Four Month Mark

Alriiiiiight! This past Thursday marked the completion of my fourth month in Argentina. I am officially halfway through my time here. Considering that I have finally started to miss the United States, I would hope that these next four months are going to pass by very quickly. At the same time, I need the time to pass slowly. I still don't have my Spanish down yet! At this point, I can now almost always communicate what I need and have basic conversation without too much trouble. I still pause a lot and have to think through the conjugations of verbs or whether the rest of what I am about to say is singular or plural. My ACA director told me my Spanish has gotten better, so that is really encouraging to hear too! I think that by the time the normal UAP students return in March to start their classes again, I'll be ready to have some seriously fun conversations with them.

But even though I'm feeling so much better about my Spanish, my classes this week have been incredibly frustrating. I am only taking 14 credits, but I decided to advance to Advanced 2 for this trimester in Grammar and Conversation. Conversation has been fine; we actually talk in class as opposed to Advanced 1, where we were talked to. Grammar however, is an entirely different story. In Advanced 1, we had only learned the conjugation of present tense in verbs (already knew that) and Imperative (command form). That's it. I and my friends in Advanced 1 were so annoyed that we were learning things that we needed to communicate in normal conversations around the town. So, when our first trimester ended and we found we had the grades to do so, we advanced to Advanced 2.

First of all, I am definitely now learning almost more than I can keep up with. By our second time in class, we were expected to know the six conjugations that Advanced 2 had already studied the trimester before. Not a problem, except that we have quizzes every class period, of which half is verbs. The second half is over the lesson. For some reason, their quizzes were behind from the lessons they were studying, so a good two or three quizzes that I took-- and completely failed-- were over lessons I had never been taught! SO frustrating. I am good student, as are the other Advanced 1 students who advanced with me. But we were ALL failing. and this isn't like, "Aw shucks I got an 85% instead of a 99%" failing. No, this was 53% or less failing. You may be able to imagine the frustration and utter hopelessness of the situation. Plus, this trimester only lasts until February and we miss a lot of classes because of all the holidays here. So we had to options: continue to fail miserably and learn but adversely affect our GPA's or return to Advanced 1 and learn how to tell time. Not kidding.

Long story short, our professor gave us some extra classes over the lessons we missed from last quarter, and I implemented some new study techniques. This week was our final week to decide if we were going to stay in Advanced 2 or return to Advanced 1. I decided that my quiz on Thursday morning would decide if I stayed or not. In fact, I prayed that if I got an 85% or higher, I would remain in Advanced 2. If not, I'd return to Advanced 1. I wasn't sure if at that point I was only wanting to stay in Advanced 2 to say that I was in Advanced 2.  I studied for Grammar class four hours straight that night. The next morning after our quiz I asked the professor to grade it right then so I could decide. After a few minutes he handed it back to me with a big 89% on the top!!! So, I'm in it for the long haul guys. Between that class and my Literature class, this trimester will be nothing but studying, but now I know what it takes to get the grades I want!

Life is still an adventure here, even though it gets a little slow or hard. I'm learning so much about how to keep myself motivated, what I need to study effectively, and talking even though I know I'm probably saying something wrong. It's worth it.