers = the bane of my existence. Since here books are expensive and it`s hard to get really out of date material professors just leave books at photocopy shops and you literally have them copy the book for you... haha so very illegal. But it`s the only way. So standing in line for 45 minutes to copy 10 pages is quite a normal occurance and if you`re waiting for a book, plan to bring a book to read... and then you just have to hope that they copy all the pages for you. But now that I have all my material I`ll be good for a while!

At a later date I`ll have to write about professors... I could go on for pages. But for now school keeps plodding along.