School / Day to Day Life

Two blogs back to back- woohoo! haha.
Until now, I have mostly written blogs about excursions or special occasions. However, in this blog, I want to explain a little about day to day life, especially school, which is what takes up the majority of my time.
As for school here, it is a lot different than being on a campus in the U.S. Here the university buildings are spread across 2-3 cities. Therefore, depending on the day, I can either walk to class and arrive in about 15 minutes or I may have to take the metro (train system) or micro (bus system) to the neighboring city. This takes more like 30 minutes. On certain occasions I take a colectivo (taxi with designated route).
My classes usually start around 11 a.m. As a whole, things start later here and finish later. For instance, on Fridays I have classes until 8:30 p.m. As for my classes, I chose to take all classes with Chilean students, rather than classes only for gringos (United States students). Also in choosing my classes with Chileans, I tried to choose those that would not have many gringos. To my surprise, in 5 out of my 6 classes I am the only gringa. Why is this good? Well, it forces me to talk in Spanish. Otherwise, it would be easier to do homework and study in English with the other gringos. For instance, the other day I gave a dissertation in one of my classes. To help prepare for this presentation, a Chilean classmate met with me for more than four hours. If I was in a class where half of the students were gringos, I think the possibility of that happening would significantly drop. However, there are also 'bad' things about it too. For instance, if I don't understand something due to the language barrier, I am probably the only one who doesn't understand. Whereas, if I were in classes with other gringos, we could all talk to the professor, expressing our confusion and frustrations. In one of my classes the other day, called 'Video Workshop', the professor explained to us that we were not going to make any videos at all this semester. Haha. One has to laugh.
Okay, what else? As for lunch, my hostmom makes me a sacklunch for the days I do not return home (which are the same days I go to the other city by metro or micro). Otherwise, I return home to eat.
I don't think I have many pictures to include on the school aspect. But, a few other things I have done with friends are: go to the mall to play pool, go out to eat, get together to watch a movie, go fishing, go on a Church retreat, etc. I am including some of those miscellaneous pictures. (The second to last picture is of my host brother and I. The rest of the people in these pictures with me are friends that I know through the Church.)