I didn't get lost today!

Not getting lost is perhaps the most exciting thing that has ever happened in my life, especially after yesterday. I told a bunch of you about this, but here's what happened: I left my house at 11:30 for my noon class and I got on the FGC (which is a metro line but not actually the metro). I got off at the stop called Gracia because I assumed it was the same stop as the metro stop at the Passeig de Gracia. As it turns out, Gracia is a neighborhood and not just a street so I wandered around with my map for a while and tried to figure out where the hell I was. Two nice men tried to convince me I was in Albania instead of Spain and eventually I called CIEE to inform them that I was confused about everything. (Thank God I decided to get a cell phone.) They told me to get back on the metro and walk to La Casa - that's what they call the CIEE Study Center - from the Placa Catalunya stop.

Meanwhile bells tolled and informed me that it was 12 and I was already late for my class.

So, I got back on the metro and I got off at the Placa Catalunya and then I realized I didn't actually know where the Passeig de Gracia was so I started walking uphill because I knew I had to go in that general direction. By some miracle I found the Passeig de Gracia by wandering around and then I realized I didn't know which street I wanted to turn on to. I tried one that looked promising and failed. After even MORE wandering I got a call from someone in the class that I was missing - he said that there were six people in our class and he wanted to make sure I was okay and by some miracle I was right next to the street I had to turn onto so I eventually found him and I made it to the second half of class. At 1:20. It was horrific and I had several mini-breakdowns, including one before dinner. During our 45 minute break between classes I didn't want to risk getting lost so I hung out at La Casa and I hadn't eaten anything all day and it was awful.

Now I know my way around, though! At least, I know my way around the Passeig de Gracia and the Placa Catalunya, and that's the important part. I can also get from the Muntaner FGC stop to where I live, and I found a farmacia and today I bought sun glasses for 5 euros and life is going spectacularly well.

I just noticed three pairs of gafas de sol on my escritorio. I told Angela that I had left mine at home (they're in my car which is having major surgery somewhere in Framingham) and she apparently is intent on giving me some of her daughter's. She is insane and wonderful. At dinner last night, when I finally got to meet her daughter, she told me that I talk like una carta (a letter - so, excessively formally) and that I should use the word cojones more often. And joder.

Ahora un repaso de mis clases! I'm taking two, Advanced Spanish and Catalunya a través de las artes (Catalonia through the arts). They're 3 credits each and we have 45 hours of class in 4 and a half weeks. I'm the only one I've talked to who's actually planning on putting in any effort, but I want to do well. I'm pretty sure they're going to count towards my GPA.

Advanced Spanish looks like it's going to be absolutely wonderful. I placed into the highest level here and I'm the best at speaking out of everyone in the class, but I think we're all on pretty even ground when it comes to grammatical mastery. We're going to do grammatical exercises which I haven't done in a year and a half, and everything is geared towards using Spanish in the real world and not writing essays, which is exactly what I need because if you recall, hablo como una carta. We're going to be listening to the news and answering comprehension questions and listening to songs and filling in the blanks and - the part that I'm most excited for - reading stories and answering questions. Everyone has to do a presentation on one of the authors. This week is Cortázar! And we're reading Continuidad en los parques, which I read for Fernando last semester and wrote about in my trabajo final. I'm assigned to do the presentation and I'm absurdly excited and no one else understands why. We have a good thing going, CIEE and I - everyone thinks I'm a geek, which is true so I'm willing to go with it.

Catalunya a través de las artes is going to be a fair amount of work. I've never taken art history before and it looks like it's going to be great and exactly what I want, in terms of being able to culture myself, but I need to acquaint myself with an entirely different branch of academia. Tomorrow we're taking a field trip walking around the city and identifying things as Románico o Gótico. I've been taking a lot of notes but the professor speaks really quickly and I'm not sure I've been getting it all down. We have a midterm and a final exam, and we have to write a 9 page research paper about something related to Spanish art. It can be about any kind of art so I'm thinking of writing about Spanish literature during the Siglo de Oro en el Renacimiento because I took that class last fall. There are so many things I want to research - la poesía de Quevedo, el rol de entremeses en el teatro, el desarrollo de la novela picaresca, la idea de la mágica en La Celestina. I'm also looking forward to doing research in a Spanish biblioteca. I like the idea of learning about art history but I don't think a month is enough for me to be entirely comfortable with writing a 9 page paper about art.

Esta noche - tapas y flamenco! Y después mi primer bar español. Veremos lo que sucede.