Holly

Você fala o português? Do you speak Portuguese?

What a first week! My classes began last Wednesday and it has sure been a rollercoaster for me trying to finalize my schedule at UW. I cannot emphasize enough how much I appreciate the program structure at Evergreen. I am thankful for the opportunity to attend UW through the Jackson School of International Studies, but I have been experiencing a high level of frustration, culminated today by serious disappointment. I have been on the waiting list to get into Portuguese 101, and today I found out that I have been denied enrollment in the class. This has come to me as a sharp blow, considering one of the main reasons why I applied to participate in this consortium was to have a broader opportunity to study languages.

Really, this is nobody’s fault and I knew it was a possibility when I went on board with the program. The University of Washington is only offering one section of Portuguese, permitting 25 to enroll, and about 40 people came to class every day, with 15 of us hoping to get signed in. Obviously, when you have a class like that with such a HUGE demand, many people are going to be disappointed. I just don’t understand why there isn’t another section available. It makes me nostalgic for programs at Evergreen because I know nothing like this would happen to me there…

But, I know everything happens for a reason. I am looking into another potential opportunity to study Portuguese this quarter, and I’ll keep you all posted with how that goes. Otherwise, my Spanish 303 and Latin American Social Movements classes are great! I’m excited to keep practicing speaking Spanish and increasing my capacity to write well in another language. I’ve already come up with a tentative idea for my research project, and I think I will be focusing on the history and politics of Mexican immigration.

¡Hasta luego!

I do love September. It’s a special month for me because it always represents a new beginning. Besides also being the month of my birth, September is when summer transitions into fall, when the university quarter is fresh and exciting, reminding me why I love being a student. Forget about all the essays I will have to write, topics I must research, presentations I must prepare for, books I must read, and sleep that I will lose. I have rested my mind for three months, and aside from working at the restaurant I have managed to do little else. I am refreshed and looking forward to my final year of undergraduate study, and I can already see well beyond June when I will finally graduate from college.

The weather is beginning to change here in Washington and I find myself instantly feeling nostalgic. I am excitedly awaiting for the warmth of the sun to fade into the trees, turning the leaves fantastic shades of yellow, red and gold, until finally October has arrived, followed by November, and it is cold. I am sad I will not be on campus at Evergreen to witness this gorgeous passage of the seasons this year, but my life will still definitely hover around Olympia in another way.

Yesterday I purchased the books for my classes at UW. I am currently enrolled in a Latin American Studies Seminar called Social Movements in the Americas. It looks like we will be studying international activism and revolutionary movements, with literature on Bolivia’s politics, Argentina’s disappeared and the military dictatorship and the black insurgency movement in the United States. This is definitely my kind of class! I also bought a textbook for Portuguese 101, and thankfully a friend had the textbook for my Spanish 303 class, so I didn’t have to purchase that one.

School starts next Wednesday, September 24 for me at UW, and then my fellow Greeners begin on Monday the 29th. I already know I am going to miss the interdisciplinary structure of Evergreen’s programs, but I’m sure I will be able to integrate the motif of my classes at UW into my own program curriculum through the Jackson School of International Studies.

¡Hasta luego, mis amiguitos!