Historia Ecuatoriana
First, the professor: I've finally come to understand some of my dad's habits through this guy. Today in class he was reading part of the Constitution that is called "Pacto Solemne". As he was reading it he would stop almost every other phrase and tell us a story or drive a point home specifically about what words like 'libertad' and 'derechos imprescriptibles' mean. Totally like my dad who while listening to this book on the way home would stop it every few sentences to discuss the meaning in an extremely passionate tone of voice just like my professor. (The other thing I learned, not related to class was the penchant for people from latin and South America to point with their lips. It's totally true and we talked about it during our orientation for the university.) The professor is really good about speaking slowly and about 1/3 of the class is gringos (foreigners). He has a movie announcer voice so sometimes I stop listening to the words and just listen to the sound of his voice. Anyway, we are covering history starting with the independence of Ecuador and how that came about. Very interesting to see the parallels between Ecuador's independence and the independence and revolutions of other countries. ALMOST FORGOT: The penchant for interrupting is totally not a disrespectful thing here. Students interrupting professors interrupting students is totally fine.
Sexualidad y atracción: Woah. This class is like Sex Ed in high school but a huge part of yesterdays lecture was the biological, psychological, sociological and cultural implications of sexuality and attraction. It's an interesting class. Today was a little shocking just because we were discussing anatomy, but the professor was very correct in saying that it's something that we have been taught to avoid the subject of. So of course when the power point slide came on today and it was a picture of a vagina, the entire class either went into shock or started laughing in the most awkward way possible. Took us a while to calm down but as it stayed up on the board she said, "and hopefully you guys are able to slowly relax enough to not be weirded out by this because it is as much a part of the body as the eye or face." It's true. I have a test in this class tomorrow on what sexuality means and factors that affect our attraction and such. Then Monday is test on female genitalia. I must say it's a lot less shocking in spanish because I don't know what most of the words mean until a few sentences after using context clues so I don't have that society-trained gut freak-out reaction to the words "pene" "bolas" "penetracion" "vagina" (pronounced ba-hee-nah) and "jucharse" as I would have to their english counter parts.
Anyway, I've found a place to practice. The practice rooms in the building Mozart are half the size of the ones in Michigan State. I have lessons twice a week and as of right now I'm still trying to find a way to keep my horn at school. Everyone I have talked to said that it's definitely not safe to take it back and forth every day. (I totally agree).
I've made a few Ecuadorian friends too! Que chévere...
Spanish words of the day: super-chévere (super awesome, cool, sweet), jucharse (to disrobe), guardarlo (leave it / save it / keep it safe), fracasa (failure)
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