Having an 8:15 class isn't so bad after all

When I first signed up for classes, I planned on taking 21 credits. I knew it was a heavy load, but since it costs me the same to take as many as I can cram, I figured I'd take advantage of saving the money. My program requires me to take at least twelve credits while I'm here, so I signed up for the three Spanish courses first. Grammar for Foreigners and Written Spanish are both worth four semester credits, while Communicational Spanish and Chilean Culture is worth six credits. That already puts me at fourteen credits.

I had originally signed up for a class called Modern History of Chile, also worth four credits, but the schedule changed last minute and made it so that I wouldn't be able to (it wouldn't have transferred back as anything anyway; what could a Criminal Justice major do with two Latin American history courses?). I also originally signed up for Physics and Humor (to transfer back as my basic lab requirement at SU; it transfers back as PHYS 104), worth two credits, and a class called Mapuche Games (Mapuche is the indigenous tribe to Chile), worth two credits, because I thought it'd be a good thing to balance out all the other crazy stuff. Well since Mapuche Games is in Viña del Mar and I had my Chilean Cultura class getting out ten minutes before that, I obviously had to drop it.

Because Physics and Humor is a class with other Chilean students, it didn't start until last Thursday, even though all my other classes started on August 4. So Mondays I have two classes (four hours apart) starting at 11:45, Tuesdays I only have one class at 2:oo, Wednesdays I have three classes (with time for lunch between the first two and a two hour break between the others) starting at 11:45, and Thursdays I only had my class at 2:oo for the first two weeks of school. And Fridays I never have class! Yay!

Well all the courses with Chileans started on August 18. I decided to also take up a class called 20th Century Latin American History, because I took a class my senior year in high school called 20th Century World History, but it mainly focused on World War I, World War II and the Cold War. That class was very intriguing to me, and since it didn't tell much about anyone in the southern hemisphere I wanted to broaden my understanding of this era. This class and my Physics class are both on Thursdays, and I believe they are worth two credits each, so on top of my three Spanish classes, I will end up with eighteen credits.

Last week, my mamá told me she would be up at seven, when I needed to be up for my Physics class, and if I wanted she would make sure I got up, since I'm used to sleeping in a bit. I thought this sounded like a great idea because I knew there was no way I was going to be able to peel my lazy ass out of bed in time to leave by 7:35 or 7:40, take the metro train (because the buses are completely and unbelievably packed at this hour) to school and survive an hour and a half of a science class if I didn't get up in time to eat a piece of bread beforehand. So I didn't set my alarm of course. Well she came in to wake me up, and I asked her for ten more minutes, but she didn't come back after ten minutes. She didn't want to bother me. So I woke up at twelve. Lame.

I was really bummed out I missed my first class with Chileans. And I was pretty damn sure I was the only extranjero in the class. So I wrote the professor an email that basically said that I missed the class but I wanted to make sure I didn't miss any important information, and that I still wanted to take the class and I would definitely be there the next Thursday. Check out what he responded with (I'm sure you'll be able to tell what I said by what he said):

----- Original Message -----

From: Luck, Kelsey

To: aromero@ucv.cl

Sent: Thursday, August 21, 2008 6:44 PM

Subject: FIS 021-01

Buenos días,
Hi
Hoy día yo perdí la clase de Física y Humor, y quisiera preguntarle a usted si perdí muchas informaciones

not to much

. Yo quiero tomar esta clase y estaré presente la semana que viene.

great
Gracias por todo, que esté bien.

Kelsey Luck

Angel Romero

I knew instantly that I was going to like this guy.

And I did. The class today went really well. I was right, I was the only foreigner in the class. I was sitting pretty much square in the middle too, in my bright red SU hoodie. There are actually two professors in the class, Ángel Romero and Carlos Wörner. Professor Wörner looked very mad scientist, with his nice brown suit with the inner silk vest and the crazy grey beard and unruly hair. And let's not forget the round glasses. Professor Romero looked a little more average except that he was wearing a lab coat full of white board pens. He drew a lot of hilarious pictures too while we was explaining the principles of Archimedes. He drew a bath tub with Archimedes floating on top of the water and his hand touching the bottom of the tub, and he drew a bathing suit to be polite but then he erased it. Then he drew water spilling out the edges of the tub, wrote EUREKA!! next to him, then drew wet foot prints running through a distant door, with two little buttcheeks and a leg behind the doorway. It was quite chistoso (funny). Especially because in Spanish, eureka is pronounced eo-rake-uh. And he shouted it out too. Haha.

And that was it. He told us don't bother taking notes because they really aren't necessary (I'm going to anyway, just in case I need to prove to anyone at my school what we learned is legitimate), because we were never going to have tarea (homework) or pruebas (tests). Our only obligation is consistent and punctual attendance and some sort of thing at the end of the semester, I didn't quite catch everything he said, but it's basically a presentation of some physical concept, and if we just want to draw it on the board and sit back down, we can.

So even though I have to try and adjust to going to bed earlier (which has not been working out very well by the way, especially when three days a week I get home at 7:30), and even though I have a four hour break after that class until my 2:00, then I have another two hour break before my 5:20 class, I think Physics and Humor is going to be a great class, and Thursdays aren't going to be as horrendous as I thought. I'm pretty stoked for it, especially that I can be in a class with probably forty other Chileans. I can listen more to the dialect (because my Spanish teachers tone it down), to the way they ask and answer questions, and I can have a good time and relax a bit. Alright.

Nap time,
Kelsey