I've had two days of classes now, and since technically I'm in Valencia for "study" abroad and not "go clubbing and bar hopping and hang out in cafés with my friends" abroad, I guess I can talk about them for a little bit.
I'm taking two classes -- Modern Spanish Art with Profe Peleaz (I think that's his last name... we call him Enrique) and Spanish for Medical Professionals with Pilar. The art class fulfills some requirement that I have for the Spanish major, and the medical one is obviamente really useful considering what my majors are. Doesn't count for anything except a general elective for Kinesiology. Woo.
Entonces, art class. First off, we don't have to memorize names or dates of paintings REQUETECHEVERE I'm really happy about that. My professor said that he would rather us be able to describe and understand the though process behind the painting and whatever art movement it was part of than waste time memorizing things, so I am 100% behind that. The professor is hilarious; he's this little Spanish dude, probably around 60 years old. He's from a town outside of Madrid. He tells a lot of jokes that basically no one gets (and by that I mean that I think he's really funny and he tells a lot of jokes but no one else can understand him well enough to get what he's saying. Jokes in other languages are hard). The classroom is honestly a sauna, probably around 25 C, so everyone tries really hard not to fall asleep, with success of varying levels. We don't really have homework... this weekend we're supposed to "take pictures of things that are different" so yeah. That's fine with me though, because my OTHER class...
I knew from the start that a class on medical Spanish would be a whole lot of vocab, so I wasn't surprised when my class on medical Spanish was a whole lot of vocab. But it's a lot a lot a lot of words in a very short amount of time. Today we went over los prefijos y sufijos that are mostly the same as they are in english, and spent forever going over how to say "I had a cast" "I had a splint" "I had surgery" "I had my wisdom teeth out" etc etc etc. So that was fun. Not. But yeah we have daily homework and a lot of projects and things for that class, so I guess I have a nice balance between the two.
ALRIGHT also one other thing that Rachel and I have been discussing -- in the States, when you order coffee somewhere it is almost always in a paper to-go cup and you take it with you and that's that. Nope, totally not a thing in Spain. We're trying to find a place on our way to school where we can stop and grab a cup of coffee, but it's only been two days and we've almost been late both of those (I blame my alarm clock). I have coffee in the morning here but it's only a cup and I really, REALLY miss my Keurig. There are cafés all around the city but I need 20 oz of coffee not 5 ml. My theory is that because this is such a relaxed place (seriously, if you took Manhattan and gave the entire city Xanax, you would have Valencia) no one really needs that much caffeine to get through the day. It was the same way when I went to Europe in high school, but it's still just as frustrating. At least it's the weekend and I won't have to deal with needing coffee until Monday.
Tomorrow we have our "excursions" with the whole group -- half of us are going to Xátiva and the other half are going to Peñíscola. I'm in the Xátiva group. Apparently there will be some hiking and stuff. I think it's an old part of something with a castle and a forest? I actually have no idea. It's free. Next week I'm in the Peñíscola group -- it's basically a full day beach trip, so that's exciting!
There's a soccer game on Sunday that a ton of us are going to in the stadium right by school (probably 15 minutes walking from my apartment) on Sunday, so that should be really fun. I'll try to get some more pictures while I'm there -- this entire place is gorgeous, but I'm either half asleep and running late or half asleep and trying to trudge home when I'm out, and you don't really want to walk around with your mouth wide open taking pictures with an iPhone anyway, unless you don't really want that iPhone. I'm sure someone would be happy to liberate it from you. Anyway, Valencia c.f. is playing Granada c.f. and I guess Valencia is in 5th place right now and needs to win to continue on in whatever they're in... I obviously don't follow European soccer but WHATEVER it's going to be awesome.
I guess that's enough for now? I'm really bad at ending things, so pretend this is a cool wrap up paragraph. I'm going with Rachel to buy a new converter (hers doesn't fit in the wall and my big one broke so right now we're driving the struggle bus a little bit) and then come back, hopefully take a nap, eat dinner, and then go out. There are a ton of cool bars and clubs near where we live, so that's nice. Nothing as close as the Corner, but hey, it's an okay trade-off considering WE'RE IN SPAIN.
Hasta luego!
No comments:
Post a Comment