Half Way Point

Someone informed me that this most recent Sunday marked the half way point of my excursion. That is just pure craziness. My experience has been chalked full of awesomeness thus far and I can't wait to see what the second half has in store for me.

I have yet to discuss my classes much. Why don't I let you in on my school life.

First there's vocabulary. It's pretty much your standard Spanish vocab class. I learn about things relevant to my lifestyle. The units we've had so far covered cities/towns, nationalities, body parts, physical and emotional descriptions, and games. My teacher for this class is a young twenty-something woman. She doesn't speak any English and we all speak very little Spanish, so she's become very good at drawing on the chalkboard and using sound effects.

Grammar. I really dislike my grammar class. The teacher is a middle-aged man who is very hilarious and good at relating things to us students. His sense of humor, however, does not make up for our general incompetence in grammar. We go over our class time nearly every day and barley scratch the surface of whatever the daily topic is. I've come to the conclusion that grammar is just hard to teach (good luck with that Nicki).

Art History. This is an interesting class, but also my most difficult to focus in. It's neat because we learn about Roman architecture or Greek statues and then are able to visit them in real life. It's not so neat because it's still history, which means lots of miniscule details and countless dates that I cannot remember for the life of me. Also, did you know that Spain is OLD? I mean, in theory I knew that, but once you go from studying the history of baby US to the gigantic history of old school Spain it's challenging to say the least.

Translation. I saved the best description for last. I really enjoy translation. In this class we translate Spanish to English and vice versa. It has a lot to do with sentence diagramming and many underlying linguistic themes. As a recently self proclaimed language nerd, this is all very fascinating to me. We translate texts from The Simpsons all the way to When Harry Met Sally. The class is teaching me a lot about both Spanish and English grammar. I'm diggin' it.

Oh, I lied. That wasn't the last description. I also have an Intercultural Class, which is put on by AHA (my program). It's a class to help us learn about the Spanish culture. We mostly just talk about our daily experiences the whole time. It's kind of a joke class, that's why I nearly forgot to mention it.

Overall classes have been fairly easy on a week-to-week basis. I've had maybe three homework assignments. Oh and we don't have textbooks. We get a packet at the beginning of each new unit, which contains all the lecture material as well as activities. Even though the classes are light on the work load, it doesn't necessarily mean I'll pass them with flying colors. Between last week and this week I've had three of my four midterms. They've all been surprisingly more challenging than expected. Despite the pleasantly light work load and shockingly difficult tests, I'm still learning and enjoying my classes for the most part.

Additional note: in the classrooms we have chalkboards, which means the teachers use chalk, which of course means they consistently manage to get chalk remnants in hilarious places. My very composed translation teacher usually has a chalk hand print on her butt by the end of every class. The hilarious grammar teacher has had chalk in ever nook and cranny imaginable, thanks to his flailing hand gestures. And my art history teacher walked around with chalk on her face on a rainy day while taking us on a tour of the local cathedral (which is no where near a chalk board). Conclusion: chalk is funny.