My First Week of Classes

El simbolo por la facultad de ciencias sociales
(where I attend classes)

Unless you have experienced it, you will NEVER be able to understand that courage that it takes to attend classes at a new university where you don't speak the language. This past week was honestly the most challenging week of my ENTIRE life. Monday was the biggest challenge because I had to find my own way to the school in the morning. I then waited around a good hour because I way early, and then when I entered the classroom, I was the only extranjero in the entire class. The only way I know how to describe it is that it is exactly how the new kid in 7th grade would feel if they entered class with purple hair, a clown nose, and riding a horse. Ya...that's a good way to describe it. I don't mind being the extranjero but the thing is that I can NEVER hide. I am tall. I am blond. I just stick out like a sore thumb. But at the same time, I had a lot of fear in the situation so no Spanish words were going to escape from my mouth. I was literally scared speechless and in this class we had to get in a group and even speak with the class listening. I was in a group with some Chilean boys and I will never forget how nice the boy was next to me. He was trying to make me feel comfortable and talk but amidst his trying, I was still trying to calm myself down. But he really did make me feel as comfortable as he could.

How many of you reading this are trying to learn another language? As I attempt to use my Spanish that I have been studying for 4 years now, I have come to realize something. I think that it is a discipline that is unique in that it requires a person to humble themselves enough to be able to express themselves at only a 5th grade level, for example. In English, we would never dream of answering someone's question of: "What did you do today?" with..."I went to the store. I bought bread. The bread was good. I like bread." haha You get my point. There are times when Maggie and anyone else who is at the school will bring up a subject such as health, religion, or human adaptation (all subjects that I love discussing) and I will have to only express a fraction of what I know or speak very slowly and patched to try to get my point across. I have become a student again after speaking English flawlessly for the good majority of my life. I am just amazed by all people who are learning another language because a person who can humble themselves enough to learn a language COMPLETELY different than their mother tongue is a person who is willing to sacrifice their own comfort for the greater purpose.

I attended 5 classes this past week. I am only picking 2 classes to take in addition to the Chilean Culture and Politics class that all the students in my program are taking. While class shopping, I had to be conscious of how much reading the class would demand because I don't want to be in my room studying all the time during the next 5 months. Also, it really mattered how clearly the teacher spoke. There was a class on the Mapuche culture that I attended and it seemed so interesting but the teacher would diminuendo during every sentence. It was VERY hard for my fellow extranjeros because we were already straining to understand his words through his thick accent. That class has a TON of reading so I am still deciding if I want to put myself through so much pain. Always a hard question because the subject matter is very interesting. The class that I fell in love with is Medical Anthropology. I will explain in the next entries to come how I discovered Medical Anthropology, but this is a class that I am definitely taking. The other class that I am most likely taking is a physical anthropology class that focuses on bioarchaeology. That class surprised me the most because there are only like 10 other girls in that class and there is going to be laboratory time for the last 1.5 hrs of class every week where we get to analyze bones and decipher causes of death and so forth. SO INTERESTING!