Clases!!

Uf! Clases have started. And can you believe that I have tons of homework already? I am taking 5 classes: Spanish Law, Spanish Cinema, Spanish Art, Language, and Colloquial Spanish. At this juncture, my two favorite classes are Colloquial and Cinema.

In Colloquial, there are about 50 students in a large room. Our first two classes were spent disecting a staged email between two female friends in which one recounts a party, school, work, etc. We tagged all of the expressions we didn't recognized, defined them, specified exactly when and how to use them, and then found synonyms. We really just jumped right in! Furthermore, the vulgar expressions are as readily taught as the non-palabrotas. It makes for both an interesting class AND this is the kind of stuff I use every day. In fact, a word I learned today, cojonudo/a (super awesome, superlative for great, but vulgar) was used in my Cinema class! Just think... if I hadn't learned it, I'd have lost the meaning of that entire scene.

And cine! This class is split between two professors equally, one day with the profesora and another with the profesor. The female professor was a bit boring, but today with the male professor, we did lots of fun activities while learning some theory. We disected a spanish beer commercial by character, camera angle, feelings evoked, and spanish values. Then we watched snippets of the movie La Comunidad, which I highly recommend as a comedy.

Those were the highlights of the week. But inevitably, I began to compare this school with Johns Hopkins. The system is entirely different. Instead of buying books, teachers (in class) give you a three-number code. With that code, you must walk to 1 of 4 buildings and wait in line at a Reprografia to obtain photocopies of these materials, which will then become either class materials or homework. This is inefficent for many reasons: 1) the teachers are often unprepared and will give you the clave but not have the materials available, so you have waited in line twice, and had to rush your work once you actually DID get the materials; 2) Instead of one lump sum, you have to pay for your copies each time you get them; 3) If the teacher forgets the code, you can't get your work, not even if you ask the front desk, and; 4) Materials for different classes are unique to certain buildings, so you spend your time being rejected from some and trying to find others.

Another queja (complaint) is that some of my teachers are Latin-American, including my Language teacher! The whole Spanish experience is difficult BECAUSE we learned Mexico-dialect Spanish in school, and we have to relearn accents, different phrases, different expressions, and different ways to address people. Why, then, does the teacher who is responsible for fine-tuning my Castillian vocabulary, accent, and expressions, not use them herself?? This makes no sense to me. Here, they call it racisim. But I call it being practical. A similar analogy might be going to Portugal and having a Brazilian teach you about Portuguese history. Or going to Britain and having an American teach you British history. This is also the case with my Law class. Having a foreigner teach you about a country he/she also only knows by the books is a little weird to me. I feel that a big part of law is how it affects your everyday life. Also, the accent and vocabulary in which you learn a subject in is also how you will describe it to others. If I learn about Law in Mexican-dialect Spanish, I have not completed my objective to fine-tune my Spain-dialect Spanish.

Other than that, I really do enjoy all of my classes, without a doubt. I chose the most interesantes classes and I can't wait to really get in the swing of things. Our classes only contain other Americans from other universities in California, New York, Boston, etc. I wish I could meet more spaniards.

However, it's time for me to dormir because I've got class early tomorrow morning! I know that the next time I post, I'll be more positiva, having gotten used to the system at my new school and such. Until then!