Classes

Classes started this week on Wednesday. At USFQ, students get the first week and a half to arrange their schedules. As such, I went to many different classes this week to figure out what classes I should take. I went to sociology (gender and society), two EAI (Spanish for international students aka Gringo) lit classes, an actual lit class (oral Ecuadorian histories), history (North and South: processes of colonialism), human ecology, and cultural anthropology. I still want to try one more class called Andean anthropology.

I decided I didn't want to take sociology, oral Ecuadorian histories, or cultural anthropology. The focus of the sociology class was not what I thought it would be and would have been a lot of work for something I don't find all that interesting. I think the lit class would have been over my head, plus it fulfills the same requirements as the history class, which I really liked. And the anthropology class was too generic: I wanted an anthro class specifically about South America or Ecuador, which is more like the Andean anthropology class.

I really like all the other classes. One of the EAI's is half reading hispanic (as in Spanish and Latin American) lit and half learning about Ecuador and Quito. The other EAI is half Latin American lit and half Cuban lit, which we will connect to Cuba's history and politics. The history class is pretty self-explanatory: comparing the English colonies with Spanish colonies during the colonial age and now. Also, the class is about half gringos, and the professor made a point to say that no one should be embarrassed to participate in class, which I thought was cool. The human ecology class is pretty sweet: the subject matter is intriguing, and I like the professor a lot so far. Although I haven't been to the Andean anthropology class, I have read they syllabus and talked to people who are in it and it seems quite interesting and we have an optional field trip into rural Ecuador to see what we've learned in real life. Because of the way the schedule works out, I have to pick four of these five classes, a decision I have yet to make.