First day of class

    All of the students in the IFSA-Butler Mendoza program have to take an intensive Spanish class together during the semester to help improve our Spanish and prepare us for classes at the universities with the locals. There are three levels for this class, and we took a test on Monday to place us into the right class. I'm in the lowest level class, and I wasn't expecting to be any higher, since I've only had two years of Spanish, and a lot of the other students here are a lot more fluent than I am.
    However, we started our class by going over the basics such as "Como te llamas" and "De donde eres", which I think everybody already knows, so hopefully the class isn't this easy the whole time. I think we are going to do present tense verbs next, so this will definitely be a good review, but there is a retest in 10 days to see if we need to change a level.
    It's going to be difficult having classes entirely in Spanish; it keeps my brain active and will hopefully keep me from falling asleep in class. The classroom we were in was tiny, with tiny little two person desks, and the chairs made a horrible screeching sound when somebody moved. I think my Spanish has already improved since I've gotten here. It's definitely all about having confidence to speak and know that you will make mistakes. After a week of intensive Spanish, I hope I'm ready to start my classes at the local universities. We have a two week shopping period to try out different classes, so I signed up to try out Tango, a history class on politics and society in Latin America, and a art and culture class. Those start in two weeks, so we'll see how they go!