Chamo-me Lindsay e sou americana

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We just finished our first week of classes. It’s a pretty intense schedule, with 23 hours of class a week and four different subjects. We’re both in the beginning level, which has moved really fast (present tense, present progressive, ser vs. estar - all in the first 4 days!).

As we expected, we are among the oldest students in the class. There are about 35 students in our class, and maybe 3 or 4 other people who are beyond standard college age. It’s been fine, though, and a lot of the students are really friendly. We’re the only Americans, and there are two girls from Quebec, and everyone else is European - there are a surprising number of students from Eastern Europe - Lithuania, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary - as well as a lot from Turkey.

We have four different teachers and have been really impressed with all of them. Our conversation teacher is really entertaining and seems to understand what it’s like to be a foreigner here. We had a whole class on ordering food in restaurants, where he explained some of the different foods as well as the overwhelmingly large variety of coffee options (every possible combination of different cup sizes, amounts of milk, and coffee strengths, each with its own term). We also have a grammar class with a teacher who, as Jason put it, all the boys would have a crush on if she taught first grade (maybe they all do anyway?). She’s really smiley and encouraging, and seems to really know what she’s doing. We also have a composition class, which is kind of tedious but is helpful, and then a lab class for practicing pronunciation and listening comprehension.

Random observation of the week: Garbage is dealt with in a different way here than we’re used to. Garbage collectors come around every night, and most people don’t have actual garbage bins outside their houses, so they just place their little bag of garbage from the day on the side of the street. They also come through every night and clean the streets, so sometimes people just throw their garbage directly onto the street or sidewalk. Yesterday as we were walking home from class, we saw someone check their mail in the entryway of their building and then just throw the junk mail out the door onto the sidewalk. Later, our upstairs neighbors must have been cleaning or something, and then just dumped the water out the window, past ours, down to the street. We actually had to close our sliding doors to keep it from splashing into our living room! Anyway, we do appreciate the daily garbage pickup, and I guess I’m just glad that we weren’t trying to dry laundry out our window yesterday!
- Lindsay

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