First day all over again

Up until now everything has been so chill and wonderful that I had pretty much forgotten what it was like to have work. Suddenly I want to be back in Cambridge watching Arrested Development in the white chair, not because Cambridge is cooler than Barcelona (quite the contrary! ha), but because I had decidedly less work to do there. But IES classes started last week, UB started this week, and UPF started yesterday, and now I am taking 21 credits (temporarily - I have to drop one) and it turns out that I really don't want to do homework! Weird. I'm usually so dedicated to school.

I'm taking my Spanish class at IES, as well as a lit class - Barcelona and the Latin American Literary Boom. They're both really cool so far, and I like the professors a lot. In my Spanish class we end up just talking about Spain and politics and other random things like birth control and divorce. I LOVE it. Pep is our profe, and he's really... emphatic. And has a lot of opinions. The Boom class is going well so far, but I switched into it this week and missed the first week, so it's starting slowly for me. I like it a lot though, and it seems like we'll be reading lots of great writers - Borges, Fuentes, Varga Llosa, and Cortazar come up practically every day.

At UB I'm signed up for a Modern Spanish history class that is only 2 credits and only half the semester, and is for foreigners only. I've only been to one class, since Wednesday was La Merce, but so far I am not impressed. The professor was nice but tended to ramble and get distracted, and also talked reallllly slowly so we wouldn't get lost. I was initially annoyed by the pace, but at UPF I learned just how important it is.

My first day at UPF should probably be in a movie, because it was so ridiculous. Not really. But in my head, everything was awkward and overblown, even when they were pretty run of the mill. I had almost forgotten how scary it is to show up, alone, on a college campus, and have no idea what to do. And this time I didn't have Grace to get lost with on the way to brunch. First of all, the classroom numbers were not given to me beforehand, so I had to get there early, find my class on a giant wall of schedules, and find my classroom. As I scowered the list, a guy asked me something in Catalan, and I had to awkwardly tell him I didn't understand. I found my classroom for my first class, Literatura Castellana, which is actually a 20th c. poetry class - another thing which was not made clear to me. A female professor showed up (5 minutes late, after I had arrived 15 minutes early, thank you Spain) and wrote Prof. Jose Maria Miro on the board, much to my confusion. Apparently he is gone for a few weeks (all she said was, we hope he can get back to us as soon as possible), and we are going to be given random professors until he gets back. But Begonna was easy to understand and seemed to be very passionate about poetry. Unfortunately, I hardly slept the night before, and kept almost falling asleep. So after class, I made my way to the cafeteria and got cafe con leche and a croissant (for 1.40! cheapest I've seen yet), then straight up walked down the aisles of tables looking for friendly faces (or empty tables). It was like freshman year at SMA, except without Paige to sit with! So I sat with some random girl who then left after I sat down, and awkwardly tried to not gulp down my coffee (because everyone eats so slowly here) but also not linger too long because I was just looking around at everyone who was sitting with their friends and feeling super awkward. GREAT STUFF. Then I had half an hour to kill before Islam history, and spent it sitting on a bench organizing my planner. Yeeeeeeah. I don't know anyone! What am I supposed to do, walk up to random people and introduce myself? Not in the quad. Maybe in class. Then. I went into class feeling confident, having understood everything in my first class, caffeinated, successfully found my second class, saw another IES girl there, talked to her as well as an Austrian guy, and was excited for Islam history. I don't know how to describe the feeling I got in the first minute of class, except with the phrase "my bowels turned to water." I honestly thought he was speaking Catalan. I had no idea what was being said, except that apparently it was funny, because people were laughing. He could have been saying "That American in the front row sure looks like a skanky whore, huh?" and the laughter could have been confirmation of this sentiment. I couldn't follow ANYTHING. He talked very fast, mumbling a lot, and if it hadn't been for the powerpoint I would have absolutely nothing in my notes. As the class went on it got a little better, but when we were given a break, I turned to the IES student and the Austrian guy to make sure that they didn't understand either - and they didn't. So I'm not alone. The Spanish girl behind me asked us where we were from, and said how hard it must be for us since he talked so fast. I think it'll get better, but Spanish professors don't really do a lot of outside help or working with students, so I don't know if he'll be very helpful. It's so hard though! Imagine that whenever you stop pouring 100% of your attention towards the words coming out of someone's mouth, they sound like gibberish. Even when I would write down what was on the board I wouldn't be able to listen to him at the same time. Damn mumblers. Next time I'm sitting in the front row. Then contemporary art history started today, and besides some classroom confusion (it was in a different room, which I only figured out because another girl was lost and we found it together), it was good. The teacher was easy to understand, even though I was sitting in the back due to my late entry in the class, and that will not do in the future. It was really cool though, and I'm excited to take art history, which is something I know absolutely nothing about! She kept asking questions which I felt completely unprepared to answer, but luckily other people answered things like "When was perspective first widely used?"

Also I have to book it from UPF back to IES on Mondays and Fridays, from my class which gets out at 1:30 to my class which starts at 2:00. They're about a 10 minute metro ride apart, which coupled with walking time makes it nearly a half hour with just enough time to grab a bocadillo and wolf it down outside IES. It's great. AND of course I have no desire to do homework EVER. So, that's great.