musings from the law: HTML, Español, English

When I was in high school I took a computer class that was worth college credit but only for one semester--the second semester my class voted to do a course on video game programing rather than Microsoft Certification (which I had voted for). At the time I would tell my mom everyday at lunch how much I hated school and specifically that class. I had no desire to learn video game programing or computer language and the class seemed completely pointless. I ended up winning an award for this specific class at the end of the year banquet and my mom thought it was the funniest thing considering how much I'd hated the class.

At the beginning of last fall I had a professor ask if there was anyone in our literature class who would be willing to be a layout editor for a literary site he was working over. I went to him after class and told him I had a couple blogs and had done a little bit of computer programing in high school in a video game class and might could help him out. The site that I edit is the Andrew Marvell Society website and it is ran through the academic web server at St. Edward's which is powered by WordPress. All of my previous work on blogging had been done elsewhere and adapting to the WordPress interface is honestly really annoying. Using WordPress requires decent knowledge on plugins and HTML code. Honestly, learning those things isn't difficult and anyone can "speak computer" but when I started working with the code for the Marvell site I had never been so thankful to have taken the video game programing class in high school. I for one stop and laugh all the time when I'm working with the code thinking about how annoyed I was with that "stupid class" three years ago.

I have my first Spanish test tomorrow...and yes, I'm nervous. I'm not worried that I don't know that material, I really just have bad test anxiety which is annoying. I also hung out with one of my friends this weekend who I haven't seen for a couple of weeks and he told me he really thought my Spanish was getting better. Hearing that from him made me feel really good because there are days when I think I'm not getting any better at all. Also, yesterday my Chilean sister cut my hair--SHE ROCKS :-) my friends in the states told me I was starting to look Amish.

I leave Chile in seventy-five days and graduate college in less than four hundred--both seem like a very small amount of time. So small that I have decided to look at my time left here with a different perspective. I noticed this weekend that I have finally adjusted to the city and my new life (in that more, oh yes, this is my home way) and considering it's taken me so long to do so I have little time left to actually "live" here. Making the decision to not get a phone was one of the best things for me here. I really am so connected in my life every day that it would have just been impulse to use a phone in Chile similarly to how I use it in the states. Now that I have adjusted to my life here--I'm letting Chile in part be my home. When I moved to Austin, it took me like two weeks to let the city be home to me and of course it's going to take me a little longer with Chile, but I am definitely getting there. My Chilean parents and family are so helpful in this process--Mama and Papa do everything they can to make our Chilean home feel like it is our home as well--and it does.

Last week I went to the Metro Station in Viña del Mar to get my student card. I know that it seems like something simple but I felt really accomplished after I got my card. I went by myself with all of my papers, was able to communicate in Spanish with the metro worker, and successfully obtained my student card. It definitely was a little thing but it made my whole week better--it's interesting how such a small independent thing can make such a difference. I also was craving a taco and so I went with a couple of friends to get a taco from a restaurant...but it wasn't the same. My friend who happens to be from St. Louis couldn't understand why I didn't think the taco was a taco and I just told him he obviously had never had Austin TexMex, where he then proceeded to tell me I was the stereotypical Texan. What can I say--I like real Mexican food!

On Saturday I went down to a restaurant on the sea before we walked around Valparaiso (he lives closer to Viña) and the restaurant was awesome! It was really good cheap seafood (Mama's is better...) but the view was the best part--from the windows we kept seeing what we thought were dolphins but ended up being sea lions. After lunch we went and watched the waves crash onto the shore and the sea lions swim only a few feet out.

It has been a couple of really good days here in Chile--no matter what language I am using. :-)