Love, Novela [Completed]

Re: Finding more to do

From: novela-harmon@bethel.edu
Date: Thu, Aug 24, 2017 at 5:03 PM
Subject: Finding more to do  
To: grace-k-nelson@bethel.edu

I signed up for a salsa dancing class at school. One of the students in my history class said it's better to go to the clubs and learn by doing, but I'm not quite comfortable dancing with strange men in bars. Alejandro (the Composition teacher) is teaching the class and he encouraged us to take it, because he says dancing is a window on culture. I think most of that class signed up. I have never danced much, of any kind, so I'm a little nervous, but also excited to learn something new and not just sit in my room or an internet cafe!

Next week there are some field trips. There are several scheduled throughout the semester. They're not required and you don't get course credit for them, but they are included in our tuition and are supposed to enhance the experience. It is first-come, first-served. After two trips you are wait-listed, but you can go on as many as you want as long as there's space. There are some trips that have special relevance to certain classes, so people in those classes get priority, and I think sometimes extra credit if they do a project related to the trip. Some of them are just evening outings in town, some are day trips, and some that are farther away are weekend trips.

This may turn around a semester abroad that wasn't going at all as expected - isolation, a distant host family, and my only options for evening activities being studying, going to clubs with the rest of the Americans and getting hammered, or watching Mexican soap operas. I only brought one book (besides my Bible and Spanish dictionary), because books are heavy and I figured I'd be too busy to read. I didn't really plan any outings outside Guadalajara because I believed, mistakenly it seems, that I'd be engaging in activities with my host family. These field trips, while not as natural or authentic as something the host family might include me in, are supposed to be educational, so that's worth something.

Look forward to hearing from you soon. Even the mundane stuff is nice to hear, a little taste of home.

Love, Novela