You Can Poop Your Pants If You Want To, You Can Leave Your Friends Behind

Well, auspiciously enough, the surpisingly calm Valdivian day literally just turned into torrential rain falling like out-of-control baby elephants from the sky the moment I began to write this entry, but as they say here, it's probably just a nubesita (baby cloud).

Today was the beginning of classes at Universidad Austral de Chile (UACH). Because of 2 month long strikes last semester, this semester began a month later, and is being compressed into a shorter time frame. I'm not sure why they protested last semester, but I imagine they were protesting how much it rains here.

Anyway, I began my day at the university feeling somewhat like a lost puppy. After two years at the same university and 3 months of summer, it felt pretty surreal to be at a different university where I didn't know anyone, and didn't know where I was going. After aimlessly wandering around for awhile, I met up with two other kids from my program, Lilly and Alex, so that we could be like three lost puppies wandering around. But with the true determination of the gringo spirit, we found our various destinations, and met up with the director of our program. However, we were delivered rather devastating news...Historia de Chile, a class we were all really excited to take, was exclusively offered to foreigners, because apparently the Chileans already know their own history. Because we're hoping to be in a more legit, Chilean-filled atmosphere, we decided not to take it.

This was the auspicious start of a day I have decided to call, "Gracious welcoming to the Chilean educational system." Now, it could be that they're just playing a huge joke on us foreigners, or it could be that in the States we're just too used to a system where you can find all your information in one place, but regardless, here is how it works. To find out what classes you want to take, you must first go each specific major's building, where with some prodding and poking and confused looks, you can hopefully obtain a list of classes offered. Once you've passed this hurdle, you take this information to another office, where you tell them the name of the course, and they tell you where and when it's offered. Once this is achieved, you go to your course at the time and place it's offered, and it's not there. As you frantically scour the premises for a trace of human (or even animal) life, a nice man with a radio offers to help you, calls approximately 34 people, and tells you that, naturally, the course you're trying to find is on the other side of the campus.

So Alex, Lilly and I entered my anthropology of globalization class about 20 minutes late, but fortunately, there were only 2 other people there. It turns out the professor makes attendance optional, which the other 25 Chilean students in the class appear to be taking full advantage of. However, coming from 700 person Berkeley classes, it was pretty cool and surreal to sit in a class with only 4 other students. We joked and laughed a bunch, the professor talked about some theories of globalization and used other big words, and that was about it. I have to choose 3 classes in total to take, and I have about 6 others to choose from, so I might not be taking this one.

But in the end, I passed the day very happily. I'm getting really into reading books in Spanish, and I found an awesome used book mini-store here, so after finishing a book by Paulo Coelho (who also wrote The Alchemist) I returned to buy another one of his books. I really recommend him to everyone...the man is a genius.

Alright, well I'd like to end this blog post with a special shoutout to my 1.5 year old nephew Ethan, who, with the collaboration of my mom, managed to poop his pants and send the diaper flying while running rampantly through our house, while I was talking to the family on Skype, prompting a humorous escapade which had me giggling all the way from the southern hemisphere. Thank you, Ethan, for reminding me that you don't have to be ashamed of pooping your pants in front of a crowd of people. May we all shamelessly poop our pants in front of our respective loved ones some day.