Sand In My Socks

Yesterday was a lazy day, I enjoyed it. I woke up and found out there was no gas so that meant no shower. Great. I knew I should´ve showered when I got back Saturday night.

After getting ready and being served breakfast in bed, we all hopped in the car and headed to Con Con, a city north a couple miles. It was a little ghetto compared to all of the other beautiful cities I´ve been to, but we enjoyed some delicious empanadas at a local shop (empanadas are Chile´s version of calzones).

Next, we walked through a local market and then headed to the beach. Rodrigo Jr. had brought a small soccer ball, and so we started kicking it around. It eventually led to Rodrigo and I on a team versus Rodrigo Jr. and Gabriela in a game of keep-a-way. Gisela eventually joined up with my two siblings because of how good Rodrigo was playing. Rodrigo told me a while back that when he was in high school, he was a really good soccer player and played with some fairly good players. He also told me that many of his friends are now professional players in Europe and he just as easily could´ve gone pro, but he chose to start a family and live a normal life instead. He said he never regrets it, but that it´s interesting for him to think about where he´d be, and that I wouldn´t be here in his house if he had. He wasn´t lying either. Sure he was only playing against kids who haven´t been playing as long as he has, but he definitely has some insane skills. I was amazed watching him play, and could only imagine what he must have been like in his prime years.

After playing for a bit, we headed home and I watched part of a movie as our once was prepared. We all ate, then I had to get to some homework for Claudio´s class. He assigned us 15 pages of fairly difficult reading to do. I can not stand this man. Luckily, I was able to find the same speech online in English so I could actually comprehend what I was reading. Later, I had some time to talk with Alyssa for a while before heading to bed.

Today, I woke up early so I could come to the University early to meet up with some other students. We´re all very worried about Claudio´s 6 page research paper essay he wants us to write using three different Spanish sources. It´s due next Tuesday, and we don´t even have any of the sources yet. I´m supposed to get one today, though who knows if I´ll actually get it. The worst thing is that this Thursday and Friday we dont have class because we have an excursion. Then on Saturday, I´m heading to Santiago with my family. So basically, I have the next few days after class, then Sunday and after class Monday to write the paper. Oh yeah, we also have an oral quiz about anything we´ve covered in that class on Wednesday. Don´t forget the 15 minute powerpoint presentation I have about a short story in Carlos´ class on either Wednesday or Thursday of next week. Basically, Claudio is trying to cram in a super hard amount of work during our last weekend in Chile, without providing sources for us to use. I don´t want to be sitting in my room reading for hours rather than enjoying my last weekend.

So because of this, our class got together today and discussed what we could do about it. We decided on writing a professional letter to him describing our problem with not having enough time or sources, and then offering some suggestions such as lowering the pages and sources, changing the essay to something easier and more managable, or something like that. We´re going to give it to him today and see what he says, and then if he does nothing about it, we´ll take our case to the coordinators and see if they can help us out. We all admit it´s not the work we´re trying to get out of, it´s the fact that he wants us to write a 6 page research paper without providing us sources until Monday or Wednesday of this week, and then expects us to read through three of them while we have other excursions and work to worry about. I´m so sick of his class, I just hope things work out.

I got to go now, I´ll let you know how things turn out. Chao.