Inauguration

January 20th,

I woke up still feeling sick but productive at least.  After breakfast and taking another dose of the poorly testing medicine from the pharmacy I made some progress on my paper for Historia Política Social Contemporánea.  

At 4:00 I went to my last class of Análisis de Políticas Públicas which was good.  I'm glad that class is over.  Of the 5 classes I took, I probably should have dropped that one.  Granted, I did learn quite a bit and my Spanish certainly improved due to the thick Andalucían accent of the professor, but it was the combination of the very high level of Spanish and the fact that I had never taken a class remotely similar to this at home that put in me a position in which I was learning all of the content in a language that I'm still working on at a pace that was a little too fast.  Fortunately, I have almost 2 weeks until the final due to the ridiculousness of the final exam schedule so I know I'll have time to study and do well.

Teoría del Estado was good.  This final will be difficult as we have covered so much.  My notes are good and I'm hoping the professor finishes putting all of the powerpoints up online.  This will be my last final exam on February 14th.

I came back home had dinner, and worked on my paper a little more.  At 9:00pm, I met for a cafe with my old monitor from the ILP summer program, Mónica.  We talked for an hour before I came back home.  During the day I had been feeling pretty good but by the time I came home and was getting ready for bed, I felt pretty weak and sick once again.  

Before going to bed I made sure to watch online the inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States.  I thought he did a great job on his speech, especially since he recited the whole thing from memory.  I think he is the first politician I've ever seen who doesn't need to read from the paper speech.  I also admire how he is going to great efforts to reach out to John McCain and include people from different backgrounds and political ideologies to be a part of his team.  I think he knows how high expectations are for him and will do his best.  I think he will be a good President.