sometimes safari annoys me

No offense, Safari. I didn't mean to offend. You are the best internet browser there is, bar none. But sometimes you do things that are stupid, like assume that when i type "so" in the subject line it means i want the subject to be "sorry for not posting yesterday," which i did not. It was actually just supposed to be "so," but so much for that. Ha! Funny joke. Anyhow, the past couple of days have been good, if a little stressful. I made a very stupid (embarrassingly stupid) mistake when scheduling classes, signing up for two that overlapped for an hour and are in different parts of the city. Ridiculous. But, good news is, after much emailing and stressing, I lined up a new class and my schedule is set. Here's what I'm taking, for real, finally:

Español avanzado (clase de COPA)
Chile, los chilenos y su cultura (la Chile)
Relaciones entre Europa y America Latina a través de la historia (la Chile)
Lenguaje Cinematografico (la Católica).

I went to the Cinematographic Language one yesterday. It was long (three hours) and very, VERY basic (this is a close up. This is a medium close up. This is dollying. This is zooming in. This is blah blah blah). But the prof seems nice and his assistant does, too. We chatted for a little bit at the photocopier during the 20-minute break the prof gave us in the middle of class. And we watched parts of the Princess Bride (dubbed), Barry Lyndon (a Kubrick from the 70s--made me really want to see the whole thing) subtitled and Citizen Kane, also subtitled. Also a really goofy 80s 3-D graphic explanation of all the different actions of a camera and dolly, complete with unchanged English names (see above) but spoken, of course, with heavy accent. Because I already knew most of what was being taught, I stopped paying attention and started free-writing, which I haven't done in so long. It was very nice, to slow my thoughts down and have to concentrate on them. I'll go back and read what I wrote in a couple of days. So that was alright, and afterwards I got all my reading for the semester. The way readings work here is that, because books are so expensive, you have to photocopy whatever you need to read, period. And printing is expensive, too, so the prof puts together the readings and gives out a list, and then the students have to go to a photocopier and get the coursepack, I guess you could call it, together. And the poor photocopier at la Católica was so overwhelmed, it took him 45 minutes to do all the copying and take care of all the other kids who wanted this or that. I struck up a conversation while I was waiting with some kid about his advanced statistics book, which was in English, about how hard it must be to learn something that complicated in a language you don't understand. He said he got about 30% of the text, but he was working on it. I understand a lot more than 30% of the Spanish I read and hear, but I can't imagine trying to learn advanced math or anything. Just understanding metaphors is hard enough. In any case, he seemed like a nice guy. Then I went to Rosie's with my computer, intending to transfer music, but ended up just eating dinner with her and her host mom's cousin, who's staying with her most nights while her host mom and sister are on vacation in Brazil.

After that a bunch of people met up at HBH, the beer bar, for Charlie's 22nd birthday (weeeeeird, he's more than 3 years older than I am). It was fun, I guess, but kind of a waste of money. Then I went back to Rosie's to get my stuff and ended up having a long talk with her about each other and our relationship and so on. I spent the night, which was all right because the cousin got up really early and left, and no one opens doors here without asking. We woke up early, Rosie having not slept very well and me having slept like a rock, and made breakfast and hooked up the computers to transfer music, but by the time we got around to that she had to leave for volunteer training near COPA, and I had to gather syllabi and deal with this re-registration crap at COPA, so nos fuimos. I went back there after, then left to go have coffee with Izaak and Kellyanne (YAY, SILVER SPRING-TAKOMA PARK!) in La Reina. It was great to talk to them and see how they're doing. Seems like we're all good, although none of us is speaking as much Spanish as we'd like to be. Kellyanne is still living in that hostel, but there are people there now and she's enjoying it. Still intends to get an apartment at some point but is no longer in such a hurry. Anyhow after that I went back to Rosie's to get my computer, which she had kept in order to take more music off of it. I had intended to go to a concert tonight of some classical music at el Teatro de la Universidad de Chile, but I waited for Rosie and her friend from school, with whom she'd been getting coffee near the station where I switch from my line to the main line (which she lives on), at said station (Tobalaba) and then talked to them for a while. By the time we got to Baquedano, which is Rosie's stop and also right underneath el TUC, it was almost 8 and I gave up. I'm mad at myself for doing that because I really did want to go and I stopped myself in order to wait for her. So I'm a little sad about that at the moment. I'll get over it, though, there will be tons of cheap concerts that I can go to and I know so little about classical music to begin with it probably won't matter one to the next.

Tomorrow, all the COPA kids are going to Sewell, which is apparently very high up (we've been told to bring warm socks and parkas and hats because there's SNOW). I'm not exactly sure why, but it's a trip they organize and we don't have to pay any extra, so it ought to be cool. We get back around 7 or 8 and then I'll come home and wish Luz María a happy birthday! That's right, August 19. Hear that, Jenna? She's having a party at the house, which I'll probably stay for the beginning of and then dip. I want to go to Club de Jazz again tomorrow, and I know at least Gabby does, too, so hopefully that'll happen. I should see what the lineup is. These past few days have been very introspective and somber for me, lots of homesickness and thinking about my relationships with people at home and here. I think about myself and those things all the time (who doesn't), but it's rare that they slow me down or give me mood swings. I've been REEEEALLY happy at times over the last few days and at other times really, well, any number of negative emotions. Resentful, sad, anxious, cold. I don't know. But I think I'm better now, despite the weirdness and rarity of those emotions in me. Like the little clouds say in the Animation Show: "Life is gooooood!.............YAYYYYY!.............my anus is bleeding!............YAYYYYYY!"

Also, the canal by my house is higher when it doesn't rain than when it rains. If I have already mentioned that on this blog, apologies. But I really can't get over that, it trips me out. Anyhow that's enough for tonight. Time for bed cause I got an urrrrly wakeup tomorrow and I might shower (sike who am I kidding?). 'Night.