Lessons

Productivity has commenced! My first Spanish class since 8th grade (15 years ago-ugh!) started yesterday. I am taking the class at the University Autonomous Universidad de Mexico (UNAM, for short). It's the large-and-in-charge university here. "Oh, Christine, large, huh? Well, you attended the University of Minnesota, land of 35,000!" To put it into perspective, UNAM has a faculty of nearly 35,000 and a student population of 306,000! Matt and I toured the campus a couple weeks into our time here, and we were so exhausted from its expanse.

There are a lot of awesome, psyched-out murals on buildings throughout campus. Here's one from the medical wing.


















Here's another. This is the library. All four sides have a mural, each side is different.
















Anyways, back to my class. I'm in one of the most basic of basic classes (again, I took one trimester of Spanish back in the heyday of Pearl Jam, OK Soda, and Nancy Kerrigan). There are a couple hundred extranjeros (foreigners) taking Spanish classes in this program. So far, I haven't met/observed anyone else from the U.S. In addition, I haven't met/observed many other non-smokers. Both weird, but both true.

In my lowly basico class, there are about 12 students. There are a few students from China, a smattering from Korea, two from Egypt, one from Taiwan, and one from Northern Ireland. I'm definitely in the upper-echelons of the geezer scale. In other words, some of these kiddos were practically toddling with pacis whilst I last "learned" Spanish and mourned Kurt Cobain's death in real-time.

All of the women in the class are very young, shy and cluster together, so on breaks, I talk with the guys (in English, peppered with Spanish) while they smoke and smoke and smoke. Today, I talked about Barack Obama and Kim Jong-Il to a South Korean businessman, I comiserated and longed for Indian food with the guy from Northern Ireland, and I told a Danish dude from another class that my brother's girlfriend was from Denmark (he thought it was less interesting than I did. Oh well).

So far, the class is easy. I've been studying on my own for the past couple months and, thus, have a slight leg up on the competition (or, erm, my classmates). My teacher likes me and calls on me a lot, and I think this is because at 29-years-old, I just don't care anymore. In other words, as time's gone by, I've lost a lot of inhibition (or dignity?) and will happily and convivily read and act out the contrived dialogues/conversations from the textbook for the class.

The past two days have been funny, awkward, and almost even fun. So, yeah...hasta luego (or something).