First day at USAL

Hey guys, I hope you'll excuse my lack of originality, but I took most of this post from an email I sent to my mom today. It wasn't necessarily what I had planned for the next post, but after describing my first day to my mom I figured that this is close to the kind of thing that Northeastern likes to see here. So here goes:

Today I had my first day at Universidad del Salvador - it wasn't classes yet, just a basic orientation and then all of us had to go into a room individually with a team of 2 of the coordinators and they evaluated our speech. It was a little intimidating going into it but then once it actually got started it was actually kind of fun. I didn't even realize I was being evaluated at first - the guy came in to get me out of the room that everyone was in and took me into another room and I sat down opposite him and another woman and it was just a bunch of small talk at first - where are you from, when did you get here, where are you living, how do you like the weather here, how does it compare to the weather back home, how long have you been studying Spanish, how long are you here for, etc etc. We talked for a minute or two before I realized that as we were having the conversation the woman was making a bunch of check marks on a piece of paper. But it was very low-pressure, they were really nice.

The second part of the test was interesting, after all the small talk the guy chose a photo from a stack that he had and put it in front of me and asked me to describe what was going on. The photo was of a man lying on a couch in a psychologist's office and the psychologist sitting next to him listening. After I described the obvious, they asked me to basically create a story to go along with it - how is the patient feeling, how is the psychologist feeling, etc. When I thought about it afterwards I thought it was really clever the way they were framing their questions in order to basically force me into using specific grammatical structures. For example (if you're interested):

"Que son las edades de los hombres? Son mismos?" (What are the ages of the men? Are they the same?)

"No, el psicologo es mas viejo que el paciente" (No, the psycologist is older than the patient)

By asking me if the ages were the same, I was forced to compare the two using "mas" and "que" rather than just stating the two ages separately, which would have been simpler to do grammatically.

Then after I had described the picture to their satisfaction the guy told me that I was to pretend like I was a patient calling him, a psychologist, to cancel an appointment. I had no idea what he said when he said this (Professor Sadow - my Spanish professor last semester - told me that there was a study done once and it showed that Spanish speaker delivered considerably more syllables per minute than did English speakers, so it's not just our imagination or Spanish inadequacies that makes it seem like they're speaking lightning-fast). But when I apologized for not understanding, he repeated it slower and I understood. We ran through this exercise fairly quickly, which was fun, I managed to make them laugh a couple times at least. I'll find out what level they place me in when I get there tomorrow, but I think it went fairly well. One of the things that I've noticed is that when I'm having a conversation with someone, they start off slow, and then their speed increases based on how comfortable I seem with the Spanish. If it's a bad day for me Spanish-wise or early in the morning, I've noticed they either speak really slow or just try whatever English they know. So basically I've concluded that if someone suddenly starts speaking quickly and with complicated tenses/vocabulary thrown in, it's because I'd been doing pretty well....up until that point.

The building where all of the Spanish classes will be - and possibly several of my semester classes - is about a half hour's walk from the residence, which in 90+ degree heat and full sun, is pretty damn far. So far though, I've enjoyed the walk somewhat - it feels like exercise, and thus makes me feel productive. Granted, I've only gone there and back twice so far, it might get old fast. After walking so much, I'm beginning to think that it will be nice once it starts cooling down a bit for autumn - the heat makes everything just feel kind of dirty - even the air tastes dusty.

We got the standard "You're in an urban environment and thus in constant danger" lecture at orientation today. Girls were told to mind their bags carefully, guys were told to keep their wallets in the front pockets and not to wear cargo pants. There have been constant warnings about acting touristy, speaking English loudly in public, etc - all things that usually come with just being careful in the city. In my experience so far - and we're not in a particularly rich or touristy part of town - is that the city is nice, and the people are generally friendly and helpful.

I'm going to try and put up some more photos from our tour of the city on Saturday, either later tonight or tomorrow. Stay tuned guys! :)