Now that I've been in real (ish) school for two and a half weeks I think its high time I gave a description of my classes. For everyone out there that has anxiously been awaiting my updates, yes, I did decide to drop the mysterious Geografía Humana class. Although this was the only normal university class with Spanish students that I was taking, I decided the trade off of not-understanding-much-but-making-Spanish-friends wasn't worth it when on day two nearly all the Spanish kids decided to ditch and understanding even the words on the powerpoints (let alone the prof talking) was hard.
These are the classes I'm taking:
Cultura de la gastronomía en España - Spanish food culture, taught by a funny little man who gels his hair and lets us out early because he always thinks we look tired (9 am struggles). This is great because I have time to go to the cafe and by a 90 cent café con leche To my disappointment, he has yet to bring us any food to sample, though I'm holding out hope. I now know more than I ever thought I would about olive oil, which is basically a celebrity here.
La imagen de España a través del cine - The image of Spain through cinema. I jumped into this class after my other cine class was cancelled (despite my best efforts at recruiting people.) Within five minutes of my first day of class we were watching rather graphically sexual scenes in Carmen, which the class had started the week before. Our teacher is a large, sweaty man who has a perpetually angry tone, as if it's our fault that Carmen portrayed Spain as an exotic, superstitious, undeveloped country. The opening scenes take place in our university though, so that was cool. Yesterday we watched several more interpretations of Carmen (a famous book / opera set in Sevilla, FYI) including "Beyonce as Carmen in a hip-hopera" which was hilariously awful.
La proyección histórica de las tres culturas - The history of Jews, Muslims and Christians in medieval Spain. Interesting, though its also at 9 am, unfortunately. Our teacher is the tinniest, skinniest little man I have ever seen. He spent half an hour today going over the foods that the Arabs brought to Spain and got really excited when he started describing the magic of eating a freshly picked fig in the early morning on his uncle's farm. Adorable. He gives us a break halfway through our two-hour class, which seemed thoughtful until we figured out its mostly so he can go smoke outside.
La historia de la Unión Europea - Hopefully self-explanatory, if you are a semi-intelligent person. This is the seminar I am taking with JYS, which I actually really like. We each have to present one of the countries of the European Union over the semester, and I went first last week with Croatia because I have a weird fascination with this country and apparently I like being a guinea pig. Fun facts: Croatia is the newest member of the EU and Croatians invented the modern tie. Now you know more about Croatia than all your friends.
So far, the only homework I have had was to write a 1-page summary of a movie we watched on the Mediterranean diet, and boy was that the worst. I think we have some articles to read for my cine class but everyone has been casually ignoring them and they have yet to be mentioned.
Last week Marie and I scored a teaching job! Marta's best friend has three little kids (ages 11, 8 and 4) and she asked us if we wanted to come every week and speak English to them and get paid. We thought oh bummer, it's too bad we're not better at English. Kidding, its the best job ever, we get paid for a skill that I could do in my sleep (if I talked in my sleep.. which I don't.. I don't think) and we get to hang out with cute kids! Last week they fed us birthday cake and we colored with them and spoke Spanglish and got sent home with a party favor from the little boy's birthday party. The two older girls go to a bilingual school, so they are way better than your average middle schooler in a foreign language class, though they definitely need lots of practice. Today we went back for the second time and I hung out with Enrique, the baby. Their mom instructed us to only speak English, which was basically impossible since Enrique is still learning to speak Spanish, and if I speak only English maybe he will pick up an accent by osmosis but he won't understand a word. I did my best. So far what has stuck is 'blue' because it's his favorite color. Marie and I both love our new job; it's so fun to experience another Sevillan family!
Speaking of families, Marie's parents were here earlier this week and were kind enough to take me out to dinner twice! The first night we went to dinner with Juan Luis and Marta as well, and the whole night was a fun translation game for me and Marie as we tried to incorporate both the English speakers and Spanish speakers into the same conversations. And I finally tried jamón Iberico which I am planning on smuggling back into the states. Can't wait for my own family to come visit in November! Hi guys!
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| L to R: me, Marie, Fernando, Juan Luis, Marta, Marie's dad, Marie's mom, Borja |
Happy birthday, Dad!! Wish I could have been there to go hike with you.
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| We've only gotten cooler in the past 20 years |
Buenos noches.
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