Why can't the world at home just stop?

Today was a frustrating day. It is now 12:07am on Saturday.

This morning I woke to a frustrating e-mail from a professor of a course from last semester. It held the unfortunate news that I had done rather poorly in the arranged study course I had to do last semester. The most frustrating aspect is that it was a course I would never have chosen to take except that taking that course was the only way to meet a graduation requirement that had to be met so I could come here. I realize that my advisor will probably be reading this blog and I hope he can understand that I am just being honest about my day. I am still rather upset because there is a chance that I may not be able to graduate because of this low grade. No one can seem to help me. When I asked my advisor he sent me back some information, but I wasn't able to understand how it answered my question and I couldn't communicate in any other way than e-mail. Besides that it was night time back in Iowa. Then when I tried to pose the question to the professor he responded that it was irrelevant to my situation because his "judgement" was over my performance and had nothing to do with the consequences of the grade. It was just so frustrating and hard to be civil because I was so far away and I just wanted someone to tell me if I can still graduate on time. The whole situation is just added stress and it shouldn't even have taken this long to get to. I turned in the final draft of the paper near the 1st of the year and I am only now hearing about a final evaluation. Either way, I am still frustrated but trying to accept that it is somewhat out of my hands right now. I let myself calm down and sent a very civil e-mail back to the professor. For my own self to deal with it I copied and pasted his evaluation of me and wrote after each paragraph the reasons why his evaluations were unsatisfactory to me. He wrote some pretty judgemental things about me that were very hard to know that he was passing on for my advisor to read and I wouldn't even be able to defend myself. I suspect it doesn't matter and no one other than Hilary will read it, but I felt better for saying the things that I felt, even just to myself. The truly unfortunate part is that all of this has been on going throughout the day and it was hard to focus on the things we did at the internship today because of it.
This morning we walked to the office and shortly after had a meeting with Andrea. Andrea is working on developing a new foster care program and was interested to pick our brains about the system back in the US. It was hard since none of us are particularly familiar with the system in an intimate way, but it made me glad to have read and studied the bits I have in social work classes. It was also just fun to meet and visit with another new person.

We also met with Yvonne who is the director of the agency so she could check in on us and see how things were going. It went well and we found that she hopes to take us to do some sightseeing, for example a trip to a winery.

By the end of the day I was pretty much frazzled, so I was excited that we got a ride home and I was able to call Tim and talk to him. I felt a little calmer after that. Hilary and Morgan came to tell me that David had stopped them to tell them that the meal tonight was just for us. You can imagine our surprise then when we went to the kitchen for our requested vegetarian meals and received 2 pieces of a leftover breakfast quiche with Canadian bacon in it. When we decided we weren't going to eat it we took it back and tried to make due with rice and some of the mushrooms from what was being served. I was excited that I brought down a lemon I got from the tree outside the office and the seasonings I bought. They really improved the meal.

We decided to go on a walk to the Supermarket that we found the other night to look for some snacks to keep around. I ended up with some cheese (haven't had much yet and kind of missing it), some sun dried tomatoes w/ Feta, and some fresh bread. I had quite the scare when I tried to take money out of an ATM and was worried that it had eaten my card, but I got it back and it turned out OK, except that I couldn't get money out. Hopefully that was just this ATM and it will work other places. The rest of the night has been spent relaxing and deciding what to do tomorrow. We have plans to hike in the conservation park, possibly check out a cave, head to the city, and possibly check out some night life. You'll have to wait for the update tomorrow, and hopefully more pictures then!