I think I have a case of the stupids today. First, I got up an hour early for class and didn't even notice. Then, I tried going to class, but the room was full of kids and the wrong teacher was already halfways done with his class period. I still hadn't figured out that classes don't start at 9:00 but rather 10:00, and wandered down the hallway (which isn't actually a hallway, just a very long open "porch" on each floor), until I found a girl sitting on the floor. She confirmed that the time was indeed 9:00am, as my watch was showing (and that it was Tuesday). Finally, I inquired if today was a holiday or something, causing my schedule to be different. Finally, she saw me for what I was--a stupid American--and pointed out on my schedule that my class actually started at 10:00. So I said, "Gracias" and walked away in shame.
And then there's this afternoon, in which I'm trying to visit the International Programs Office to check if I've gotten my mail today. As expected, when I arrived at 2:15pm the security guard inside the door told me office was closed until 2:30pm, and didn't seem to want to let me even go up to the their floor and wait. No problem, I figured, I'll just go use that computer lab right there, and write a blog post about something (I didn't know what, but figured I'd think of something). I asked the guard if there were computers available for me to use, and he agreed, pointing towards the computers through an internal glass wall. Then he made some wild gestures about going around this and that to get there (I ignored these, as the door handle was plainly right there). I walked over to this door, turned the handle, and tugged, but it was locked. Then I saw something that looked like a very small card scanner on the door frame, not unlike what NDSU has for some of its computer labs. It didn't look quite right though, so I walked to both ends of the glass wall that the door was set in, but found no other door. I returned to the door, whipped out my shiny new plastic ID card, and searched for a magnetic strip. I didn't see one, but reasoned that there was no real reason to make the magnetic strip visible to the naked eye; it could be white like the rest of the card. I swiped the card one way, another way, reversed it, and tried two more times, to no avail. (Keep in mind that this is a glass wall, and there are people who are using the computers watching me the whole time.) By now, the guard was laughing so hard he had fallen off his chair (not really, in all honesty I don't think he was even laughing), and again gestured to me that I had to go outside the building to get into the computer lab. I confirmed this by glancing through the glass wall and saw the doors on the other side. Around I went (it's really
hot here today), and here I am.