Bars, Orientation, Stupid Nintendo

12 March 2010

Today the international students had a meeting to discuss our class schedules and the other choices we have to decide from. The gringos all sat in one section, separate from the French and the few hispanoblantes, which I found very entertaining. It looks like I'm set up to mostly just be in a bunch of Spanish classes, they had already set up several courses for me. I'm trying to change a couple, because I don't want to take a class over pronunciation that doesn't last for very long, but instead I want to take a class called Cultures in Contact in Chile, and I'd also like to take another class called “Contemporary themes in Latin America.” It would put my hours above 12, which is against my original plan, but that's okay because the classes should be really interesting, and it doesn't seem like the language classes are going to take more effort than just going to class. After the orientation, we went to a ceremony for the new students, with speeches, music, and some poetry as well. It was pretty fun, but as with all school functions, the speeches weren't terribly interesting. Something else that seems to be the same in most cultures, I suppose. I finally met Sabdy today as well, right before the ceremony, after months of e-mails about Chile. She was super helpful and explained some of the things about Chile that I hadn't known yet, plus some slang. After the orientation, we went to try to get on a bus but missed the first few because they were full and had to wait for what felt like an hour. It was okay, because Julianne (I spelled her name wrong in the first post, I'm SORRY. I'm not really, I like Juliana better :P), Mai, Trenton, Lindsey (for a while), and I all were stuck waiting for the bus. Mai and Trenton are both from the U.S. as well, and Lindsey is the unlucky Canadian I spoke of earlier. I don't know as much about Mai yet, but I do know that Trenton speaks 3 languages (that bastard) as part of his plan to do well in the job market. Finally the buses came back, but of course the first one back just parked and mocked us from afar, then we rode the second one into town. Of course, I embarrassed myself trying to get off of the bus because I failed to open a door; all I had to do was push, but I guess I have a bigger vagina than I thought.

After getting off at my stop (along with Julianne who has the same stop) I went home and had lunch with my family. As usual, it was delicious. After sitting around for a while, Chris and I went to el centro in search of a wireless mouse for him, (which we later realized was pointless because he wanted it to avoid wasting a USB port, but it takes one anyways) and a charger for my DS, which for some reason doesn't work with a converter (too much converting maybe?) On the way, we ran into his friend Kim and her host mom who were out shopping and chatted for a while. Eventually we found a radiovision, where the guy did have a USB charger for the DS, although when I got home I discovered (to my delight) that it is a charger for the DS, not the DSi. For some RIDICULOUS reason, the DS, DS Lite, and the DSi all have different chargers. Hey, Nintendo, fuck you, that sucks. Once Chris and I got back, I pretty much just sat around trying to figure out how the hell to get to OH, a club where there is a party tonight for international students from UVM and the other university here in town. I figured out where the club was and started heading out. Originally, I thought that Mai, Julianne, maybe Anna, and I were going to go down there together, but I didn't have Anna's number, Mai decided not to go, and Julianne went somewhere else with her brother first. Anyways, I started going down there alone, and quickly decided to take a colectivo, which is like a taxi but that will stop and pick up more than 1 group of people, so its usually cheaper. I actually got the same driver as the one that Chris and I took home last night, so that was kind of cool. He and I talked the whole way down, but it ended up costing 4.000 pesos because he didn't end up picking anyone else up, so it was like a taxi price. Once we got to the bar, I went inside and didn't see anyone I recognized. I figured this would happen, since I had left kind of early planning to walk, but changed my mind once I got to the street. I thought I recognized a guy named Hector who is a friend of Chris's that I had met earlier, so I went over to say hi, but I realized that it was actually a different person entirely. We exchanged greetings anyways and I sat down with him and his other friend, both of whom were from Spain. After talking with them for a while, I ended up ordering a liter of beer (I had the thought in mind that I could share it with my friends once they showed up). At Cafe Journal, the other bar we went to, the beer came in liter bottles with a couple of glasses, but apparently at OH the beer comes in GIANT Viking god sized mugs.

After hanging out with the Spaniards for about 30 or 40 minutes, finally some people I know showed up, in fact, they all showed up at the same time. I sat down with them at a table with 4 Chileans from Vina as well. I ended up sitting at the end with all of the Chileans and had a good time talking with them. Every once in a while I would switch to the other end of the table and crouch between to people and chat, just to try to mix up the conversation. Lindsey the Canadian girl was there, and whenever we went to pay, something happened (I'm not too clear on it because I had already paid for my beer by then) where she thought she had lost 10.000 pesos. This is just further proof of her massively unlucky streak. I finished my whole liter of beer, which obviously was a little much for me, but I was still pretty functional, and obviously I remember pretty well what happened. Thankfully, Trenton and his girlfriend were there (his girlfriend is from Chile), and she has a car, so they offered me a ride home. This saved me a long and difficult walk, which I'm very thankful for. I got home and promptly went to bed. The weather was pretty awesome for most of the day, but like usual it started out kind of muggy. I'm not sure, but it felt like around 62 in the morning and 70 in the afternoon.