Um, I’m sorry. I lost you at “Buenos dias.”

Walking into campus on Monday felt a lot like high school. We all climbed out of our van (And just to be as conspicuous as possible, it’s bright yellow and has “Escolar” written on the side in BIG letters.) and moved through the campus in a big gringo pack. You know that scary part of freshman year when you think everyone is looking at you thinking “Ha, freshman. Fresh meat” ? Replace freshman with “gringa.” Anywho, the class rundown:

“Temas (Themes) de America Latina” (poli sci) was fantastic…potentially my favorite class. It’s a decent mix of gringos and ecuatorianos. The professor is one of those cool, smiley sweater wearing men who just loves talking about how the world works. One assignment is to go and just sit in the Plaza de la Independencia for an afternoon and write a few pages about what we see and who we talk to.The readings cover Castro, Evita Perón, Che Guevara and Rigoberta Menchú plus Colombian refugee issues and just about anything we can pull out of the newspaper.

Tangent: Has anyone heard that a man directly linked to the murder of Oscar Romero has just been found and is going to trial? He was living in California and supposedly, the US has been aware of this since 1980. For all I know this has been floating around at home for weeks but I just heard it and I’m very interested to know if anything is said at home in church, etc.

After that was “Lecto-escritura y Artes de Lenguage” (Reading, Writing and Language Arts), an education class that nearly gave me a panic attack. First of all, for anyone who has seen “Bend It Like Beckham,” remember the older sister and her scary friends? That’s who was in the class. Then, in comes the professor who talks for half an hour saying something about “lot of work” and “Write eight notebooks for homework.” I caught maybe 40% of her explanation but after talking to her after class, I found out a lot of the reading is in English and the notebooks aren’t due for a few weeks. All I needed to hear.

Literatura Feminina was an experience. All gringas, save 2 or 3 ecuatorianas. No guys. And they were the kind of gringas that smile really widely when they discuss the terrible injustice and inequality of women. Help! I’m drowning in feminism! I’m looking it at a sociology experience though: We’re reading authors that are not a) male b) white c) Irish and d) dead. So already it’s got the BC English department beat. Plus, this country is crazy with the machismo. It’s just understood that men can get away with just about anything and women aren’t going to do anything about it. (I’m talking attitude and opinion, not assault. We do have a little labyrinth of due process for that.) So to take the class from that perspective should make it worth it.

El “Boom” Latinoamericano (another literature course) is my last one on Mondays and Wednesdays. It took me a ridiculous amount of time to read a fifteen page critical essay for the class but the rest of the readings look great (Garcia Marquez, Vargas Llosa, etc.). Man, do Ecuadorian lit majors talk fast!

On Tuesday, my Quichua professor never showed so that language remains a mystery for one day more. I did find the school where I will be teaching though. It wasn’t open but Jenna and I went to scope out a similar school a block away where she will be teaching. I’ll wait to describe mine when it’s teeming with kids but all I can say is hers is exactly what I pictured. Dirt roads, handmade decorations, cement floors, a recess area about as big as one of our normal classrooms at home. Public schools don’t open until September 20th but that day cannot come soon enough.