Whew!
Boy am I glad that it's Friday. I thought I wouldn't ever make it through this week!
I can say that I experienced my first tad bit of homesickness this week. It comes when I'm stressed.
My dislike for history was confirmed this week. I feel like my entire week was consumed with writing my 5 page history paper. I enjoy learning history to some extent, but boy is it 10x harder in Spanish. I finally finished my essay right before class on Thursday after spending hours studying the topic in English, talking with other students, and spending 2.5 hours with another professor discussing the topic. Whew! What a relief! I practically threw my paper into the arms of my professor as soon as I walked into class on Thursday. We'll have them back on Tuesday, I'm hoping for the best.
Not sure if you recall, but I, along with 3 other students from Clemson are taking a photography class here at the University. All of the Clemson students were required to take at least 1 class with other Argentine students. (The rest of our classes are specifically for foreign exchange students) Needless to say, we chose photography. Can I just be honest and say that we hardly ever have a clue as to what's going on in class. It is definitely much easier now that it was at first, but photography has a language of it's own, even in English. We always prepare to spend 15 minutes after class talking with the professor about what happened during class. It's quite comical. I often wonder what he thinks of us, but we are honestly making an effort.
So today, we turned in our first project for photography. None of the professors here (NOT ONE) explain what they expect or what they want for a project/essay/anything. It's all just assumed, and I can't stand that! Anyway, Pat, Matt and I spent Thursday afternoon working on our projects together. We each had to select a theme and shoot 10 photos regarding the theme we chose and illumination. We had the pictures professionally printed and had to analyze each photo: quality of light, direction of light, temperature, intensity, contrast, plan, point of view, etc. Please remember that we've been taught these terms in Spanish and have no clue their significance in English. So, Pat, Matt and I struggled and pushed through each of our photos for about 3 hours. We hope our understanding of each definition is correct because we were pretty strict to these definitions.
So, we arrive to school early this morning to print out our analyses and we're feeling pretty good about our work UNTIL we ran in to some other Argentine photography students. ALL of these students are graphic design majors. Several of the students looked at our worked and made comments like "oh, nice" and "very good". BUT, it had to be a fake! You should have seen THEIR projects! These were the most elaborate, most incredible projects you've ever seen. They made ours look like projects of 5 year olds.
Anyway, I thought it was pretty funny. Here's to hoping our professor understands that we do not have ANY experience with photography and our majors are FAR from graphic design.
Today, I took a 4 hour nap. It was amazing.
Tomorrow I'll be spending the day working on my cultural videos for a class at Clemson. I hope the weather tomorrow is the same as it was today. Sunny, about 75 degrees with a light wind. Just beautiful.
Love you guys!
Can you believe next week is mid-April! 1/2 of my adventure has passed. That just seems crazy to me!
Besos from Cordoba,
Hannah
I wanted to include a few of my photos from photography. I chose the theme of textures with illumination. I realize I'm not a photographer, but I thought I would share some with you guys :)
Posted in: on Friday, April 9, 2010 at at 11:15 PM
