¡Acelera un poco más!

It´s been almost 2 months since I´ve been here in Alcalá de Henares, and everything is going well. Classes are in full-swing now, and I guess now everything is normal. Because I am studying history and humanities, there isn´t an urgent need to go to class, so last week I skipped a lot in order to hang out and basically just do whatever I felt like; but this week will be a "good-student" week (well, except for yesterday because I skipped Translation in order to go to the Thyssen-Bornemiszma Museum- it was worth it). Other than the random trips to Madrid, I´ve not been up to anything really interesting. I´m watching a good bit of fútbol (soccer), and it´s great. Just a good atmosphere, I think.

A couple of weeks ago, I went with 4 German guys to Toledo- we rented a car, and spent the day in the city. Toledo in car has got to be one of the most interesting things ever because of the fact that the streets are designed for people and thus are very VERY narrow. We drove a Seat Leon down streets that were literally as wide as the car, and the streets were packed with people. It was like a sick game of bowling where the car is the ball and the people were the pins- thank goodness we lost that game of bowling.
Me and my friends have booked a trip to Marrakech, Morocco for the end of November (at least I think it´s then.. really not too sure). Also, we are probably going to buy a flight to Lisbon, Portugal soon because they were just as cheap as Marrakech. I really want to travel around Spain, so a trip to Barcelona is probably going to happen soon, but it will be full price which is fine with me.
I almost forgot, last week there was a Medieval Festival here in Alcalá for a few days: food, drinks, hand- things, and different boothes showing how things were made in the Middle Ages- it was quite interesting.
The university here in Spain is a lot different from what I´m used to in the States. I don´t have to go to class because all that happens in the classes are lectures, and we only have one final exam in almost all of my classes with a few exceptions (the exceptions are just one project besides the final exam). So I try to read and keep up, but that hasn´t really worked out as well as I would like. It´s getting easier to follow my professors in class, but still my brain is mush at the end of the day. The hardest part of my days are when I have two hours in one class. I´m not used to that at all. At MSU, I find it almost unbearable to sit and listen for an hour and fifteen minutes- and here, in the 2 hour classes, most of the teachers REALLY lecture for 2 hours solid. Usually we get a break in between the hours, but if a professor is on a roll, we go straight. It was not fun in a straight 2 hour class of Historia de Europa en la Edad Media (History of Europe in the Middle Ages).

"People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character. "
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Classes and life outside of the Comisaría

Classes are basically in full swing now except for "Grado" classes which start the 5th of October. I´ve had to do some rearranging (ok, quite a bit of rearranging) of my classes in order to make everything work, but I guess because we´re Erasmus, they let us do whatever we want. I only have 4 classes as of now because, after listening to my teacher in Philisophic Anthropology ramble and watching the class of native speakers struggle to follow him, I decided that would not be a wise class choice for me. This is my schedule:

Monday: Spanish Geography and Cultural History of the Middle Ages

Tuesday: Spanish Geography, Spanish-to-English (and vice-versa) translation

Wednesday: Cultural History of the Middle Ages and History of Europe in the Middle Ages

Thursday: History of Europe in the Middle Ages

Friday: NO CLASSES

The way my schedule works, and it seems to be the norm in this university, is that one day a week you are in a specific class for 1 hour and the other day it is for 2 hours, so it´s great that it works out perfectly to 3 hours a week of classes- MSU will be thankful. As you can see, it´s not a lot of classes, and the translation class won´t really count for me in MSU- I just think it´ll be helpful for me. I am going to look for a Grado class to take that will count.

Another thing, I got a job teaching english 6 hours a week, and the pay is NICE. I work in a place called Academio Metodo (I think that´s the name), and it is located on the 3rd floor of a building in the Calle Mayor (pictured). I have classes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I have adults and teenagers. Most of the groups are upper intermediate- although I do have a group or 2 of elementary level. I´ll just kind of follow the book that they´ve given me, but the main point is to get them to talk. Today is the first day of class, so I´m going to get suggestions from them in order to see where they want to go with the class. My friend from the UK had her first day of teaching yesterday and said that it was a lot of fun- I´m kind of excited.

The police station.

Today should be my last time to go the that hellish place. They told me to bring my health insurance information last monday, and that was all I lacked. After going there and waiting only an hour or so- I went to the table and was told that they didn´t have my letter of acceptance from the University of Alcalá (UAH) and that I have to return today with that.

One thing I´m going to do is tell the coordinators of this exchange at MSU ALL OF THE DOCUMENTS that you have to present upon arrival in Spain- there are a TON. I guess that´s why I´m the guinea pig- next year´s group will have it EASY.

It´s become evident that I could stay here for 10 months and not improve my spanish speaking too much at all because of the number of English speaking people around. So I´ve decided that I have to start studying Spanish on my own because I really do speak a good bit of English, and in the classes I can just sit back and listen- no speaking necessary. Well, I say I listen, but I´ve been in the habit of tuning out the teacher when it gets to messy with all of this huge vocabulary. I´m going to buy the books for the classes that are the most difficult and do some of my own studying so that I have a bit of a better vocabulary for the subject.
My friends and I here have decided that we´re going to stop speaking English, and we´ve been quite successful.

I think that covers all of the important points- I really need to study a little before going to the Comisaría again.