El fin de Salamanca

I am officially done with the semester! I took my last final exam yesterday, which means not only am I mercifully done with the Spanish school system, I’m done with my junior year of college! I’m also sadly almost done with my semester in Salamanca—I can’t believe how fast it went by.

So, my last month in Salamanca: My last day of class was Thursday May 7, so I had exactly 3 weeks between my last exam and my last final. I’m used to studying for and taking all of my exams within a period of 10 or so days, so this seemed like a really long time to me. I needed the time because I had a lot of work to do, but I didn’t really start working hard until about the second week and spent about 10 solid days in the library, so I ended up putting in the same amount of hours as I do at Georgetown. However, the stress level was waayyyy lower than it is at home, I think mostly because I just have to pass these classes, so there’s really no incentive to go above and beyond to get a good grade. My exams went pretty well, although they were kind of frustrating. I automatically passed my Indigenous American History class because I came to class regularly, so I didn’t have to take that exam (yay!), my Spanish Poetry exam was a commentary on a poem, and my Modern Spanish History exam was a 6 page paper about the documents we read in class and then a short oral exam. I felt pretty good about both parts of that exam, especially because the professor simplified the oral questions for all the foreign students. It’s really nice that so many of my professors are understanding about having foreigners in their class! For my Inquisition History class I had to write a ridiculous 20-page summary of all the documents of the class, which is probably the biggest busywork assignment I’ve gotten in college, but I think I did a good job on it.

And then there was Hispanic American literature. I took this exam yesterday, and it was pretty awful. We covered A LOT of material in that class, and most of it was history of literary movements rather than actually analyzing texts. Because of this, we all figured that our exam, which was a commentary on two of the texts from class, would be on the major works of the class that could be discussed in detail. The professor told some students during office hours that the test would be on the important works, and, for the test that was given a couple of weeks ago for student who had a time conflict, the commentaries were on two of the biggest works of the class. Well, for our exam, we got two really obscure texts that, out of the people I talked to, no one felt they were able to analyze well. I misidentified one of them, but I got the other one right, so I’m hoping that will give me points enough to pass, but the whole thing was very frustrating, especially because I went into the test feeling like I knew the material well, and then I didn’t have an opportunity to demonstrate what I knew. If I had been given the name and the author, I would have been able to give a much better analysis. That’s a big difference between the European and American university system: here there’s a much bigger emphasis on memorization (as in, memorize everything we read so you can identify it on an exam) whereas at home there’s more of an emphasis on analysis (professor gives me an identified text and I talk about how it’s important in the greater literary movement). I like the American way much much better, and I really hope the fact that I couldn’t identify a random stupid avant-garde poem doesn’t keep me from passing the class, especially when I knew everything else so well!

Ok, enough rant. So, for the past few weeks, I’ve just been studying and hanging around Salamanca. On Saturday May 16 we had our final group dinner with the Georgetown program, and we went out to a nice Greek restaurant in Salamanca. My program director Celia told me during dinner that my host mom had told her how much she liked me, which I was of course happy to hear! I love my host mom, and she’s made my experience here so much more comfortable and enjoyable. Nothing else terribly eventful has happened: I went to a friend’s birthday party, went out for tapas a couple of times, met with my intercambio/language buddy, various new roommates came and went, and I’ve started the process of saying goodbye. I also finally saw a bit of Salamanca’s traditional tuna music. Back in the Middle Ages, the tuna musicians were poor students who would play music around town to make money, and today there are still students who dress up in the medieval ensemble and sing in the Plaza, although I think nowadays they mostly play for bigger gigs like weddings. I was on my way home from school one night, and I got to see them! It was pretty amusing, because I had definitely seen a couple of the guys hanging around school before, and it was funny to see them in their troubadour outfits singing medieval songs.

Wednesday night the Barcelona soccer team defeated Manchester United for the world cup! I’m sure many of you have already seen that on the news, it was a huge deal, especially here. Since it was such a big game and soccer is such a big deal in Spain, I decided to take a study break to watch the game. I went over to Kristen’s apartment the night of the game for dinner/study session/game watch, and it was really nice to just hang out in the living room and watch tv like I would at home. Of course, everyone was deliriously excited that Barca won, especially in Barcelona; from what I saw on the news, it looked like there was absolute mayhem. We were in Barcelona the night the team won a regular game, and that was crazy enough; I can’t imagine what it must have been like for this!

So that’s basically my last month in Salamanca. I packed up my room yesterday, and this morning my host mom taught me her wisdom on how to make a Spanish tortilla—my favorite Spanish dish that I’m sure I’ll be making a lot once I get home. I’m going to spend the next couple of days sightseeing and enjoying Salamanca a bit before I leave for Paris on Sunday! I’ll be traveling for the next 3 weeks, so the next time you hear from me I’ll be back in the States!

Also, I want to wish my sister Meg a HAPPY GRADUATION!!!! She graduates from high school today, and I wish I could be there to see her!! I’m proud of you Meggie!

Georgetown does Barcelona

Barcelona Harbor

ENORMOUS pans of paella....yum!!!

