puente

My education class was cancelled. Again. Sound familiar? It is. I walked discouraged through Viña, determined to make use of my time to explore. I checked out Palacio Rioja, which is the nicest ¨house¨I have ever encountered. It is packed with the original furniture, light fixtures, paintings, and floor. You have to wear slippers overtop of your shoes in order to not destroy the floor

It was also a good night at Journal, a night of catching up and conversation with the Australian crew, in which I also include other exchange students and Chileans like Ken and Ricardo. I was good and walked home before everyone else in order to get up for volunteering at the school. See how responsable I am?

Now for what I really wanted to talk about: the puente. My Chilean language and culture profe, Felipe, always talks about a bridge, forming a bridge between what you know and what you want to know so that you know how to get there. After class I asked a question about some insignificant thing that I can´t remember. But more importantly, we discussed something which has been gauging my experience in the class; the other students, the gringas. It has come to the point where I absolutely can´t stand arriving to class, in a Spanish-speaking country, taught in Spanish about Spanish, where the students purposefully and disrespectfully distance themselves from the language and culture. It makes me want to smash my head on the wall. No one wants to be uncomfortable when they don´t know what to say, but that is why they are here. The bridge, here it is. My class of a year and a half ago through Millersville University, where 17 future teachers infiltrated Philadelpia schools, discovered the same thing. People are uncomfortable stepping outside of their comfort zone. It is the same thing!! Gringos with gringo friends, interacting with people just like themselves. The same! Now I have a bridge between the ideas in my classes here and at home. The whole notion angers me. While I want to have friends to travel with, I realized that they would be just for that, traveling, because I don´t spend time with many estadounidenses. With other exchange students I feel somewhat better because they are from different countries other than my own. All of the gringos get together and travel all the time, so I am sort of stuck for travel buddies a lot of the time. But I have a bridge and a perspective now.

And for my classes being cancelled, all the time... one might think this is great. I am irritated. I arrive at the Sausalito campus and have class about 60% of the time. The rest of the time is spend wandering around trying to find which room how harbors the class, asking around, finding out what time the class was changed to, being generally confused. We don´t receive any notification of this ahead of time. It´s not just me either; the Chileans student show up too. The lack of a secure schedule messes with my mind and makes me upset. At first it was generally funny and an adventure, but now I just feel even more lost in my classes. This is not typical by the way.