Classes, etc.

The first week of classes is over! It has definitely been the most stressful/frustrating week since I've been here...which isn't that hard to do because its almost impossible to get stressed here, but this week was pretty rough. I was enrolled in 4 classes when I got here that I picked while I was still at Northeastern. We were told to just pick any classes and that it would be really easy to change them once we got here. So I got my schedule (called a timetable here) and wasn't too worried about the 2 econ classes and 1 business class that were on it.
Early on Monday morning a couple of my friends and I went to get in line at the International Student Office in order to change our schedules around and switch in/out of classes. We got there at 8 and waited in line for about an hour and a half. I was only changing my business class to an Australian multi-cultural class, so it wasn't a problem. Then I went to print out my timetable and in HUGE letters at the bottom of the sheet it said CLASH. The way the timetables work here is that you don't get to choose what time/day your classes are. There are also almost no classes that have quotas, so there are usually a bunch of sections offered for each class. So, if you don't like the schedule that you got or it clashes, you have to go online to your timetable and keep refreshing the page until you get the times and days that you want, or that work the best. When I did this I realized that the multi-cultural class that I wanted to take clashed with one of my other classes and it was only offered on that day so I had to go back on Tuesday and get it switched again. I got it changed to Australian Theatre, Film and Learning which only meets on Mondays 2-4 for lecture and does not have any tutorials (should be pretty tough =]).
Most classes have two hours of lecture a week. It could be two days of one hour lecture or one day of two hour lecture. Then almost every class also has a tutorial once a week or either one or two hours. These are much smaller classes up to 25 or so students where the lectures can be over 600.
So, here is my schedule as of today:

Monday: Australian Theatre, Film and Learning Lecture 2-4
Tuesday: Intermediate Micro Lecture 9-11
Foundations for Ancient Greece Lecture 2-3
Wednesday: Production Economics Workshop 10-12
Foundations for Ancient Greece Lecture 2-3
Foundations for Ancient Greece Tutorial 4-5
Thursday: Intermediate Micro Tutorial 10-12
Friday: Production Economics Lecture 10-12

So far I have only been to the Ancient Greece class and the Production Econ class. Ancient Greece seems really interesting, but I think it's going to be a lot of work. The econ class as of the first day seems REALLY over my head and I'm considering dropping it and picking something else. When my teacher said that we have a math exam in that class next Friday on "the stuff I think you should be able to do for this class" that's worth 10% of my final grade I think I had a small heart attack. All reading should know that a. I'm terrible at math (hence why I've taken it 6 times since being in college) and b. I'm terrible at tests! Math + Tests = Bad News...maybe I'm not so bad after all =]
That's pretty much all I've been doing all week. Trying to figure out which classes I'm taking and trying to find the building they're in which has proved to be a bit of a challenge made even more difficult by the fact that there is NO time between classes and it's just customary to start class 5 minutes late and end 5 minutes early. Luckily I don't have any classes back to back.
Saturday night was the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras which was a lot fun. We went to the parade, but couldn't actually see anything because there were so many people and we went back to the apartment where we had been at all day and just hung out there for the night. Lots of fun!

Okay, I'm on my way to the beach now, so more later!
xoxoxo