Social Struggle Bus

So here's the way my day went. I woke up, ate breakfast, then got back under the covers to read Bossypants on my iPod. When María knocked on my door to tell me she was leaving, we had a conversation about me being back in bed, in which I decided it was easier to let her think I was napping than to explain I was reading a novel on a 3-inch touchscreen.

Anyway, I finally got productive and went to class, came back fro lunch, and looked up hostels in Rome & Madrid & Salamanca for future voyages & visits (more on that later).

At 6, I had to go to a rescheduled musicology class, which began a series of events that put me into a slightly unnecessary fight-or-flight-or-panic mode.

1. I didn't know which classroom we were meeting in. I made it to the right floor, then stood around like an idiot until I ran into some other kids who were like, "It's room 24, right?" I have no idea. I'm following you guys.
2. I was having a harder-than-normal time picking up the pre-class chatter. Usually, I get an idea of the conversation (even if it's not a good enough idea to participate in the conversation), but not today.
3. Several of my classmates had photocopies of papers I'd never seen before, leading me to believe I'd once again missed the memo on something I had to get printed to prepare for class.

At this point, my homesick, frustrated, stressed brain went int panic mode, and decided my desire to avoid yet another class where I felt lost, unprepared and alone was so strong, it was time to bail. (Mom & Dad, I know that's not what you want to hear, but sometimes at the age of 20, you have to bail on things for stupid reasons. No one died or got arrested. Or skipped class in the end.)

I almost got away with it, except I decided to take the front stairs instead of the back ones. And as I started up the stairs, I saw one of my almost-friend classmates coming down them (We bonded two days ago over the fact that we can both pop our knuckles loudly and the fact that my ability to pop my thumb out totally freaks him out. I'm not sure if our professor didn't hear us laughing or just ignored it because I was finally doing something other than sitting there like a terrified deer in the headlights). This put me into panic mode again.So there I am, taking the stairs 2 at a time with my head down, but halfway up I hear, "Hey man, where you going?" in a Spanish accent. Now tell me, is there any possible way you could ignore that and just keep going? The answer is no, because it was just too awesome to hear out of nowhere from a native Spanish-speaker.

So my knuckle-cracking friend, two other friends from class, and I had a weird bilingual conversation on the stairs where I gave them my silly panic-mode reasons and they basically shut them down.

"I don't have the copies"
"But the printer is downstairs…"
"Well, yeah. I'm already late."
"So are we."
"I don't have the copies!"
"You can look at ours! Come on!"

And that was that. Class was not the torturous disaster I was apparently expecting (Panic-Mode Corinne is beyond overly pessimistic). I wasn't prepared. I was definitely lost part of the time, but no more than usual. But I survived. And I swear my life had one of those movie moments, one that belongs in a new-kid-in-school movie where the tortured protagonist finally has a table to sit at during lunch.

Cheesiness aside, turns out going to class was a good plan. Because I finally actually participated in class too! Mostly because we were talking about the silly way of calculating when Easter or the festival of Corpus Cristi was… or something… and my professor brought up the American presidential elections. Because (in case you didn't know) those are held the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November. So it can't be November 1. So I got to explain that to the class, and show them I'm not a complete moron, I just don't know how to answer music questions.

So I'm not sure if anyone but myself finds this interesting (I hope you at least enjoyed that my friend knows enough English to feel comfortable saying, "Hey man, where you going??" because I found it to be hilarious), but this is the highlight of my week so far. Although I am going to Karaoke tonight. And we have a Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. And I go to Lisboa on Friday. So there are more interesting posts coming. I just really felt like writing about my social struggles and why they sucked a little less at the end of today!