Time'sa Wastin'

I've noticed that everything here seems to move at a much slower pace. It takes an hour to get to school, classes more or less start ten minutes after the hour, dinner often lasts more than two hours, and even a simple task like getting a visa photo taken can take an entire afternoon.

Take, for example, today. My second day of classes. Upon arriving at the school, I discovered that my class had been changed to a different room. After asking around a bit, I found the room. But, of course, no one was there. So back I go to the office and find out, oh, not only was the classroom changed, but so was the day! There was little choice in the matter, so now my schedule is a lot less awesome and a lot more annoying. Anyway. I'd agreed to meet the Finnish girl (Johanna) after classes (which were supposedly in the same building at the same time), so I decided to take care of a few errands and walk around the campus some more. I ran into Paty a little later, so we spent the hour left walking around and chatting with various other exchange students. The story continues along this thread for a while, me running into other students and chatting, moving on, finding more people to talk to, until the next thing I know it's almost 2. I'd gotten to school at nine!

Of course that's not all. The second leg of the adventure took place off-campus for another 3+, which consisted of catching a bus, getting our visa photos, and walking maybe a mile from the photo place to our house. I was hurting like crazy because of various bumps and sores I've acquired in the last week, Amber was complaining about the walking the whole time, Johanna was too excited about her new Nokia phone to care about any of us, and Paty just plain didn't want to go home to her empty house.

So now it's 6, I've walked at least three miles today, and have nothing to show for myself except more blisters on my feet and a fading sunglasses tan.

I love this country!