Gringolandia

So...these weeks are passing by quicker than I would like. Monday comes easy then Tuesday a little longer of a day. Wednesday marks half way done and when its Thursday the weeks basically over. Crazy. I feel like this semester is going to pass us by; I hope it don´t forget us.

Its weird. I found myself dreading my Friday classes @ Latina; my two courses that are actually in Spanish. And its even more strange because at the end of every Friday, I´ve had the best day. I think I be nervous about critch crutchin around en español.

Anyways, in me and Kelsey sociologia class there are dates that the teacher can´t come. SO she has made some classes double in length to make up for the hours. THIS MEANS some Fridays we have class from 8am until 12:45. OC right. Today was one of those days. I however, have a class after sociologia and cannot make these EXTRA hours so I am going to have to do something else with the other students who also have a 10:30 class.

Im still loving my history class. Today we had a diagnostic test on what we knew about Panama. It was intesnse lol luckily diagnostic test don´t count for real grades! When I get the test I laughed when I was lookin at it because I realized how little I know. Then I was thinking about if it were about the US would I know all the answers. Luckily our teacher is the ish and he was laughin with me when I was tryna cheat. Everyone was having trouble; lol and half the class from other countries so they was feelin me.

After we all what should have been failed, we used the sheet to learn from. We moved our desks in a circle.

Look what I learned:
- The isthmus of Panama was formed approx. 3 million years ago.
- Isthmus means a narrow strip of land connecting 2 larger areas. Panama connects North and South America.
- The Republic of Panama is divided into:

9 Provincias which are like states
75 Distritos which I am told are like big cities
623 Corregimientos which I am told are like counties but I get confused by this because there are more counties than Distritos?
and 5 comarcas which are like indigenous reservations.

- The Provincias are:

Bocas del Toro
Colón
Chiriquí
Coclé
Herrera
Los Santos
Darién
Panamá
& Veraguas

- The Comarcas are:

Kuna Yala founded legally (even though they were all here first) in 1938
Emberá-Wounán 1985
Kuna de Madungandí 1996
Ngöbe-Buglé 1997
Kuna Wargandí 2000

And Profe told me where the term "Gringo" comes from.
When the Mexican-American War began, hundreds of Irish-Americans fought on the side of Mexico. Sent by the U.S. government initially to fight against Mexico, they came to doubt why they were fighting a Catholic country. Resentful over mistreatment from their generally Anglo-Protestant officers, these Irish (and other immigrants) deserted the U.S. Army and joined forces with Mexico. Led by Captain John Riley of County Galway, they called themselves St. Patrick´s Battalion (in Spanish, San Patricios). Green was the color of the Irish, and the soldiers sang "Green Grow the Rushes 0!" (based on a Robert Burns poem) or their version of an earlier Scottish tune "Green Grows the Laurel", which they called "Green Grow the Lilacs". This latter tells the story of an Irish soldier who'd fallen in love with a Mexican lass. When the songs became popular with American cowboys, those listening across the border in Mexico couldn't hear the words clearly, only the repeated "Green Grow". Over time this changed into the term "Gringo" (green go), later used to refer to people from the United States.