Daniel goes to school!

So today was the first day of school!

Since there was no one here to do it for me, I took a first-day-of-school picture (complete with uncomfortable smile):

(Picture taken in the most cluttered part of my room 'cause I love noticing all the little background things in other peoples' pictures. Like my deodorant "with extract of wasabi" [weird - but the best-working deodorant I've ever used] and the 2 boxes of juice I slayed in about a day)

Oh wait- except this was actually from yesterday. Because in typical Brazilian style, they neglected to mention that although yesterday (Monday) was the first day of the "semester," today (Tuesday) was the first day of actual classes. So I had a fun bus trip to school and back.

Now here are some pictures from the REAL first day of school (today). This is what it looked like when I got up for school:


Beautiful, eh?

That's because it was DAWN. Because I have class at 7 in the MORNING. I have NEVER had class that early in my life! We'll see if I keep that class... although unfortunately it's kind of the most logical class to keep.

So today was interesting...
I was shocked at how well I was able to understand what was going on in class! Especially at 7 am!
It's funny how incredibly upper-class PUC is (especially compared to Cal). Everyone is white and clearly expensively dressed, and has a bourgeois air about them. It's more than a little disturbing! It's like USC but only worse...
PUC also feels more like highschool than a university. I kid you not, when I walked into one of my classes, everyone was chattering away greeting each other in that "OMG! How was your summer??? You are SOOOOO tan! I'm so glad we KIT [I guess that's the same in past tense as future, right?] over summer!" It was ridiculous. Everyone knew EVERYONE! I mean, not that there's anything wrong with that, but combine that with the fact that all Brazilians look several years younger than they are and it reeeeeally felt disturbingly like highschool. Even the teacher in that class seemed like a highschool teacher. At the beginning of this class (an International Relations class), before the professor showed up, the whole class even went downstairs to go to the freshman IR class to ask them embarrassing questions and generally haze them. Like a Brazilian college version of Dazed and Confused. Minus the paddles (I think).
In keeping with the theme of lousy information-dispensation, I didn't find out until today (when I asked) that apparently I can't take PE classes for more than 0.5 units for UC! Thus beginneth the great class-dance. The only class I'm certain of right now is Portuguese. Other than that, here are my fun decisions to make (I need 2 more classes):

1. drop 2 of the following: Brazilian History, US in International Relations, International Organizations (an IR class)
2. pick up: Intro to Observational Drawing (1 of 2 times depending on which of the above classes I drop), a graduate class on violence in Rio (I think this is probably a bad idea, but it'd be great for forcing me to do research and I heard it's not too hard), or keep a second of the above 3 (and have 2 classes going towards satisfying Poli Sci requirements).
3. still keep my PE classes? Why not? Although if I dropped them I could only have 2 days of class a week....
   

fun fun fun! I hate beginnings-of-semesters. Even in Brazil!

On a real up-side, every professor I talked to was very reassuring about a foreigner taking their class. I and most of them complemented me on my Portuguese! Especially the Argentinian professor of the US in IR class who was definitely also not the most proficient speaker. (yes, an Argentinian teaching an international relations class on the US in Brazil... how much more international can you get?)

So that was that. And the cat just jumped in my lap, so I think that's my cue...

tchau!