Aly's Spain Adventure

Read about what I'm doing while in Spain so you can keep up with me!

Name:
Location: Des Moines, Iowa, United States

Saturday, October 28, 2006

Day 55, 56, 57
Wed.-Fri.
So I've been doing a lot of homework (just kidding, more like watching the TV shows I downloaded) & sadly haven't been able to get up the energy to do much. Kind of waiting for that to pass, I think it has for the most part. It's so hard to do as much as I've been doing all the time. I need to RELAX more. I think the next 2 months are going to be CRAZY busy so I think that was the last of my lazy days. So Wednesday I went to the salsa class again with Joanna & her boyfriend who is visiting. Her boyfriend's name is Patrick & he is from the West Indies (Martinique). It's a country but I had never even heard of it before. He had somewhat of like a Jamaican accent or something. Anyway so I met them at the metro station (after waiting for them forever! hehe) & we headed to dance. We had a few drinks first because no one was there for the class yet but finally the instructor came. My roommates didn't end up coming so I ended up dancing with the instructor the whole time. At least he knew what he was doing so I couldn't screw it up too bad. It was a really fun time & we all enjoyed ourselves. Joanna & Patrick made me a little homesick for my Mikey though. :-(
So I really haven't been doing too much. I've just had a few small "adventures" here & there, buying groceries, trying to find my books for my classes etc.
So something I will talk about is the school system here & how it works. In the universities here it is quite different from the universities in the US. You have a schedule & your classes are either in the morning or in the evening, there's no real mixing it up. It's not nearly as flexible of a schedule as the US. One thing that I HATE is how their classes work. You go to class & take notes just like in the US but there is no specific textbook that you follow. You do not read a specific chapter for each class. There is no one book that contains all the information you talk about in class. There are recommended books but nothing concrete. So if you miss a class or don't get good notes (such as if you're a foreigner who can't understand everything) you're screwed. You can read the recommended books but can't be sure exactly which ones to read or what to know. It's HORRIBLE. It's horrible because it's harder to learn too. You only have one chance at getting the information & don't have it explained after reading it like in the US. It's only information given once. It SUCKS! Also something kind of weird is their midterms (examenes parciales). The midterms actually more or less have set dates by the university, not by the teacher. They are like our finals & so they are hard to change the date if you can't be there for the midterm (like I can't). So I very awesomely found a girl who took 3 of the classes in the past that I am taking now & she has all her old notes!!! But she told me that my ethics class that she also took last year, only 3 people in the whole class passed!!! How encouraging. I already didn't think I was going to pass so now I think I will actually drop the class to give me more time to focus on the others & to reduce stress of a class that I really have no hope of passing. I decided not to freak out about it though because I can just take that class this summer & it will be easy. So that's all good.
So tonight I think I will be going out with some Spanish friends from school so we'll see how that goes. Next weekend grandma & grandpa come!!! Woohoo!!! I'm so excited to see my family!
Oh one last thing to share. Halloween here is not a big deal at all. Just lately have they begun to even celebrate it & not many people dress up & they do not have trick-or-treating or haunted houses so that's kind of sad but I am going to go to a Halloween party where we do dress up & an awesome thing is Halloween is Tuesday & we don't have class on Wednesday. Woohoo!!! I will get more pictures up soon. Please send me emails if the site doesn't work b/c my mom said it didn't but she might have used it wrong: aad006@drake.edu. If it's not working I'll try to fix it. I love you all so much!!!
Aly

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