One More Class!

One 10-pager down, one to go. That thing took me 5 days to write- The teacher picks it up, reads it, and corrects it in less than two minutes. Regardless of the fact that I got a 9 out of a possible 10 on it, that still felt like a swift kick to the junk (or at least a well-executed sac tap). Kinda like how you take 2 hours to cook a fancy meal, then eat it in 10 minutes, except waaay soul-crushingly worse. I guess I can't complain too much, writing it did improve my Spanish a lot, and now I feel better prepared for my much more difficult Literature paper (which has to actually have a thesis and all that crap). No pictures either in this one. Bleck. Overall, I got a 7.7 in History which comes out to a B by American standards. Not quite as good as I was hoping for, but I'll take it.

So I have until Tuesday to finish my Monster Lit Paper and prepare for my Monster Lit Exam (MLP and MLE respectively). I think together they are worth over half of my grade in the class. At least I have a new Uruguayan friend who has been proofreading for me. That should ensure that I at least won't get marked off for bad grammar and syntax, although it will be tough whipping up substantive content for the MLP. This is an Honest-to-Bob literary research paper that will force me to not only analyze the poems of Rafael Alberti, but also to see how stuffy literary critics have analyzed it, and then think of some kind of idea that hasn't been thought of too many times already. All Well and Good, except that Alberti is one of the most well-known Spanish-language authors of the 20th century, so people have pretty much gotten all the angles covered at this point. At least writing the MLP will make taking the MLE a bit easier. I should be able to analyze just about anything she throws in my face. I'll have alllll the adjectives you can use to describe a poem down by then.

Sunday I went out with the Spanish Fam to La Día de la Madres (Mother's Day for you thick headed folks in the crowd). We went to a restaurant (something I never see mi familia do) and met up with a rather large handful of the extended family. They were all really nice and fun to talk to and hang out with. The little 5 year old, Inma, had started learning some English in school so she could say Hello and Bye Bye to me along with counting to 12, which once she got comfortable doing, felt the need to keep doing. I had a great afternoon with them, and am a little sad I couldn't get to know some of them a little better while I was here.

The program is ending way too soon. For all it's shortfalls, I think it has been a decent program, minus the assinine amount of pages I've been requried to write in this last month. I really don't wanna leave now. I've really started to get comfortable here and feel much less like an outsider. My Spanish has come along far enough that I'm never aprehensive about at least trying to jump into a coversation, regardless of the likely outcome (that is, I'll completely run out of things to say, or things will start getting too abstract for me to understand after 5 minutes). I've gotten used to a lot of the quirks of Spaniards, and have grown to like -while maybe not always agreeing with- a lot of their whacky ass world-views. I could easily see myself spending a few years here.

There are things I've noticed about Spanish culture that are sometimes good and sometimes crappy. A few examples:

Spaniards appear to be much less ageist than Americans. There's a much broader spectrum of age groups in any given situation. You see older and middle-aged people going out to the bars along with the yung-uns, albiet not in large droves. There are a lot more older people studying at university as well. Oh, and maybe this is tied in or maybe an entirely seperate issue, but there doesn't seem to be any embarrasment tied in with hanging out with your parents during those "awkward years." Family seems more intertwined throughout here, and everybody sticks pretty close together. I guess they have to when the kids are living at home until they are 30.

Something crappy is how ridiculously racist Spaniards (or at least Alicantinos) are. It's pretty ridiculous, to be honest. I thought America could be bad, but people are are so blatantly xenophobic sometimes. You hear Spaniards at school talking shit about everybody: Moors, French, Americans, English. Doesn't matter to them. If it doesn't have Spain in its vein, it's just not the same (and not quite worthy). This is definitely especially bad with Moors, which is understandable in a way, although still not justified. Sometimes you get the impression more than a few of the 40+ers miss Franco more than you might first think.

It kind of interested me though, because Spain has had a history of doing well after expelling people that were different. Can you say "Inquisition?" In 1492, they had just finished kicking all the Arabs out of Spain, the Jews were being worked over quite well by that point (almost all that were going to convert had already, then rest were leaving or being killed), Columbus just found America, opening up a world of new economic possibilities, and all of Spain was unified under one crown. It was the Golden Era Renaissance for Spain, and half of the reason why was because they made sure everybody within the borders was Catholic and Goddamned Spanish. A similar kind of homogeneity was forced under Franco in the 1940s and onward (like how everyone had to speak Castellaño even though Spain has four official languages), so the residule effects of newly-widening cultural demographics are being felt throughout by the natives. Needless to say, there is negative racial backlash.

Also, girls in my program complain that they get hassled constantly by guys here. Not just the regular cat-calling-run-of-the-mill-un PC behavior though. They actually get hassled. They get sworn at and followed around, and have guys walk up to them randomly on the street and try to start kissing them (and not on the cheek). Lauren says she's had things thrown at her head while being called names. Sam, who looks Cuban -although he is from New York-, gets called derogetory names all the time. Spaniards really hate South and Central Americans, because they all come over and take advantage of the healthier economy. All and all it's pretty ridiculous. I myself have experienced almost no trouble, save for more than a handful of scowls-of-death for wearing sandals and shorts when I go to the beach.

One more thing. Spanish babies and young, young children are probably the cutest in the world, on average. We're talking the 1-6 age group. After that, the become the most obnoxious kids in the world. No joke. I think it's that parents here baby their kids too much, and they inevitably turn into brats. I want to strangle all of them.

Alright, that's enough for now. Gotta go catch the bus. I'll probably snap up another post after I get everything done on Tuesday. Maybe I'll get a quickie in before then, but no guarantees. Still no more pics up yet, folks. Sorry. I really do have hundreds more to put up. They will come eventually.

Paz