Settling and stuff

Hello, sorry it's been so long. Classes finally started, I moved into an apartment, and I have been traveling too much to keep up with this thing. I actually have homework now so this one will be short...

I am taking three classes at the UCA (Universidad Católica Argentina), two of which count for my Hispanic Studies major as they are literature courses and one as an elective. I am taking a contemporary Latin American short story class as well as an Argentine literature class and then one about the solidarity movement in Argentina and other social justice issues in Latin America. The BC program also requires us to take a history and culture of Argentina class at the Universidad de San Andrés. Both the history and the solidarity classes include frequent field trip type things to places in the city that have to do with course material (ie we went on a city tour today for the history one and for the other we went to a program that assists families with housing), which I am excited about. The homework load is not much compared to BC, mostly since I conventiently arranged my schedule to being on Tuesday and end at about 2pm Thursday. I have yet to attend a full week of class and don't plan on it for another two to three weeks due to the wonderful 75% attendance requirement as well as random holidays that tend to fall on my class days. I recently spent six days in Patagonia and only missed one day of class (I'll write about that later). I wish I had been able to take a class with Argentine students in the main university but with my major and prerequisites and other annoying variables I had to stick to classes for international students. At least they'll probably be easier.

Other than class I have been playing soccer for UCA, although it isn't what I had hoped since half of the team is American and I find myself speaking English a lot. The caliber of play is better because of this, but I would have preferred to use Spanish more. Oh well. I have only been twice since I have been traveling/celebrating St. Patrick's Day/doing other things during practices but the second time we had a new coach that knew close to nothing about how to train a soccer team, which worries me a bit. We'll see how that goes.

Finally, I have finished moving into my new apartment in the Almagro neighborhood and I really like it. It has a balcony, plenty of space, good location despite being kind of far from the subway and buses, and I like my roommate a lot (Catherine from the University of Richmond). It is nice to have my own space, food, etc since, while I loved living with Beatriz, my room was incredibly small and the Chinese girl who came to study piano played at very inconvenient hours. I am also much closer to all of my friends, which will save many pesos of cab fare.

Fun fact: they have assigned seating in movie theaters, which would only bother me if people actually sat where they were supposed to. For crowded showings of newer movies, they have ushers that actually enforce the assigned seating printed on the tickets; it's actually really organized and efficient and a good idea, I think I'm just bitter that we didn't have great seats last time.

I'll write soon about my awesome Patagonia trip, promise.