(although judging from the comments, that would make "everyone" a very small number of people. you guys are horrible at this!)
today i'm going to tell you a little about school. for this semester, i am studying at the universidad de buenos aires, in the facultad (or division) of philosophy and language.
most of the facultad is in one building, on street named "puan", and because of that, a lot of people say "i study at puan," rather than saying "i'm studying at the facultad of filosofia y letras." for me to get to puan, i generally take a bus from right near my apartment, and depending on traffic, it usually takes about 15-20 minutes to get to rivadavia, a very large street that intersects puan at one point. then i walk about 15 more minutes and i'm at my facultad. 
the building is literally plastered with political and other types of posters on the inside and out. the picture to the left here is the outside of the facultad, the wall directly to the left of the picture is the wall you walk along on the street puan until you get to the entrance. to the right, you can barely see some people and blankets on the ground- that's all along the entrance of the facultad, there are always people spreading out their wares on these blankets to sell them to students. jewelery, clothing, knitted accessories, bags, actually pretty much all that stuff is hand-made. also there are always people selling school supplies, coffee, tea, and mate all over the facultad. once you walk along this wall and past most of the blanket-vendors for a minute, you hit the sign, of which there's a picture above, and then you get to the entrance. once you go in, it's still kind of open air, and there are ALWAYS people trying to give you flyers for events or services or concepts. if you decide to go up the stairs that are near the entrance, this is the view you get on the first floor (or as we gringos like to say, SECOND floor): see all the posters and disarray? 
this place is an EXTREMELY stark contrast from middlebury, no doubt about it. posters go ANYWHERE, and they're advertising ANYTHING, and stuff in general is just much less cared for than things in middlebury are. it is hard to find a desk with no gum stuck underneath it, but that desk is still 999 times easier to find than 1 roll of toilet paper in any bathroom in the entire building. not to mention soap to wash your hands. and always in the building, sometimes even in class, people smoke! there is no such thing as "smoke-free" at UBA, apparently. classes in general are HUGE, and it's not all that uncommon for late-comers to class to have to stand in class, because there are simply no more seats left in the classrooms.my shortest class is 2 hours long, 3 times a week, it's psychology (but it's in the anthropology department. so far ALL we've been talking about is freud and his thoughts on that woman who had a phobia of drinking water because one time she saw a dog drinking out of a glass, and she repressed it and then after she remembered, she was suddenly able to drink, ha, that's old news, i remember that from psych disorders at midd! thanks, professor g!). before i picked my classes, i was considering a class on history of education in argentina and latin america, which seemed very interesting, but if i had continued that, i would have class every thursday for 10 hours straight- psych discussion for 2 hours, then the education discussion for 4 hours, and then the education LECTURE for another 4 hours. i tried that out last thursday and i thought i was hallucinating and had to go home after 8 hours (i don't know how i even made it that long), so i think i've decided to stick with a class on cinema instead- 4 hours lecture, 2 hours discussion, each once a week. hopefully both courses will continue to be interesting, and as i catch up on the reading, i may even (GASP) attempt to participate some. and get laughed at or pitied because everyone will finally realize "hey, she's not from around here...." i'm not going to promise participation yet, though- these classes are HUGE- my psychology class has more than 100 students at the lectures! yesterday in psychology i had to laugh, because no way was even half the class there, and the professor sent out a role sheet for each person to sign in that they attended this class. and every single person in my row before and after me took about 5 minutes with the role sheet, because they were busy forging in the signatures of all of their friends who "couldn't make it" to class that night. and the role sheet took so long to get around the room, some people just spent most of the class period waiting for the role sheet, and as soon as they got it and put down their and their friends' signatures on the page, they booked it- they just walked out in the middle of class.
i guess a lot of the things i mentioned has to do with the fact that being a student at UBA is not something a whole lot of money is invested in. students aren't really paying tuition, so why would the school pay for "unnecessary" things like toilet paper or custodians? and students don't feel as obligated to stay for the entire class period, maybe because they or their parents aren't paying money for their classes? in comparison to middlebury, where i think one of the reasons most kids stay through entire classes is because they or their families are making some kind of monetary sacrifice for them to be able to attend said class? or maybe i'm reading too much into this, and UBA students leave class because they're bored, OR BECAUSE THE CLASSES ARE TOO RIDICULOUSLY LONG! (and they leave to go to the bathroom and never return because it took forever to find toilet paper. or something).
one thing that surprised me was the quality of the professors. with all the other aspects of UBA that i mentioned above, plus with the fact that, from what i understand, professors here get paid VERY little (they usually need to have another job in addition to their jobs as professors). so i would have expected the professors to... well.. suck. but they don't. from what i've seen, they are genuinely interested in what they are teaching, and they seem eager to encourage and help their students understand. and that, in my book, probably in anyone's, is a huge plus. now that i more or less have chosen my classes, i will be approaching the individual professors next week. one very sweet thing about this semester is that i don't have class on fridays! for now that's very cool; next week i will probably be starting my internship, and then i will probably
work on fridays too. but for now, it's a 3-day weekend every week! alright!i think that you have learned enough about UBA for today, i'm tired now and am going to finish this off with a couple pictures (don't forget you can click on them to see bigger versions). to the left you can see people waiting at the bus stop on avenida rivadavia, sometimes there are many more people who ALL want to get on the same bus as you, which can be a pain. not to mention when the bus is already stuffed to the brim with passengers, so the driver blazes past you as you try to flag him down. the bus system in general is AMAZING here, though, as long as you're getting off and on at the right stops. what i've found is very
helpful is getting on a bus with your map-booklet guide already in your hand, and just following the route that the bus takes. that way, even if you know where you're getting on and off, you can follow along and orient yourself in the city and where you are in relation to other things. or maybe it's just me who enjoys doing that?
in case you haven't noticed, i've finally more or less gotten over my fear of taking my camera out in public with me (i've been worried it would get stolen, what with all the cautionary tales i've been told). (hopefully i didn't just jinx myself.) also, today was a gorgeous sunny day, so i was able to take some pictures in a positive light instead of ugly grayness that has also been pervasive. today i was running a couple errands downtown, and i took this picture of the obelisco. another gawgeous, no dahling? google it if you don't know what it is, or the famous street it's on. i would tell you, but i've decided it's bed time.
tomorrow i'm off to a weekend in montevideo visiting my very good friend nasti from germany- she's been living there with her family for the past couple months, and i am VERY excited to see her; now it's been a few months over a year since i saw her last, it feels like so little, but at the same time, so long since then! so to all of you a very good night and an amazing weekend, hope you're doing well, keep (or start!) commenting!
