Not Much is Happening, Except Life.

Life has been busy this week... I started my Winter Break class on Tuesday and haven't had much time to do much of anything. My class is interesting... it promises to be an easy A for me, which is always a good thing since I will be busting my butt the entire spring semester with a full 18 credits. Well, actually it is 21 credits since the winter break class is considered part of the spring semester. I am cramming a 16 week course into 2 weeks of class every day, but the professor has abbreviated the class and it is an easy topic. Latin American Politics thru Film. 

Yeah, I know kind of a joke class, but it is rather interesting. There is a lot to it despite the easy aspect of it. We take a lot of notes on film and on various things on Latin America and then we watch a movie that relates to the lecture and nightly textbook reading. So far I have watched 4 movies - one each day in class. The first movie was really graphic and violent, Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, which was about the Aztec Nation and the beginning of the Conquest by the Conquistadors. This movie was very intense, very graphic and extremely violent. 

The second movie, while still intense wasn't nearly as graphic. It was a much younger Robert DeNiro and Jeremy Irons movie called The Mission. This one was about the argument between Spain and Portugal over a small area located where Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay come together at a spectacular set of waterfalls called Iguaza Falls. They play Jesuit priests that are trying to save a tribe from Portugal and the slave trading it engaged in by kidnapping and selling the indigenous people. As with all things related to the Conquest of Latin America, this did not end well for the Jesuits and natives.

The third movie was a depressing one called Missing that was about the coup in Chile by Pinochet in 1973. This movie is a true story about a young liberal reporter living in Chile at the time of the violent military coup who asks too many questions and then disappears after coup soldiers arrest him. The main point of the movie was that the American Embassy and Consulate did nothing to help find the missing young man and other missing American citizens. He was never found, and was rumored to be executed. And yet, the American officials did nothing about it, and was rumored to have assisted in making the coup take place.

Today's movie was about drugs, Mexico & the U.S. The movie was Traffic with Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas. It was a good movie with a very surprising twist to it.... CZJ ends up being married to a drug lord in CA that works with a big drug cartel in Mexico and takes over the business when her husband is arrested and put on trial. Her involvement really surprised me... CZJ even went so far as to order a hit on the main witness against her husband, and makes sure the witness dies.

So I get to watch a daily movie and read a short textbook and write what is essentially a modified book report every night on the daily movie and I get an A for the class. Each of the film scriptings, as the professor calls them, is worth 20 point and I, of course, end getting 19 points on all of them. *Shrugs* easy stuff. 

Now the professor... he is something else.... possibly close to 50, more likely in his late 40's, and about as loony as they come..... I am almost 100% positive that he is a medicinal marijuana user and possibly a drinker. He is absent-minded and often smells of marijuana. I have had him for 2 other political science classes, which is one of my minors, and he is very easy to confuse. I do believe he is rather sexist, but he manages to not be obvious about it in class. He is absent-minded and always says funny little things that don't always make sense unless you know what he is talking about.... comments about tv shows and movies that 90% of the young'uns in my class don't get, but me being the age that I am, totally get it and end up snickering in class, which of course the professor sees, so he knows I am not as young as the babies. Oh well....he grins at me when I snicker at his little jokes, so I guess I won't get into trouble.

So all in all, this week has been busy and I am enjoying going back to class for the moment.... except for the whole "wake up and be in class by 8 am" aspect of it. Really not a morning person at all. I have to set my alarm starting at 4:15, and it goes off every 15 minutes until 5:15, when I finally drag myself out of bed.... and it goes off til 5:45 just in case I still manage to sleep thru the numerous rooster crowings that I use as a my alarm on my cell phone. Yeah, rooster crowings.... the only thing obnoxious enough to drag me out of bed in the mornings. I really hate getting up before 1 pm.... anything earlier than 1 pm is uncivilized, in my humble opinion anyway.

I wish this was in my bed at night.... would be a great reason to sleep in, I think.