Classes

OK, yeah, I still go to school.

The Hamilton Center is a 25- to 40-minute trip from our apartment, including the metro ride and walking to/from stops. It's very near a bunch of other schools; there are always lots of students of varying ages walking around. My schedule doesn't match exactly with my roommate's, so I usually ride alone. On the metro I've been reading and/or eavesdropping on other people's conversations (good for learning Spanish!).

The center itself is, in a word, comfortable. On the first floor are the directors' offices, the teachers' lounge, and a computer room; the second floor has the (modest one-room) library and classrooms; and the basement is basically a student lounge with more computers and tables/couches. Those make up the spaces I'm aware of daily, anyway.

Classes in general are pretty different from those at Colby, but I'm pretty sure they're also different from typical ones in Spain. My class sizes range from around 12-30 students -- typical-ish for Colby, small for Spain -- and there's never any discussion: solid lecturing, from start to finish. (They're all twice a week and 1.5 hours each, which is a little longer than I'm used to.) But we are, of course, all Americans, and still act the way we think we're supposed to. It's normal for Spanish students, on the other hand, to talk, copy, and text straight through classes, and nobody thinks anything of it. Or so I hear.

Oh, and no classes on Fridays (specific to our program, not to Spain). Good deal.

In particular:

(I like all my classes a lot, so I'm going to save myself the trouble of saying so in each part.)

1) Cervantes' Don Quijote. Not hard to figure out what we do in this class. Sometimes it's a little difficult to sit through (9 am both days) but for the most part it's tolerable. Eugenio, the professor, incorporates a lot of European literary history and philosophy, which I only got a little of in high school. He also gives everyone in the class weird nicknames, or just other regular names that happen not to be theirs.

2) Spain and the Process of European Unity. This is history, starting from after WWII leading up until today. I just took Intro to International Relations last semester, so it's interesting hearing about some of the same things in a different language/context. Tomás is a good and fairly organized lecturer, and, like all of them, is really into his subject.

3) Subjectivity and Identity in Spanish Poetry in the 20th Century. Pretty much everyone has been enamored of this class, and professor, from the beginning. I didn't want to take it initially (schedule conflicts mandated), but I'm glad I am. It's almost more philosophy than poetry, and we're practically spoon-fed daily epiphanies.

4) Advanced Grammar. Pretty standard, a more nit-picky look at all things grammar. I took a class like this at Colby, but here it's different still; in class we learn a lot more colloquial words and phrases, and maybe go somewhat more in-depth.

To reiterate, I think the best thing about these classes is that the professors are so in love with their own subjects. I'm sure that's the case everywhere, but maybe here it just shows more.

The workload isn't bad so far; other than reading Don Quijote, I generally don't have too much to do outside of class. None of the real stuff -- papers and tests -- has started yet though, so we'll see.