I feel like an idiot?

Although we had a long weekend, school came back for a visit pretty quickly. Although I had a great weekend with the Futbol game...well both Football games (Saints win!) we were in class today and in my second class we had a discussion over Ser and Estar. Both literally mean "to be" (Shakespeare you're mind is gonna be blown) and have very specific variations. We started asking questions and our professor corrected us on three different accounts. The first was asking a person how much something is, the second was letting someone know the food was good and the third I don't recall (Mom, I picked up on the first two, I did good). The phrases we had been taught since we started Spanish don't even make sense here. My question is, besides feeling like an idiot because I have asked countless people what the price of something was and telling our waiters the food wasn't that great, why do our professors teach us this material? Since I've been here, it's pretty amazing to see what we would never ever pick up on sitting in a classroom in the states. I have always felt that the romance department needs some re-structuring but why don't our professors tell us these things? We had a pretty long discussion on the 30 minute walk home and were all pretty encouraged. Our Spanish is still pretty rough but we have been here for less than a month and we are able to pick up on quite a bit. Just some quick after lunch thoughts. - Sean (Sorry there aren't pictures, use your imagination :-).