Classes

On Thursday we finished our Intensive Language Program, and will start University of Granada classes on Monday. I’m very intimidated to start, since our professors for ILP were very accommodating linguistically, and would slow down their speech and explain words since all of us are basically terrible at this language! Also the Andalusian accent is very difficult to understand (Granadians say that once you can understand them, you can understand any form of Spanish), so hopefully a lot of my professors will have been born in other parts of Spain! I will say, though, that I can definitely feel my Spanish improving. It’s so thrilling to be able to have real conversations with people! The other day my friend Allie and I were asking our monitor Javi all about his opinions on political and social issues. But no matter how good I get at Spanish, people will always know I’m a foreigner because blonde hair simply does not grow on Spanish heads.

I’ve finally picked out the classes I’m going to take, which is a good thing since they start in three days! Choosing classes was quite the process, and it made me appreciate UCSB’s system so much more. The campus is split up into different colleges, and each college has its own schedule of classes and course descriptions, all in different websites. Spanish students stay in one specific college, but we are allowed to pick classes from all over the place. Although this is great, it also makes picking classes and syncing up times very difficult. In the end, I will be taking several linguistics classes interspersed with some anthropology, history and art history classes.

Celebrating the end of classes, or really just another night in Spain....