El comienzo de las clases (The Start of Classes)

The front of the main building (which, I cannot stress enough times, is humongous on the inside) of La Universidad de Sevilla!

This past week has been a blur of classes, professor-stereotyping (it should be a sport or something), and getting lost in the enormous main building of La Universidad de Sevilla. I have tried more classes than I think I can count and have been confused about how to get where I am going more times than I would like to admit. The old Tobacco Factory, where my facultad (department, more or less) is located, is absolutely enormous. The building doesn't look that complex from the outside, but on the inside it's a maze of patios hallways of all sizes and shapes that don't make sense. That said, I think I can get myself around my facultad adequately now and I think, as of today, I have made my final decisions on which classes I'm going to take.

As a common principle, classes start late and end early. Also, there are a large amount of older people (40s, 50s, 60s) in the classes and getting their degree, too.

Detail on the outside gate of the main university building.

In the fall semester, we take 4 classes: one through el centro and three through the university. Most kids take their 3 classes in different facultades to mix it up a little bit, but pretty much everything I'm interested in is housed in "Geografia e historia". No surprise there, I guess, as it has Geography, History, Art History, and Anthropology, but still. I do feel a little lame for taking all my classes in more or less one hallway. In this whole process, it was an enormous luxury to have no requirements at Cornell. Some of my friends are subjecting themselves to classes that sound horrible because they need the credit to count towards whatever major they have so that they can graduate on time. I do love the College Scholar Program.

So in el centro I'm taking "La vida cotigiana bajo Franco" (Daily Life Under Franco). I may've already written about it because it started awhile ago, but I can't remember. I really like the class a lot. It's taught by UMich Professor, who teaches the same class normally at Michigan. It's a 400-level and challenging, but fantastic nonetheless. We meet for more hours than the other classes offered in el centro, but that's because each week we watch a movie that provides some kind of commentary on what we're learning about. It's good. The professor uses a lot of original sources (photos, movie clips, and texts), which I like a lot. Franco's dictatorship is also just really interesting to me... it happened so recently and it was such a vastly different lifestyle (women needed written permission from their husbands to do a lot of things, lots of movies and books were banned to all, etc). Whenever I see older married couples, I automatically start thinking about how different their married life was (and probably still is) for them.

In the university, I'm taking two anthropology classes. No surprise there. It took me awhile to stumble upon two that I liked. I had originally picked Anthropology of the Iberian Peninsula, Anthropology of Mediterranean Villages, and Anthropology of the Americas. Classes here tend to have very general titles, and I don't know if it's a personal thing or the atmosphere I was brought up in (ahem, intellectuals, hi father), but I tend to be very skeptical about classes that claim to teach broad themes, like "Human Geography" or "Social and Cultural Anthropology" (I kid you not; both of those are legitimate classes). Anyway, I tried to pick classes that had more specific titles, which didn't do me much good. Anthro of the Iberian Peninsula was really intimidating. The teacher wasn't nice and randomly called on people, so I scratched that one off my list pretty quickly. I liked the professor of Anthro of Mediterranean Villages a lot, but we have to give a 45 minute presentation to the class, so, needless to say, that one was scratched, too. Fourty-five minutes of original anthropological thought is hard enough in English and doing that in Spanish would be really hard. Maybe next semester. Maybe.

So that leaves Anthropology of the Americas, which I was most skeptical about because of the total ambiguity of the name, but it turned out to be pretty fabulous. The teacher is hard but good: she takes attendance and asks for various essays and opinion pieces throughout the semester, something that is very rare here, but she's a very organized teacher who knows what she's talking about. The class seems like it's going to focuson the interactions between the US and Latin America and the Professor, Pilar, is really critical of the style of US Anthropology and the whole idea of using Latin American civilizations as "the other," "the savage," etc. I think Pilar's class will be really interesting. It won't be entirely a critique of American thought or anything like that, but it will definitely be interesting to get an outside perspective on Anthropology from a woman who seems like she knows what she's doing.

Great, so three classes and only one worked out. That left me needing two more classes.

