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And just like that, it’s done! On Monday, I had my last two classes, grammar and literature. Afterwards, instead of studying like I probably should have, I went to Enebro with a bunch of people from class, and pretended like exams weren’t about to start on Tuesday. After a few hours, I had to go back home for dinner with the family, then read through my Art & Culture notes before going to bed.

Tuesday morning, I decided it was probably a good idea to get my study on. I got up early and went to a café, where I read through the handouts for Art & Culture and went back through my notes. I even made an outline for the Reyes Católicos (aka Isabella and Fernando), on a whim that it might be one of the essay options. Our professor got really excited about certain topics, and much less so about others; the midterm confirmed that her excitement was correlated to the likeliness that she might test us on it.

About an hour before the exam, a few more people showed up at the café and we group studied for a while until it was time to take the test. It consisted of three 10-minute short essays about slides of art and architecture we’d discussed, then a 30-minute longer essay. And the two options? Reyes Católicos and Las Austrias Menores, three consecutive idiot kings of Spain in the 17th century (literally more and more inbred to a point of utter stupidity and finally impotence, ending their rein). Score one for my outline; I recalled it from memory and think the exam probably went pretty well.

After lunch, I had an hour to study with Kellly for the partner conversation exam. It consisted of three parts, each of which was done independently of the partner. Which means the fact that it was a partner exam was kind of moot. First, we had to define words on three cards drawn at random, then give directions with the aid of a map, and finally describe the ideal house for a family described on another card drawn at random. It went moderately well; I defined the words perfectly, but the directions gave me some trouble.

And then? ::Holds microphone to the audience:: “Drinking!” Yup. Good times.

Wednesday morning, I got up early again to study for grammar. By far the hardest of the tests, it was 100 questions, 70 of which were verb conjugations involving the various uses of the subjunctive in all the different tenses. Put a bullet in my motherfucking head. I understand the gist of the subjunctive now (I never did before Spain), and even can conjugate it relatively well given enough time to think about the situation. But there is no way in hell I can use it on the fly in conversation except in something simple like “¡Que tengas un buen día!” (roughly have a good day).

After grammar, lunch; after lunch, literature exam. I didn’t even bother studying for this one, because as with the midterm, we got to choose to answer two questions of 10 options, and use the texts and our dictionaries. I basically wrote the same thing as I did on two papers this quarter, and I’m sure that will fly quite nicely with him. The professor, Carlos Mamonde, is probably the most endearing old Spanish man I’ve encountered, and no one in the class has gotten below a 90% on anything.

And then, freedom! More than half the class congregated at Enebro after class, and a fair number of us got pretty drunk in celebration. I ended up going to bed relatively early; despite how non-taxing the finals were, they were finals nonetheless and all I wanted to do was sleep.

Today has been a really relaxed post-finals day, partly because the water in my house was completely nonfunctional until four this afternoon and I didn’t shower until then. Afterwards, I just walked around the city a bit and sat in the main plaza people-watching and absorbing the sights and sounds I won’t get to enjoy anymore. Sam came in from the suburbs around six, and we went out for a few melancholy drinks before I came home for the night. My parents just got home literally as I finished that sentence, and they reminded me of how much I’m going to miss this place. They’re absolutely phenomenal people; they attend to my every need. For example, a few days ago I asked my mom where I could find some of the cookies they have to take back to the States with me.

She said don’t worry about it, and yesterday when I got home, there were 12 tubes of them on my bed.