Wow, it has been over a week since I last wrote. I am both sorry for the hiatus and amazed that so much time has gone by. The days are flying by already. I can’t believe it is March!
That being said, it is March and I am only on my second full week of classes. Last week the PRESHCO program classes began. These classes are only for students in our program, but like the classes that we tried out the week before, Universidad de Cordoba professors teach them all. There were a lot of courses being offered that I was interested in, but I was able to narrow it down to a list of four from which I would have to choose to take three. So all of last week I went to an extra class.
The first class Monday morning is a class called Mujeres Solas or Women on Their Own. The title of the class itself was not what interested me. The week before I had met the teacher and really like her. She is very approachable, her Spanish is pretty easy to understand, and she makes her subjects interesting. I discovered all of this when I went to a preview class of one of her regular university classes. I was writing down notes on the class, and under the professor name I wrote “The one who looks like mom.” That is right. I found my mother’s Spanish twin. Well, not really. Their faces are quite different and the professor is much shorter than mom. But their hair is the same, they both have small hands, she was dressed like mom, and she is a history professor. Pretty spooky, eh? I think it is pretty funny. Anyway, I have officially decided to take this class and really think it is going to be great. We have been talking about the roles of women and the history of those roles in Spain as well as other countries, using The US as a more familiar example.
Continuing along the path of women’s studies, the classes I have directly after Women on their own is a course on Image, Gender, and Sexuality in Spanish Cinema. I have never taken a cinema class and I am pretty excited about this one. All the films are fairly contemporary (all Post-Franco) and I would say maybe 7 or 8 of them out of the 10 that we watch are directed by Pedro Almodovar. So really, the course should probably be called, Image, Gender, and Sexuality in the films of Almodovar. There are several students in the class who have been in Cordoba all year and took a similar cinema class with the same professor last semester. A bunch of them said it was their favorite class, so I would say chances are very good that I too will like it. So far, I really like the professor. Once again the class feels pretty laid back and he seems very approachable and also kind of funny in a somewhat dorky way, which I love. We haven’t actually watched any films yet, so the class really has yet to take on the dimension that it is going to have for the remainder of the semester. We shall see. But this is another class that I have now officially signed up for.
My next PRESHCO class isn’t until 5:30pm on Tuesday. It is Comparative Political Institutions: Spain and the United States, and it is team taught by two professors. Last Tuesday we met the first professor, who handed out the syllabus and then spent the rest of class equating basketball to democratic government. Kind of odd, but it was entertaining. Thursday we met the other professor, a young Italian who actually came to Cordoba after studying abroad here himself. He took a class with the professor who he now team-teaches multiple classes with. His Spanish is really easy to understand, though also entertaining to listen to, due to his Italian accent. His class was incredibly engaging. He understands exactly how to connect with a class of foreign students and I really think it would be impossible not to pay attention to him. Now I genuinely say this because I think he was a good speaker and teacher and he came to class very well prepared, but I must also confess that he is the eye candy of the PRESHCO staff and many of the Preshco girls (“Preshquitas” as we are called) are quite fond of him.
Moving on, the last class that I also attended last week was Colonization of America. This is the class I have decided not to take and I really think that is a shame. I saw this class in the brochure for the program over a year ago and decided that I wanted to take it. I think it would be really interesting to learn this history from another prospective. It really seemed the perfect class for my American Studies mind, but alas, it was not. The professor seems incredibly into the subject, but unfortunately his teaching was something I just couldn’t get into. He said the first class how he likes interactive classes and never wants class to be boring, yet it was incredibly boring and he talked AT us for an hour and a half. Every other class I took that week involved some sort of “my name is Catherine, I go to Trinity College…” but in Colonization, he never even asked us what our names were. He said he wanted us to get to know him and he wanted to get to know us, but he made no effort toward getting the ball rolling on those subjects. And when he lectured, I just couldn’t pay attention or fully comprehend what it was he was saying. Determined to like the class and knowing that first days are always a little different, I decided to give him a second try and went to the second class as well. It was once again an epic failure. So now I have dropped the class, and will not have to sit through it again. Knowing many other students felt this way, I wonder if the class is even going to happen. Each Preshco class needs at least five students enrolled. Oh well.
So those are all of the program classes, but this week was also the first real week of my enhanced direct matriculation class, The History of Song. I am feeling a little bit worried about the class itself. In the preview classes, the professor was relatively easy to understand, but now the entire class is feeling a little lost in a sea of incredibly fast spoken Spanish by a disorganized professor. Hopefully it will shape up a bit. That class in on Mondays and then our class time on Wednesday is not actually class, but rather is choir rehearsal. What an experience it was going to the first choir rehearsal. I thought the Dischords were ADD, try a choir of eighty Spaniards. There was so much going on. People were chatting away, people came in late (and by late I mean some people came in an hour into the rehearsal). Apparently this was a slightly atypical rehearsal. Usually the first hour is dedicated to technical work and then the second hour to repitoire. This time the whole rehearsal was practice for a performance this past Sunday. The choir sang as a Catholic mass on Sunday and I attended with a few other new Choir members. After the rehearsal I was a little worried that I was hearing a group that was about to perform those songs. It really didn’t sound good. But let me tell you, acoustics of a beautiful church really did wonders for the sound. Also, singing at the mass was not a required activity for all choir members, so clearly those who came, were dedicated to it.
There is something really interesting about attended mass in Spain. Despite the language difference, everything is the same. Now of course the mass is the same in structure, etc. But when I say everything is the same I mean even the rhythm of different prayers. Even though the words sound different, you can always know where in the mass you are because the rhythm of speech never changes. I love that.
More things I love: Every weekend is a three-day weekend as no one in PRESHCO has classes on Friday. Every Saturday we play soccer in a park and people show up and get into it and it is great fun. Siesta is wonderful and should be brought to the United States. There is a lot of chocolate in Spain (at least there certainly is in our apartment). It may be raining today, but the weather here in general is amazing. This weekend I discovered the wonders of the filmoteca: an independent movie theater that is free to the public and reminds me of cinestudio. Tonight I start Sevillanas dance classes. Skype makes communication while abroad ten times better than if I studied abroad a few years ago.
Alright…that is all for now. I hope all is well with you and hope you are enjoying my updates. Shout out to the Slocum family and thanks to all others who are reading! Now post comments and/or send me emails to update me on your lives. Hope those of you in the Northeast are not stuck freezing in a snow bank. Happy March!
Adios.
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