hola me llamo Caroline Hanson

Things you should do on your first day of class at your university in a foreign country. Speak their language and try not to steal or lie.

Well today was the first day of orientation at my new school. The 250 of us gringos arrived at 830 in the morning and spent an hour chatting it up with each other. Within minutes i spotted miss Jen and we spent a good hour of WAIT WAIT LISTEN TO THIS...OMG NO WAIT, pretty much couldn't contain ourselves.

We were speaking in Spanish and scanned the mass of gringos and whispered dude i can't wait to meet Ecuadorians. I couldn't help my word vomit of how sweet Guatemala was, but quickly realized that its just not the same when you say it out loud to people who have never been there. One dude, Jose, came over to Jen and I and started talking to us. His spanish was really great, and he asked us how our summers were. As soon as i said that i lived in guatemala he said OMG HOW COOL I'M FROM EL SALVADOR, I LOVE GUATEMALA. And the stories started flowing.

Okay- speed ahead to the orientation. 4 hours of people speaking at us. Security, culture, campus....etc. The majority of which was in English. I was surprised, but i guess its for the best so people get the information they need to be safe.

Speed ahead- time to leave. Walking out with a friend from spanish class (i was walking alone by the way and really wanted to talk to anyone speaking spanish but EVERYONE WAS speaking english, the only people i heard speaking spanish were Jen and Maureen...so yea- strange) to find something to eat. We walked around campus a bit and found like alittle cafeteria that sells all different types of burgers and sandwiches and such. We walked into line, but noticed that there were a TON of people in this other line for this like buffet.

We walked over and saw a HUGE buffet with everything you could possibly want with tons of gringos. SWEET- free lunch! We loaded up our plates with a ton of food, soup, bread, fish, salads, dessert...TODO.

Then we got the the end and noticed there as a person with a list of names and you had to sign next to your name.

It was a private lunch for people who had prepaid with a certain group (or so we concluded.)

What to do?

Give up our food that we were drooling over and walk out empty handed?

Naa. Pick a name and sign away and hope the girl looking over your shoulder isn't Caroline Hanson.

Buen Provecho!! :)