Estudios Internacionales

(El Palacio de Comunicaciones in Madrid, Spain)

Today I had three classes: Present History for two hours, Spanish for an hour and a half, and Economic History for an hour and a half.  Unfortunately these classes are spread out over a 10 hour period, so I will be spending a lot of time at Carlos III on Wednesdays.  These days will get even longer when my fourth class starts later this month - also on Wednesday morning.  But the bright side is that I have time to do all my homework in between classes.  The even brighter side is that I still don't seem to have any homework! (I better keep my fingers crossed. . .)

My Spanish class went really well today because everything we talked about I have actually learned before!  I felt pretty intelligent, not going to lie.  My Economic History class was interesting, too.  It is a class on international students taught in English.  Today the professor split us into groups, gave us an article to read, and told us to answer all the questions at the end.  In my group, Laurie, a girl from Great Britain, and I finished the article pretty quickly, but the two boys, one from Spain and the other from the Philippines, were less fluent and took longer.  I was impressed they got through the article at all - I was nearly asleep by the end.  Answering the questions consisted of Laurie sounding really brilliant because she said everything in a British accent, and me writing answers with really big vocabulary, (I've found that this is the best way to make one's self sound smart).  I had to make a conscious effort to stick to my American accent, because I have a bad habit of imitating British people and it's led to some awkward situations in the past. . .

Today, I also got my last class to count for my International Business minor.  I was talking to a BC student who had gotten it approved for the International Studies minor, which is essentially the same thing, so I asked him to send me the e-mail from the BC professor.  Now here's how this works.  My problem has been that I have been sending my professors the class syllabi.  This student, a much more creative thinker than I, paraphrases the classes in his own words.  Turns out this is a much easier way to get a class approved.  Yay!

Oh - interesting cultural tidbit.  The other day when I was talking with Ana, she said that she thinks madrileños are very outgoing and open because Madrid is more culturally homogenous than other countries such as America.  She said that madrileños don't have to worry as much about insulting other races or religions, because there really aren't any.  There's fewer social constraints in Madrid.  Thought you might want to add that to the trivial knowledge banks.

I came home exhausted and don't think I said a single grammatically-correct sentence to Julia, but I managed to keep my head off the table through dinner (fish and salad).

I sent in my globalpost.com article today: The Madrileño Secret.  If they put it on the website, I'll give you the link, and if they don't, I will complain about how they do not recognize my genius.  Either way, you get to hear more of my ramblings.  Lucky you!