The Sagrada Familia

Georgetown girls in Parc Guell--me, Joelle, Kristen, Lauren, Alli

deliciousness at Boqueria Market

football mayhem after Barcelona's victory over Madrid

This weekend I went to Barcelona, my last trip of the semester before I leave Spain and travel a bit during the summer and then head home to the States. As of yesterday, I have exactly 4 weeks left before I leave Salamanca for Paris, and while I’m obviously incredibly excited to go to Paris, I’m going to be really sad to see this semester come to an end. The next few weeks are most likely going to be kind of miserable because I’ll be in finals crunch-time mode, but I want to make sure that I take the time to say goodbye to Salamanca and appreciate my last few weeks here. Now that I’m down to the final month, the end seems so much closer, and I want to drag it out as long as possible!

Kristen and I skipped our two classes on Thursday so we could leave early in the morning to catch our flight to Barcelona. Mary Kathryn and one of her friends joined us on the trip to the Madrid airport; they were both going to Paris this weekend. Our friend Lauren, who we haven’t seen since we visited her in Madrid in mid-March, joined us at the airport and came with us to Barcelona. We got into Barcelona in the evening and had a nice time catching up over tapas and sangria and then over Ben and Jerry’s ice cream at the hostel. A little bit about Barcelona: it’s the capital of the region of Cataluña, an autonomous state of Spain. Catalans see themselves as Catalans first and Spaniards second, and there’s a moderately strong independence movement in the region. The official languages are Spanish and Catalan, which is surprisingly similar to French. Even though I could get by perfectly well with Spanish, it was still a little jarring to see Catalan on all the street signs, newspapers, and everything in Barcelona. So while Cataluña is officially a part of Spain, the area definitely feels somewhat separate from the rest of Spain.

Friday we spent the morning exploring the Old City area of Barcelona and wandering around the harbor. We didn’t really do any sightseeing but just roamed through the city and enjoyed the weather. After lunch, we met up with our friends Allison and Joelle from Georgetown. They are both studying at Sciences Po in Paris this semester, and their university organized a trip to Barcelona, so it was nice that all of the Georgetown girls were able to meet up for the weekend. Allison was my roommate over the summer and during the fall semester, and I hadn’t seen her since the end of last semester, so it was really nice to see her! After getting some delicious gelato, we walked through the city a bit more and planned on heading up to Montjuïc, a huge park on a mountain on the edge of the city. We wanted to ride the funicular, which had ski lift-like chairs that took you across the harbor to the top of the mountain, but we missed the last ride, so we headed back to the hostel to relax and get ready for dinner. Joelle had left to meet up with some other friends at this point, and Lauren, Kristen, and I made sure that Allie was able to try all the classic Spanish fare for dinner, which consisted of paella, tapas, and sangria—and more gelato for dessert. We finished dinner probably around 11:30 (I’m still not used to these late meals) and, being exhausted, went to bed so we could get up early on Saturday and sightsee.

Saturday we saw Barcelona’s most famous sight, the Temple de la Sagrada Família by modernist architect Antonio Gaudí. It was a really beautiful building and unlike anything I’ve ever seen before; in my trusty guidebook, Rick Steves aptly describes it as “cake in the rain” architecture. The church is a work in progress and isn't expected to be completed for another 25 years, so we decided we're all going to reunite in Barcelona when we're 50 and see the finished Sagrada Família. There’s a lot of Gaudí architecture in Barcelona, and after the Sagrada Família we saw Parc Güell, a beautiful park he designed that was apparently featured in America’s Next Top Model. We had lunch in the Old City and went to the Mercat de la Boqueria, a huge covered market with beautiful tables of fresh fruit, chocolate, and other treats. Then we toured the Picasso Museum, which was really interesting; I had no idea that Picasso was so talented when he was a child. We were going to try to get up to Montjuïc again to see the “Magic Fountains,” a cool-sounding show with lights and fountains, but we hit trouble on the way: Lauren lost her wallet. We don’t know if she dropped it in the metro or got pick pocketed (Barcelona is one of the worst cities in Europe for pickpockets), but we had to take a detour to the police station in order to file a report. Fortunately none of her most valuable items in her purse were stolen, just the money and ID cards in her wallet, but it was really sad to have to deal with that when we were having such a good time. Once that mishap was straightened out, the five of us were able to have a nice dinner together, and we got to introduce Allie to the magic of churros and chocolate for dessert. I wasn’t really into churros when I first got to Spain, but they’ve definitely grown on me, mostly because they are so quintessentially Spanish. But I’ve decided that they’re pretty tasty too. Saturday night was a HUGE soccer match between Real Madrid and Barcelona—there’s always been tension between the two cities, formerly for political reasons, and now mostly for fútbol—and all the bars were packed with people watching the game. Well, Barcelona squashed Madrid 6-2, and when we came out of the restaurant at about 11:30, about an hour and a half after the game ended, the streets were still completely packed with people screaming, cheering, climbing on telephone booths, dancing around bonfires….it was insane. The only other times I’ve experienced anything like was when Georgetown got into the Final Four during the NCAA basketball tournament my freshman year and all the students stormed the streets, and when Obama was elected president and everyone in DC stormed the streets. It was absolute mayhem, and so much fun; even though I didn’t watch the game, I felt like I was participating in a really big part of Spanish culture as I cheered in the streets with everyone else.

We said goodbye to Allie and Joelle Saturday night, and Lauren, Kristen, and I headed back to Madrid early Sunday morning. The next four weeks are going to be hard, but hopefully not too terribly stressful, and before I know it I’ll be off on another adventure, and soon enough, home!