Thursday, March 1st, 2012
After an evening of trying to find other classes to take with Argentines, my efforts came up with nothing--they don´t have course offerings online, nor is every degree program 4 year plan online, so I could only get a vague idea of what classes I could take and none of them looked appealing or I lacked the credentials to confidently take them in Spanish.But I signed up to take at least one class with Argentines, so I had to find something.
Class let out early after a brief review session after lunch and I made my way to find other departments whose course offerings were of interest to me. Like the language department. I went to the 6th floor information desk to ask which floor the language department was on and was met with a big "IDK". Oh, ok. HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW WHERE IT IS?! It seemed that whatever or whoever wasn´t on that floor didn´t exist, as far as anyone on that floor knew. I went to the information booth on the ground floor to hopefully get better information and while they were still a little confused by my inquiry, they suggested the 12th floor and I desperately hoped they were right because I was one step away from going to every floor to find out where it was...
On the 12th floor, I ran into Christian, who actually knew what was going on and told me that unfortunately, all the classes that are approved for foreign students were not being offered this semester. Right, of course! I asked about a translation class I´d seen on the ISA website and he told me that the only translation class they had this semester was for technical translations and he strongly advised me to not take it. Yeah, buddy, it wouldn´t take much convincing. Technical translations? No thanks. Despite the fact that he said my Spanish was great and he was stoked about my wanting to take classes with locals, he actually discouraged me from taking such classes because the selection looked grim for me. How encouraging...
But I started to like this idea because it meant that I could travel for a little longer once class ended and that I would end class the day before a certain someone´s birthday, meaning it could be the biggest birthday blowout ever and as I walked to my tutoring session, I started to think of ways I could tell him I might have a ridiculous birthday surprise for him. But this bubble was promptly popped by the ISA staff.
My tutor was intent on reminding me that I had signed up for classes with Argentines and this meant that I had to take at least one. Not all classes were difficult and scary and because my university was down to approve essentially any class I took (as long as it was in Spanish and somewhat relevant), I had a ton of options. In that moment, I felt desperate because I didn´t feel like taking some odd ball class.Of the 5 classes with international students I chose, I liked all of them, and I´d rather be in 5 classes I liked versus getting rid of one just to be with local students in a subject I might not know too well in Spanish...But my tutor said that the experience in a class with Argentines is one worth having, and that´s why I´m here, after all...
She burst my bubble again when I got rocked with the study sheet she gave me. I was getting so many sentences wrong and it was almost as though I hadn´t spent 5 hours every day for the past month learning this, because now it was all getting muddled in my mind and nothing made sense because everything made sense. However, she did give me useful tools that I´d never before seen in my Spanish career and as long as I focused on them, I understood.
As I was leaving, clearly kind of confused, discouraged and overwhelmed, she told me to open my mind a little. I was caught off guard by this because I usually pride myself on being open-minded and I was ashamed that I was appearing to be close-minded to Argentina and its culture and language. Clearly seeing my shock at her statement, she clarified that she meant that I should open my mind to the subjunctive mindset. "Nikki, you´re just going to have to realize that life is different in Argentina and Latin America in general. In the US you don´t have subjunctive and it´s not a mindset that you are accustomed to because there´s less uncertainty. You make decisions, follow schedules and do what logically comes next--but you´ll find that sometimes you can´t expect that here and it´s ok. In addition to just accepting the grammar and usage of the subjunctive, just accept the mindset. You´ll find classes with Argentines and you´ll understand Spanish grammar, but you´ll also understand the mindsets behind them."
With that, I could feel my mind opening a little more because everything she said was true and I wanted to take it in wholeheartedly even though it was harder than I ever imagined.
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