somatablet.com

As great as the internet may be, booking trips online with a shoddy internet connection has to be the most frustrating waste of time ever. I should be blogging way more often, but instead I’ve found myself more than once sitting on a computer in the computer lab for more than two hours without making a single hostel or flight reservation. It’s enough to make a person scream.

I’ve figured out what trips I plan to take this quarter, and they look to be pretty awesome. In addition to some travel around Spain (Sevilla, Valencia, Barcelona, and a car trip to the North at some point), I also plan to go to Paris (to see Eddie), Berlin (to club it up), and Prague (to meet up with my mom at the tail end of a business trip). I’ve booked Sevilla, Berlin, and Prague so far, and my bank account is already dwindling.

Spain continues to be everything I could want and more. The classes have been pretty easy so far, except for the literature class, in which I can spend 2 hours trying to read some surrealist short story and still not understand anything about it. Literature has never been this left-brainer’s forte, though, and I would kill for a math class once a week or something. Otherwise, school has been mostly review of stuff I kind of have a grasp on, with the bonus of learning colloquialisms and having an environment to try it all out in.

One of the strangest transformations I’ve experienced in my immersion here has been my aural comprehension. When my teachers talk, and even when most women talk (more clearly than men, in general), I can understand them nearly perfectly. But the imprint on my brain of what they say is conceptual, not the language itself–I could never repeat something back to them using Spanish, but I could figure out how to say it in English. The thing is, I’m no longer consciously sub-translating into English when they speak; I’m understanding the Spanish. I can’t wait to see where the remaining eight and a half weeks take me.

Classes only account for four days a week, and my life after they are done every day is pretty relaxed. Most of my homework (besides reading) consists of quick and easy grammatical exercises. This leaves me lots of time for drinking. After class Monday, a group of us went to Enebro and we all had no small amount of cerveza. After classes and trying unsuccessfully to book some trips yesterday, Sam and I went to Bar La Boveda, split a pitcher+large glass of sangria, and talked about Spain and home and existence for two hours as we got progressively more intoxicated. I went home for dinner (my family went out for the night so I ate with Belcha the dog while I did my homework), then went back out and split a bottle of wine with Megan until the place closed, went back home, and got my regular eight hours of sleep.

Early in the morning this coming Friday, four of us are going to go to Sevilla. I still owe you all pictures from Madrid, they’re formatted, so I just need to upload them. Coming soon.