I was deciding between Andalusian Geography and Local and Sustainable Development: The Andalusian Case. I just decided earlier today, after sitting through one of the most boring and poorly-given lectures of my life, that I would go for the Local and Sustainable Development class. I have been having a moral dilemma with this one because the Local and Sustainable Development class is a total joke. Like completely, utterly, 100% joke. The. Professor. Talks. Like. This. Because. He. Knows. That. The. Class. Is. Made. Up. Of. Mostly. Foreigners. Really. He talks like maybe my 7th grade Spanish teacher talks. Maybe. But I think she even spoke more quickly than him. The teacher is a nice enough guy, but the class is very slow-paced and his expectations are very low. On the other hand, Andalusian Geography, although it was boring, was also filled with much more information and would have been much more difficult. So I was in this dilemma of whether or not to take the challenging-but-I-will-learn-something class and the joke-but-I-will-do-well-without-trying class. After the first class of Andalusian Geography yesterday, I thought I was going to go for it, but then today I realized just how boring and awful the professor's lectures are. So I switched. I'm taking the easier Development class instead (which means leaving my awkward cheek-kissing friend. Oh well).

Two side notes:
1) Every so often I think about how my parents are paying twice as much as they need to be for this program. If I were going to UMich, I would be doing the exact same (literally, EXACT same) things this semester for half the price. Cornell, you better be helping my personal growth and all that jazz for those 6 other semesters I spend on the hill...
2) I get 15 credits from Cornell per semester no matter what I take, assuming that I pass everything. I understand why they do it that way, but that seems like overall a horrible idea. It encourages most kids to take total joke classes. I actually don't think of myself like that--three of the classes I'm taking are going to be reasonably difficult and I'm excited for the challenge--but I'm sure I'm in the minority. The UMich and Penn kids have to take back all of their work to show to their universities, and then their universities decide which classes were worth 3 credits and which were worth 4. I guess I like our system better and it's easier and all that, but still. I see flaws in the system. Oh yes, yes I do.

Back on track. So I'm taking Franco, Anthro of the Americas, and Andalusian Sustainable Development. That leaves one more class that I need. I searched far and wide for a class. I asked around and I went to back-to-back classes for a good chunk of yesterday. It's hard to find a class that fits in with my schedule, that people say is good, and that I have interest in. But yesterday I found it. I found my class. It's Anthropology of Contemporary Societies. Like I said before, I didn't even consider it at first because of the hilariously ambiguous name, but my friend Audrey was going yesterday to the first day of the class so I decided to go, too. It's a late class--8-9:30--which I don't love, but it's alright. The professor was completely fantastic. Especially in Spanish, I'm finding the professor makes the class. He was this little old man (and when I say little, I mean little... maybe 5 foot, max) with poofy white hair and smiled and laughed at his own jokes. He talked quickly but it was still pretty easy to understand him (more or less). He seems like a good teacher and is a really encouraging, supportive guy. He ended his spiel by stressing how ERASMUS students (basically, quickly defined, meaning foreigners) should not be afraid of him or his class. He stressed how flexible he is and how he wants us to come in to his office hours if we need help writing (there's a big paper at the end) or if we have any questions or doubts of any kind. There's a paper and a final exam at the end of the class, and he went off about how he's very flexible with the paper and we can be creative, blah blah blah. He was talking about how we can do a movie, write a song, etc, etc, and that kind of flexibility is very hard to find here. So yes, his class it is. According to the yearlong schedules, he's also teaching an Anthro class next semester I wanted to take, which is great.

So yes, there you have it. My schedule, more or less. I'm also working in el centro at the job I got 6 hours a week.

And, as it turns out, I don't have class on Friday, which is a nice bonus. I didn't plan it that way, but I'm certainly not complaining.

This weekend is the only long-weekend of the fall semester--we have Monday off--and me, Audrey, Liliana, and Kristin (Lili's roommate) are going to Barcelona. I'm excited, but getting tickets was an involved process... they hit you with so many under-the-table charges here! It costs 8 euro to pay for your ticket online with a visa card, it costs 2 euro to book your actual seat, it costs 20 euro per suitcase (so hopefully our bags fit the 'carry on' limit, which is very small), etc. It's very sneaky of them. Very sneaky indeed. But Barcelona, here we come!
Final note: Go see Vicky Christina Barcelona if you haven't already. Really. Just do it.