I'm incredibly tired from a busy but good day, so a short entry will have to suffice. This morning I had a meeting with Don Antonio and a few other students about my GUA/USA paper. It was great to discuss the book I just read (its called Bitter Fruit by Schlesinger and Kinzer) with him and other students who were reading it. We discussed potential theses for our papers, and it sounds like Don Antonio would like us to focus more on what can be learned from the history between the two nations instead of writing about what actually happened. While that means my paper will be much more interesting than it would have been, it also means that I will need to do more research than I initially thought and that the amount of time I spent on my first book was a little too generous. No worries...now I know and I'm excited about the new direction for the paper.
Our conference about that paper took about an hour and a half and after that I read about drugs in Latin America to prepare for one of our lectures this week. As always, the afternoon was spent at ICADS, where another student was added to my class, giving us 5 in all. We talked a lot in class and having that discussion time with other students really boosts my confidence with using Spanish outside of the classroom. On the way home from ICADS, Haleigh and I searched for postcards to send home, but that seemingly simple quest proved itself impossible for today. I'm sure we were just looking in the wrong part of town.
Despite our failure, we had a great time, and encouraged by the events of the day, I was able to hold a few solid conversations this evening with my mamรก in which I was mostly satisfied with my Spanish capabilities. I did have a little trouble describing a Minnesota winter, however. The cold weather of the north is almost unfathomable here and is one thing I don't think I will ever need to fear missing.
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