School

Hi all,

Well, I started school yesterday. I know, I don't sound very excited about it, but that's just because yesterday was strange. We were supposed to have an orientation yesterday and then start classes today. Then we got to school and they told us that we would be starting classes on Monday. Oh. So yes, I had to sit through all four of my classes yesterday even though I was totally unprepared and technically not registered for any of them.

Everything actually turned out all right. I met a lot of new people yesterday and found a few that I think I'm going to get along with very well. I have all four of my classes on Monday (from 10-2), three on Tuesday and Wednesday (from 10-1), NONE on Thursday, and one on Friday (12-2). It's a rather bizarre schedule seeing as how I have my language class for an hour on Monday and then two hours on Friday, but things in Spain are just kind of like that--just a bit different. I really like my literature and art history professors. At first I thought my history professor might be a bit boring, but he is really passionate about history, so I'm warming up to him. I have to make up my mind yet about my language professor. All of the girls love him, but I just don't know...it's probably not so much him, but just that I'm the least confident about that class.

University classes in Spain are very different than what I'm used to in the U.S. Pretty much almost all of my grades are determined by one final exam (like about 95% of the grade is the final, maybe 5% is attendance) except in my language class where we have a midterm and a final. My classes are almost 100% lecture as well. There's very little student participation. For me that's a bit difficult as 1) I usually have an opinion (especially about literature) and I want to voice it and 2) it's really easy for me to let my mind start wandering and then get off track...and it's just so hard to get back on track in a foreign language. I thought it would be difficult having all my classes in Spanish in a row, but it's actually a bit easier. That's because the longer I sit there listening, the more the language embeds itself in my head.

It was my birthday yesterday. I had an ISA meeting at night and the ISA directors made me a card. After that Julie, Sonya and I went out for dessert and found this cute little plaza with a statue of Federico Garcia Lorca (one of my favorite Spanish poets/playwrights) in it. The picture accompanying this post is one of Julie (right) and Sonya (left) with Lorca.