Everything Seems Different Until You Realize It Isn't

I would first like to say to all the baseball fans out there, Happy Spring Training Day, please enjoy it for me as baseball is not at all a thing in Spain. It is the complete opposite of a thing. If the ball isn't as big as someone's head, they don't really care about the sport. (EDIT: Except tennis. Thanks, Dad. EDIT #2: And golf. Thanks, Mom. My parents really want me to be thorough.) And that is the only significance of today that I am going to acknowledge (for the moment), thank you.

Now, relevant to the title: sitting up at 2 in the morning eating Lay's potato chips, drinking Diet Coke (though here it's called Coca-Cola Light), listening to music, and writing a Spanish essay. Sounds like my nights in Ann Arbor. Sounds like my night on Wednesday. We finally finished officially with our three-week orientation by turning in our final essay. I did something intelligent for once in my life and wrote the 5-page essay first, before classes at the university started, and only had the 3-page one to write. It was still difficult enough. In Spain, they use 1.5 spacing and longer paper, so it's even harder to finish a paper. Anyway, I couldn't help but notice that in some senses college here is exactly like college at home. I guess it's just the nature of us all being human, or something.

Speaking of college, classes have been going fairly well, considering. I've picked the 5 that I want definitively; now I just have to hope that they're all open, because if they aren't, I have no idea what I'm going to do. I just figured my classes would probably not fill up too much--apparently it's not so much the literature ones that fill quickly--so I didn't make a huge effort to go to backup classes. I have seen some other people looking for new classes this week, so hopefully it would be possible, I'd just rather not deal with it. Here's my ideal list of classes:

• Escritura Creativa (Creative Writing): At the program center. Since I love creative writing in English, doing it in Spanish should be fun too. I think it will really help my writing skills. My speaking skills are what need the most work, but writing is always a good idea, especially for me. This one was kind of a no-brainer.
• Métrica Comparada y Traducción Poética (Compared Meter and Poetic Translation): This one seems slightly challenging, but it's subject matter that really interests me, believe it or not. Usually when I tell people I'm taking that class their eyes get really wide and they just stare at me and pretend that it sounds interesting to them. It's okay, you don't have to lie, I know it seems awful to a lot of people, but I find it really interesting. I also took a class last year on Spanish renaissance poetry so I have a little bit of background in the subject. Plus we're supposed to do a translation later in the term with a partner/in groups in which there's at least one Spaniard and one foreigner if possible, and I'm foreign so it's perfect! All around pretty pumped for this one.
• Comedia Española: Ciclo de Lope (Spanish Comedy in Theater: Lope de Vega): This is the most confusing to explain to people. It's Golden Age theater, right around the same time as my pal Shakespeare (not sarcasm, I love Billy), but specifically looking at the author Lope de Vega and his comedies. I read a piece by Lope in my Golden Age literature class (Jorge Ledo, you will probably never read this but I cannot thank you enough for giving me the best preparation possible for these classes, and for giving me A+s in both of your classes, and for generally being so awesome) so I know a little bit about him as well. The professor is really cool too, so that always warrants bonus points.
• Historia de los Estados Unidos (hopefully you could get this one on your own but History of the United States): Okay. I have been questioned about this one on multiple occasions. "Why are you taking a US history class in Spain?" Well, for one, at this point I feel as though I know more about Spanish history than I do US history, but that's possibly because I've had classes about the former far more recently than the latter. I'm also curious to see whether things are portrayed in a different light when they're being taught in a foreign country; I'm inclined to believe they are, but we'll see. And on the first day of class, I couldn't find the classroom so I walked in half an hour late, but when I went to talk to the professor he was super nice about it and told me not to worry and then we bonded over how he lived in St. Louis for a while so that made me want to take it more. Also because the literary texts class I was going to take instead turned out to be awful so I'm really glad I discovered the kindheartedness of my history professor. And finally, some of the documents we're going to read are in English, which I didn't know going in and so is not why I'm taking the class (promise) and doesn't make a huge difference but offers me a nice bit of relief from the constant español.
  
• Historia del Cine (again, probably can get this one on your own, History of Film): This just appeals to me because I'm a bit of a movie buff. I took a screenplay class last semester and really enjoyed it, so I'd like to study film a bit more. We're looking at cinema all over the world and watching a bunch of different international films, so that should be fun. Some of them are American, so yes, some of them will be in English. I know it seems like I'm cheating because three of my classes involve English at some point, but I just see it as taking advantage of my full linguistic abilities. They're still all taught in Spanish.
  

The walking-into-history-half-an-hour-late saga deserves its own description: First of all, the building where my classes are held makes no sense. Actually, the first thing I should mention would be that the building where my classes are held used to be a tobacco factory, because that's just weird. It's a GORGEOUS building though. I would post photos of it if I didn't feel so weird taking photos of where I go to class. It's not like I go around snappin' pics in Mason Hall back in Ann Arbor. You'll just have to trust me on this one, there are statues everywhere and I've seen at least 3 fountains and the staircases are huge and marble and everything is amazing. That being said, the layout makes absolutely no sense. The literature department is in this building as well as history/geography, and all of my classes are within those departments. It gets weird when you realize that lit classrooms are numbered with Arabic numerals, but history classrooms are numbered with Roman numerals. So because this is a history class, it's in room VIII. I knew where room VII was, so I went down that hallway because I figured VIII should be right next to it, I mean it's just one extra I, they've gotta be close together, right? Nope. I walked down that hallway, found VI and VII but no VIII. Walked down the other side of the hallway, found different versions of VI and VII, still no VIII. After wandering aimlessly for a while, I finally saw some girls I know from my program and one of them knew where it was, so she gave me directions. Turns out it's on the second floor--because that's logical--in some random hallway with random numbers surrounding it. But I decided not to care about walking into a 4:00 class at 4:30 and marched forth. Good thing too because seriously, that literary texts class was a nightmare, and not just because my umbrella got stuck on the doorknob as I was walking in (that's a whole different story).

I said before that I wasn't going to attribute any more significance to today for the moment, and now is the other moment in which I acknowledge that last night I had a lovely dinner with my Valentine, Sabriye, and our double date partners, Natalie and Leann. We went and got some delicious sushi and had great conversation--nearly all in Spanish! It was really nice. And today we had stuffed roasted red peppers for dinner because our señora wanted to serve us something red in honor of the day. I mean, I'm pretty anti-Valentine, but that's just adorable. I hope you've all enjoyed your February 14th; I ate an entire can of Pringles by myself today so I'd say I made the most of it.