The week without internet

More or less, I passed the last week without internet access. Poor me, huh? It was actually pretty awesome.

I decided I am going to put all of my everything into not speaking english the rest of the time I have here. So far, pretty good. I gave in a bit this weekend on our trip to Baños, but other than that I've been forcing the tough conversations and keeping to my goal. I have less than two months!

Flash update: Last week was a busy week for homework, which was kind of a nice change. I did lots of good research and interesting reading, and also some interesting writing and reflecting for both my History and Sociology class. I miss the busy-ness that classes at Willamette provide, and I really miss having multiple things to be involved with on campus on top of the intellectual challenge. I will be glad to be at Willamette in January.

I have a big group presentation tomorrow in History, which I had been dreading until we really started to mesh as a group. Now, I'm excited! Costumes, some joking, a little bit of acting, and some very interesting information to cover. I hope it all comes together as well as it should.

I had a tough day in class on Thursday, or rather a tough few minutes. Part of this History class is to write 4 reflective essays based on a question, our knowledge of the text, and some outside research to help apply the information to our present lives. For the essay due last Thursday, we were to come up with our own reflective question and answer it. In class we read each others essays as usual, and then did some analysis of our questions. Once all of the questions were written on the board, instead of analyzing what the questions were trying to ask, we rapidly fell to picking apart grammar and use of historical terms and petty errors. The class got braver and braver, more critical, and less focused on the point of this opportunity to help each other learn. By the time we get to my question, we had lost our purpose and were tearing each other apart, anonymously and without constructive criticism. SO, I suppose the details aren't needed, but a few of my classmates shamelessly criticized my sentence structure and lack of connecting words. Basically, it all could have been avoided if they had known I DIDN'T SPEAK SPANISH, but we spent 3 excruciating minutes switching verbs with nouns and adding "que" where I had ignorantly written "de." After Maria Dolores was done erasing my question and re-writing it to please herself ("Who wrote this?" she said. "This sentence is just awkward."), my professor asked me what I thought of the new version. "Pues, es mi pregunta!" I said. "Well, it's my question!" I am sure my face was bright red by then, and I clenched my jaw tight to stifle the water welling in my eyes. I knew it was not my ideas they had critiqued, only my ability to seamlessly weave grammar principles with vocabulary, but my feelings were deeply hurt. And to top it off, I was called out as the author, unlike all of those who had been trashed before me. My classmates sunk down into their chairs after my confession, a few shooting me apologetic eyebrows and mouthing their sorries. After a few seconds of making sure that my voice would not break, I said "Disculpen. Disculpen porque no hablo español." "Excuse me. Excuse me because I don't speak spanish." I think I made my point. Later than I would have liked, but I made it nevertheless.

My professor didn't hesitate to compliment my question, which was actually a fabulously prodding and difficult one. She said I had done more than what was asked, and I had obviously been reading more than just the words in the book to be thinking about the bigger picture and relating it to my own life. However, she stood there and watched, and even encouraged the kind of degrading criticism that had been happening all of the class. I hope that if she ever uses that strategy again she makes clear the objective, and that the objective is actually to ponder the questions rather than anonymously (or not so anonymously) rip at each others egos.

Not to worry, because I got to talk to Mom later that day and she boosted me right back to where I should be. I'm also glad that nobody else was outed, because I can and will return to class with my head held high and my brain turned on. And I will continue to make grammatical errors as I criticize organized religion and colonization, and question the way in which we are taught and learn. Laugh away folks, because I would take an experience like that every day to be learning what I am learning.

That feels much better.