Most of my ranting now stems from the fact that my professors assigned homework during winter break that there was no chance of doing before hand. I guess Puget Sound spoiled me with free time between semesters, but even though the first trimester finished on 17 December, all of my classes had final essays, projects, or exams that were throughly explained ON the last day of class, leaving us only the rest of the "vacation" to do it- boo!
My current rant has to do with the fact that one of my class essays is a joint project- I wrote an essay with a classmate of mine. She's nice and we get along in class, but writing a 15 page essay with another person is hard! We're currently butting heads on the issue of citation- she's says that we only need to cite direct quotes, whereas I'm convinced that ideas and facts taken from other authors' works need to be cited as well, even if it's not a direct quote. This is a weird argument for me- who ever votes for LESS citation? I made all the changes, adding in-text citations to the document where necessary, and she called me to say that she thought I had cited too much! The only thing I can possibly understand from her concern is that she thinks that by citing it looks like less of our work is original, whereas I'm voting to avoid plagiarism issues. Her most current move was to preface all of my citatons with "idea taken from". I'm trying to take this as a cultural learning moment, although I called another Ecuadorian friend to make sure I wasn't being absurd, and she assured me that I wasn't.
Still, the upside to "vacation" means that I have a bit more free time to cook. In terms of yummy food, I have been on a culinary roll. I was inspired to make spinach enchiladas last week with homemade ricotta cheese thanks to Nanny's enchilada sauce arriving in Ecuador. After meeting a friend's brother who studied in India, I was suddenly consumed by the desire to make Indian food with my new spices that the fam brought down that I can't find here. I made a lentil daal dish and a spinach saag- both delish. Finally, yesterday I made a potato leek soup (mostly because I love saying the word leek in Spanish- puerrrrrrrrrrrro) and I made a banana/strawberry bread. The Supermaxi also presented me with a gringo purchase that I just couldn't resist: garlic and onion BAGELS!
So at least I've been eating well while slaving (and complaining) away on academics.
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