Vitamin C for the Soul...or at least for my throat...




I've just sat down with a large glass of horrifically processed orange juice which tastes more like Sunny D, hoping that there is still some sort of vitamin C content that will help my slightly scratchy throat. I don't like Sunny D in the least, but sadly, it is practically impossible to find fresh orange juice in this country. Now I'm not even a huge fan of the pulpy fresh stuff, but I at least drink juice that isn't neon orange...but alas..that is all one can find here. I first bought a carton of the juice which looks like it would be the equivilant of Minute Maid, and found it rather unsatisfying. The next bottle tasted of pure sugar, and thus I have returned to my original "Andina" juice...keep your fingers crossed for my increasingly soar throat...

On a different note, I discovered today that I now have about a 30 minute listening capacity for the spanish language. I had my art histroy class again this morning, and was doing very well through the beginning. I understood the general concepts of the lecture and even some of the more detailed comments, but then after 30 minutes, it all went down hill. I could slowly feel my translation skills creating a delay. And when I say I could feel it, I literally could sense a delay in my translation skills which would slowly grow until all of the professors words became one big jumble or nothingness decorated with a few spots of words such as "light," "shadow," and "symbolism." I then was left to sit, glass-eyed, and stare blankly ahead until break (the class is about 3 hours long with a cigarette/coffee break in the middle). After break, I was refreshed and ready for another 30 minutes, but once again, after that time was up...I was back to my trance. I'm hoping that since last week I had no translation abilities in that class, that within a few weeks I'll be able to last the entire class. Until then, I'm forced to survive on only a third of the lecture and the readings which are provided...which by the way...the readings assigned last week were about 150 pages for three different book excerpts...and after class today I was able to get the last book necessary, which was an additional 160 pages...in spanish...that's an insane amount. Although while wading through the first half last night, I found that when i began, i needed my dictionary multiple times per page, but by the end, I didn't need it at all. Go me!!! hahaa

One peculiar thing I wanted to mention while I'm discussing readings for my classes, is the method of class reading lists here. When books and excerpts are assigned here, you don't go buy the book, or even check it out of the library and read it. You go to the copy shop and get a photo copy of the reading...and I don't just mean some of the readings...I mean all of them. I have a stack about an inch thick of legal sized paper just for the first week of reading for art history...I can't imagine how much paper they use here. It has got to be insane...