I've been here a little over a week. It feels like much, much longer. Which I suppose is understandable, given the dramatic changes my life has undertaken in that amount of time. I am still having moments where I look around and ask myself "What am I doing with my life?" The concept of up and moving to another country for four months is very strange in some ways.
The good news about this week is that we only have four days of classes. Early (early early) Friday morning we leave for a quick field-trip to I'm-not-sure-where. But it apparently involves a chocolate farm, consumption of large quantities of chocolate, sloths, and some type of forest-walk. So I'm excited.
Most of my program is built around the completion of an independent resarch project that each students designs, carries out, and writes up with the help of an advisor on a topic of their choosing. The first draft of our proposal is due Thursday, which I was fine with, until I looked at the example one and saw that it's 14 pages. ack. Little confused about how we're supposed to go from our first five sources due tomorrow to a draft two days later, but whatever.
It's raining. Which is apparently very strange because it's summer here and never rains this early. I'm just hoping I won't get too wet this week on my walks to and from school.
Spanish is harder than it was the first week. The first week was mostly me being super excited that my Spanish was actually passable. That I could communicate with people. But now that we've talked about the easy, simple things, it's harder. Even in English, I am generally a pretty quiet person except with the people I know really well. In Spanish, I struggle to come up with things to say, and then simplify them back to tenses and constructions that will be comprehensible outside of my brain. It's hard to have a censor on myself like that.
But then I come here and I talk to friends and family and the wonderful world of the internet. Which is helping to keep me sane, but I can also feel how it disrupts my Spanish. Once I'm thinking in English, it takes my brain a little bit to transition back into Spanish. I'm not going to give it up, but the balance between the two is definitely on my mind.
The good news about this week is that we only have four days of classes. Early (early early) Friday morning we leave for a quick field-trip to I'm-not-sure-where. But it apparently involves a chocolate farm, consumption of large quantities of chocolate, sloths, and some type of forest-walk. So I'm excited.
Most of my program is built around the completion of an independent resarch project that each students designs, carries out, and writes up with the help of an advisor on a topic of their choosing. The first draft of our proposal is due Thursday, which I was fine with, until I looked at the example one and saw that it's 14 pages. ack. Little confused about how we're supposed to go from our first five sources due tomorrow to a draft two days later, but whatever.
It's raining. Which is apparently very strange because it's summer here and never rains this early. I'm just hoping I won't get too wet this week on my walks to and from school.
Spanish is harder than it was the first week. The first week was mostly me being super excited that my Spanish was actually passable. That I could communicate with people. But now that we've talked about the easy, simple things, it's harder. Even in English, I am generally a pretty quiet person except with the people I know really well. In Spanish, I struggle to come up with things to say, and then simplify them back to tenses and constructions that will be comprehensible outside of my brain. It's hard to have a censor on myself like that.
But then I come here and I talk to friends and family and the wonderful world of the internet. Which is helping to keep me sane, but I can also feel how it disrupts my Spanish. Once I'm thinking in English, it takes my brain a little bit to transition back into Spanish. I'm not going to give it up, but the balance between the two is definitely on my mind.
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