meet me in the city

That title has no meaning beyond it being the song I was listening to when I wrote it. Now is "The Light" by Common, followed by "Smoke and Mirrors" by RJD2, which is followed by "If There's Love" by Citizen Cope, "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" by, well, if you don't know you shouldn't be reading this blog, "Poppin My Collar" by Three 6 Mafia, and about 40 other songs. As you can see, I'm still working on that intro mix, and it's about as far from completion as it was whenever I started it. Anyhow, today was good, if a little frustrating. I went to PUC in the morning to check out a class I think I want to take called "Seminar on Latin America in the 20th Century." The San Joaquin campus is about a 45 or 50 minute commute from me, including walking, so imagine my stress as it first took longer than I thought it would to get there, then couldn't find the damn room it was in, then found the room and read the sign: "Seminar on Latin America in the 20th Century will begin August 17." FUCK. So I went to COPA, chilled for a little, preregistered for la Chile, and talked to Valeria and all the kids who are taking the COPA history class (about 10 or 12 of them...seems like a waste of time to me). Then I went and ate by myself cause everyone either left or didn't want to leave yet, came home, RAN (more on that in a minute), showered and went back to COPA to meet Rosie so we could go BACK to San Joaquin to do our PUC preregistration and.

The running felt, in a word, spectacular. The air here does suck, and I live high up, too, so it's way better here than the middle of the city, which slopes gently upward to the North and East (towards the cordillera). La Reina is waaayyyy East, so it's not so bad. But still, I could feel it. Also I hadn't run for weeks and I am really out of shape and I only ran for 20 minutes (hard, but still). But all that being said, I felt SO GOOD afterwards and stretching felt great and then I did pushups and crunches and the plank and it was wonderful.

PUC was frustrating again, because by the time I got back two of the classes that I had wanted to preregister for in the morning were full. FUCK again. But I got onto one that Isa said I would like, so I'll visit and check it out. Whoop de do. This was going to be a much better (read: longer) post, but my host brother Francisco came in and wanted me to translate yesterday's post for him. He seems very interested in me and is a great host brother for that reason; he always wants to talk to me, help me out with things, etc. So I did, and it wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be! That was encouraging. I haven't been speaking enough Spanish because I'm still trying to figure things out with classes and the city and so it's just been a lot easier to chill with COPA kids. About that, though, Rosie gave me a really good justification today. She said that it's important for us to get close with kids in the group because later, when we're branching out, it will be important to have people here to come back to when we're stressed to whom we can communicate as clearly as we need. Spanish friends are important, but the fact of the matter is, our Spanish is far from adequate to express deep or complicated thoughts and feelings. We'll need each other less and less as the semester moves on, but for now it's great to be able to build a foundation of support. I like Rosie a lot, we've been hanging out a bunch the past few days or a week or something like that and she's super open and happy. It's good to hang out with happy people in a place that's so strange and overwhelming like this. I guess we've had a couple of those great college getting-to-know-you conversations that get sad and introspective. But it's okay, because she's so different from me and so interesting! In any event, this post ended up being medium-length anyway, so lucky you all. I'm going to do my Spanish homework (I cannot BELIEVE I just wrote that) and then go to sleep. Maybe with a little Elmore Leonard thrown in (I'm reading Mr. Paradise, which I picked up at the COPA office yesterday). 'Night.