The Start of Class

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I started my classes yesterday. I'm really excited for the service learning module. I had to write a paper about myself, my background, interests etc to give the course facilitators an idea of what I'm about so they can place me with an organization that I will enjoy... hopefully. I should find out on Friday where I will be volunteering and I will start next week.

My other classes are... interesting. I've gone to three different sociology/political science classes of which I need to choose two.

The first was Economic and Development Problems- the professor is supposed to be really good because he was one of the most influential people in ending apartheid in South Africa. It seems like it could be interesting but he wants us to write a 15 page paper (not that big of a deal) and we have two tests. That's the problem because he says that in other countries they don't require a lot of writing for the test essays (and I'm fairly sure he was talking about the US) and that he wants not just the skeleton, he wants the meat that goes on the skeleton. For me, doing this on command for a test just doesn't work. I can write papers when I have the time to work on it a little and then take a break, not pulling a lot of information out of my head and putting it in words intelligently for a test.

The next class is Politics and Cultural Change in SA. It seems like it will be interesting... it's a sociology course and it's different because every week we will have a different lecturer for a specific topic followed by a student presentation on that same topic the next day. The presentation is supposed to be 20 percent of the grade and the final exam is 80 PERCENT and that is all! It's a little strange and I'm not the best test taker like I said before so I don't know.

The last one I feel like I really want to take. It's Negotiating Transition which would probably transfer as a political science class or maybe sociology. The professor is really cool. He's a HUGE human rights activist all over the world. In fact, he was supposed to be in Algeria today instead of in class for a conference but the Algerian government blocked his visa because they saw that he was going to be there for human rights and he had to cancel his trip. But never fear! He was able to participate through Skype over the internet in Hestea's office (my advisor, program coordinator, amazing person who will do anything for us while I'm here and who finds my keys when I lose them). The class seems very interesting. We have one article to write and one research paper and that is all for grades. He said that last semester about 7 or 8 of the students had their articles published from his class. Amazing!!

So yeah, I need to decide between the first two because I really have something pulling me to take the Transition class.

This weekend we'll be heading to the Cederburg Mountains where we are going to get to hike, go wine tasting, have a huge braai cookout, and do other cool things too probably. We're going in a long convoy of vans about three and a half hours north of where we are now. I'm going to try to be a tourist tomorrow before class so that I can post pictures of the school and town where I spend most of my time. Bye for now!

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