Classes

The reason that I came to Spain mid-August when most study abroad programs begin sometime in September was to improve my Spanish. Living with a Spanish family was immensely helpful, but I was also enrolled in a CIEE Intensive Spanish class to help me get ready for this semester. For three hours a day, I spoke only in Spanish and did enough work in two weeks to fill an entire semester. It was challenging and difficult, but it was also so helpful. I've only been here for three weeks, but there's already been a notable difference in how comfortable I am speaking Spanish, both with my host family and random people on the street.

The most intimidating, but also probably useful, part of the class were the two presentations we did about the people who live in Sevilla. For the first presentation, we worked in pairs to interview Spanish university students about their lives here. Working up the courage to approach them was by far the hardest part of this project. My partner and I were careful to look for people who seemed nice and unlikely to laugh at our bad Spanish. That being said, everyone we talked to was so nice and willing to help us with this project. When we presented, we also did so entirely in Spanish for 10 minutes, which was challenging but encouraging at the same time. It made me happy to know that I could do it.

For our second presentation, we had to work by ourselves and interview a worker from someplace in Sevilla. I chose to go down to a magazine/candy/etc kiosk (think of those places in the mall, or an entire convenience store in one little stand) right outside my apartment because my senora told me that the man working there was very nice. I purposely went during the siesta so that no one else would be out on the streets to make me more nervous than I already was! The man, named Fernando, was really helpful and kind and my presentation went fine. Even though they were nerve-wracking, I'm glad that we had to do those two presentations.

But now my Intensive class is done (yay!) and tomorrow is my Spanish language placement test at Universidad Pablo de Olavide, where I'll be taking my regular classes for the rest of the semester. Wednesday is the official first day of classes there. Even though I don't find out my schedule until Tuesday, I have a rough idea of classes I'll be taking. Definitely a Spanish language class, a History of Spanish Art class, and then some combination of Contemporary Spanish Politics, Democracy in Portugal, Greece, and Spain, and History of Spain. We'll see how it turns out, but I'm excited to get involved in classes and extracurriculars over there.

I still want to get a post up with pictures of all the beautiful places I've seen so far, so hopefully that will come sometime in the next couple days. Thanks for reading!