School: just as boring abroad

I wish I could describe to you the immense difficulty of anyone holding my attention for a full two hours, let alone an elderly, balding man telling me in a fast paced, mumbling tone about Lebanon. But it is indescribable. TWO HOURS IS SO LONG. I miss my quick little fifty minute math classes. Luckily I have to take three of them next semester (bleh). Classes are just so different here, for a number of reasons besides the epic lengths. First of all, my UPF classes have about 70-80 students in them. My art history class is half lecture, half discussion, but both Islam history and poetry are pure lecture. At least in poetry we get a break in the middle. The other, most notable difference for me is that when I am in class or walking around campus, I don't know anyone. At Whitman, it was impossible for me to cross campus (or even walk between two classes on the same floor of Olin) without seeing someone I knew and probably wanted to talk to. But here, I'm taking classes with sophomores and juniors who have all the same classes together and who have been in classes together for more than a year. They're all already friends, and not very friendly. Plus they stand around speaking Catalan to each other, so it's not even like I could awkwardly jump into their conversations. I was talking to some of the IES girls who live in residence halls, and they say they haven't even made friends in their dorms, with the exception of a few kids from southern Spain, where people are actually friendly. It doesn't really bother me that much, since I do have friends - just not at UPF, but it feels so weird to go into the cafeteria or sit in the quad and not know a single person around me. I sort of miss Whitman's tight little community, however suffocating it can be. And I'm determined to go to the south.
In other news, I finally figured out the websites for my classes, only to discover that the art history class is the only one that actually uses it. But I did find information about most of my finals, except poetry. By the way, the real professor still hasn't made it to class. I don't know what's wrong, but he probably should've just not been teaching classes at all this semester. We have a different teacher each week now, which is fine but sort of frustrating. They all seem to be pretty smart though.
Also, people take notes in very odd ways here - most people just sit there writing full sentences, and full paragraphs, of what I can only assume is verbatim from the professor's mouth. True, mine are dented by the fact that I don't always catch everything they say, but still, I prefer bullets and short points to paragraphs upon paragraphs. It seems like it would be hard to study from. AND I have noticed several people taking notes in Catalan. This bilingual world is so odd to me. We will conduct class entirely in Spanish, but someone will ask a question in Catalan, and the professor will (usually) respond in Spanish. They can take notes in an entirely different language. I mean, I could probably take notes in English, but there are still a lot of words I don't know the meaning of, and I would get caught up translating and then get way behind in listening.
Everyone is extremely respectful of the professors at UPF, which is an extremely notable difference from my classes at IES. Not in my Spanish class, but in my Latin American lit class - people talk through class (and this is a class of 15-20 people, not 80, so it's very obvious), and openly talk about the things we do being a waste of time. Maybe it's just because I really like that class, but it annoys me. A lot. The worst is this one girl who spends the entire class asking her friends what the professor just said, presumably because she doesn't understand? I don't know. But it kills me to hear them talk, in English, over our professor for the entire class. And they can be really immature - about half the class was groaning in disgust when we watched an interview with Onetti and he had yellow, rotting teeth. Ok, yes, his teeth were gross. Chill out and maybe shut up so we can hear the interview we're supposed to be listening to? Not that I can ever understand the interviews we watch anyway, since everyone important seems to mumble. Anyway I just miss people who respect their professors, even if the class is a waste of time or the professor isn't deserving of their respect, they still usually shut up when class is in session.
OH MAN in poetry the other week, these two girls were talking and the professor asked them to be quiet and they kept talking through her asking them to be quiet - drama. She got really mad and said that she doesn't care if they don't pay attention, she's only talking for the benefit of those who want to hear her, but when they don't listen when she is speaking directly to them it is rude and disrespectful, not because she's a professor but because she's a person. WOW it was intense. I think they were Americans, and had been asking each other about the meaning of something, and therefore didn't understand immediately that she was talking to them. But it was very intense.
Anyway, now that I have figured out the class websites, I have the list of twelve books which are listed as "recommended reading" for two of my classes. I'm assuming I should read them. My poetry class, on the other hand, doesn't have anything listed but in our dossier, at the end of each poet's section, there's a section of recommended reading that lists about ten books for each poet - that's not happening. We've already done four, and have at least four more to do - I don't think I'll be reading eighty books for this class. Maybe I'll pick one that looks good for each poet or something. I really need to start doing this immediately though, because this "no" work until the exam thing is way too easy to get into, and I have completely forgotten that I will actually need to do work for the exam. Especially since I don't learn a ton in class, since I am either a. spacing out and taking distracted notes (Islam) b. feeling like this class is in media res (art history) c. analyzing a specific poem but learning nothing about the poet. In short, I need to catch myself up outside of class a lot. Also I should be writing my midterm for Latin American lit instead of writing blog posts. But which is more fun?