I Promise I'm Still a Student

September 03, 2018

I Promise I'm Still a Student

Putting the "study" in "Study Abroad"

If you're a consistent checker of my mom's Facebook, you may have noticed an absence of large trips the last few weeks. While Purdue (my home institution) started their first weeks of school, I started my first round of midterms. Note: Exams take on a difference appearance here at UniNorte. Goodbye to hyperventilating over an 80 question exam over one hour with less than a minute for each question! Hello to hyperventilating over a 4 question exam worth 30% of your grade!! Cultural exchange is such a reminder of universal commonalities. In the end, we are all similar. Exams still suck.

However, I got up to a few exciting things in-between pretending to understand my chicken-scratch notes in Spanish. (Realization: with my newly acquired Spanish knowledge and a long sit-down on google translate, it has come to my attention that I understood nothing from the first two weeks of lectures in Spanish. Maybe understood 20% of the information...and because I was already semi-familiar with it)

Weekend of August 25th

Went to Sabor Barranquilla! Incredible event where you walk around and try food from businesses from Barranquilla. Think Costco on Saturday, but twice as many free samples. I didn't take great photos, so please enjoy this professionally made advert and this photo taken from Google. The weekend was spent studying for my two exams, wandering around malls, and eating Salchipapas (pictured below), an incredible dish that I cannot believe hasn't been brought and established as an essential food group in the US. Think fries with cheese, sausage (meat of your choice), and literally everything else. Also prepared for the International Students Fair (see previous post).

This dish was advertised as a serving for two. Probably could have fed a small family.

Weekend of September 1

As previously pictured on my mother's Facebook, my roommates and I journeyed to Castillo de San Antonio de Salgar! Only a half-hour drive from our house, the Castillo is one of the main attractions of Barranquilla. We had a lovely afternoon picnic and stayed for the sunset. The Castillo is a fort form the Colonial era, maintained today for tourists for its beautiful view. We ended the day with milkshakes and watching CoCo. A very happy weekend. If you're really on a procrastination high (shout-out to my US friends on Labor Day Weekend) here's a link to a Wikipedia: Castillo