It has officially been one month since my feet left American soil and landed in Argentina. It has been a battle everyday since. From being bored the first two week, to placing in a class bellow where I had hoped, to being far more homesick than I had expected, to this previous weekend where things were a hot mess, to my electives where I don't understand most of whats going on, it has been a journey.
Thank you so much to everyone who has taken the time to write me notes and letters and send them to me. I've gotten at least one letter, some times three or four, every week since I've been here. They are so encouraging and have been a great help for me. I'm slowly gaining the courage to speak more readily with the students here. While none of you would peg me for being shy, meeting new people (especially in a language I don't know) is extremely stressful for me. Unless I'm in class or talking to my roommates, I spend a lot of time just being quite and listening or tuning things out as opposed to engaging in conversation. Now that I'm getting more adjusted to being here I've decided that lunch time will be my meal where I try to sit with only Spanish speakers or more Spanish speakers than ACA students. That might not seem like a lot, but I don't eat breakfast and dinner I usually eat with my roommate and her boyfriend and they speak English to each other. So lunch is now my practice time. Also, all of my language classes are in the morning so it's an excellent opportunity to put into practice what I'm learning in class.
I don't remember if I mentioned this before, but instead of moving up into the Advanced 1 class, I've decided to stay in Intermediate but I have the grammar book for Advanced 1 and I'll be working on it as much as I can so next trimester I can be in that class. The class I'm struggling with the most right now is Ortografia. It's basically hooked on phonics for Spanish. Right now we are learning about syllables and accented syllables and where there needs to be tildes based on certain rules. I understand the concepts very easily, but I struggle to hear accented syllables in English let alone in Spanish. Hopefully I will be able to bring my grade up from the last two quizzes. I got a C on the first quiz and I'm pretty sure I did worse on this last quiz because the majority of the quiz required me to classify words based on where the accented syllable was, and since I can't hear the accented syllables, I kind of had to guess on all of them. I spoke with my professor after class and we're supposed to be meeting on Monday sometime for some extra help. I'm also going to be going to the tutoring session tomorrow to work on my Ortografia homework and to get some help on the Advanced 1 grammar work.
Next week is Week of Prayer hear. The following week is our trip to Buenos Aires. Tomorrow I'm sitting down with some friends to plan our Christmas vacation travels and will hopefully be booking buses/hostels tomorrow or the day after.
Thanks again for all your prayers and support. I will continue to need them and appreciate them as time goes on. 31 more weeks and I'll be home :) Chao for now!
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