University of Buenos Aires

Classes! eek!
I thought registering for classes on Madison's student center was tough, before I came here, where the concept of efficiency seems to have been lost. A two week "shopping" period started this last week, we can try whatever classes we want and then choose the ones we want to keep. Problem: You spend more time high tailing it across the city to the different campuses of the 4 universities we can take classes through than you do "trying" classes. Problem: Making it to the campus on time is one thing, finding the classroom is another. Problem: When you do make it to the right room on the right campus, the professor probably isn't going to show up.
Amount of classes I tried to try this last week: 5
Amount of classes I sat through: 2
Amount of those classs I'm going to take: 1
Hopefully next week's shopping period will be a bit more successful?
The class I did like is at the university of buenos aires (UBA), their goverment funded school with more than 100,000 students. The buildings are spread across the city, but each one looks like the other: A scary hell hole. A huge contrast to the two other smaller private schools that I had tried a class at. The first time I walked into an UBA building, I just about threw up from how nervous and vulnerable I felt. It's not scary in a dangerous way, but scary in a "I'm so lost right now" way. Students swarmed around me, graffitti painted the walls. Broken desks and doors and missing professors define UBA's atmosphere. wow. this will be an experience. If nothing else, it makes me appreciate my own public university at home, where a classroom without a.c. is considered torture.

Taller de Radio (My class at UBA)
This last tuesday was my second attempt to take a clss at UBA, the first one was met with no professor and a confused classroom. My teacher walked in 30 minutes late to a two hour class, but surprised me with her readiness and determination to tackle the semester's material. We even got a syllabus!
My teacher immediately pointed me out "ahh we have a foreigner, ok, great... now break up into groups of 5, unless you have the foreigner, then you need 6 because she doesn't know what's going on." The rest of the class she kept pushing my group members to make sure I knew what was going on. I would have felt offended, if I wasn't so grateful to have the extra help in such a huge place.
When I left the classroom, I was met by a girl from my class, Clementina. She stopped me with a "hey". I looked at her confused. She ignored my facial expression and continued in english:
"I know this must be hard for you, I'm Clementina, if there is anything you need, let me know."
Wow. Would I have done that for a foreigner at Madison? Probably not.