Classes So Far & Spring Break Plans

Last night was definitely a reality check. To start, we have ten days of vacation during Easter week. Even though my original travel goals were 1) See as much of Spain as I can 2) Travel to Lisbon/Portugal 3) Travel to Morocco, but not alone! & 4) Make my second visit to Paris (my first was in spring '07) with my mom & aunt after my program ends, I was determined to get to London for the second half of my break. Unfortunately, I had to face the fact that this was not going to happen after it became clear to me that 1) Airline prices jump like no other during Easter week, even so-called "cheap" ones 2) "Cheap" flights into London are called just that because you have to shell out quite a fair share of pounds to actually get into the city via express trains & often arrive right around the time when they stop running 3) Just how expensive things would be in London (ex. hostel, food, fun stuff) considering how while the euro just wrecks havoc on the dollar, the pound more or less leaves it for dead. I was bummed after spending so much time & effort to put together an flight intinerary I was willing & able to pay for, only to realize that one simply didn't exist. Or one that didn't make me worry about being a possible scam, anyway. Needless to say, I did not go to bed happy.

However, now that it's the next day (well, technically early evening by Spainish standards), things are put into perspective. I decided to book round trip tickets from Madrid to Lisbon for the first half of my vacation which was 50%+ off what it would have cost me to add on transportation to London alone. I will spend the second half of the week in Madrid, likely exploring some of its interesting neighborhoods & visiting some lesser-known but reputable art museums I won't be able to fit in when I meet my mom & aunt there after PRESHCO ends. This plan does a much better job of keeping my original goals in check. Especially considering if I chose to visit London, I might not have been able to afford Morocco & would have had less to contribute to my Paris trip. Additionally, PRESHCO offers us reembulsos (reimbursements) of up to $500 in total for the semester to use for pretty much anything except for alcohol or travel outside of Spain. So it's essentially an extra $500 "kitty" of sorts which I can possibly draw from during the second half of my vacation & therefore another way to cut corners while keeping my original goals in mind. In the end, I need to remember that I need to do what's best for my budget, that in reality there will be other participants who can afford to spend more than I can (which certainly doesn't inherently make any of us better or worse people yet does create notions of what is "cheap"/"a steal"/"affordable" which can differ dramatically) but I can still do my share of traveling. Not to mention this is hardly the only time I can travel to international destinations I want to go to, either.

So far, my PRESHCO classes- which of course are all in Spanish- are going well. I'm taking Spanish Art History, which starts with Spanish Baroque art & archeitecture & ends in the modern era of Picasso & Dalí. While the textbook we're using seems to skimp on the details of a topic I actively want to learn more about, I like the professor & it seems like she packs a lot of enriching information into her classes to keep us engaged. My Advanced Oral & Written Communication class seems like it'll be by far the largest workload this semester. But as I've learned from the Spanish class I've been taking with my mom & sister at home + past hard lessons, the opportunity to better my Spanish skills will simply pass me by if I'm not willing to work hard. I'm looking forward to covering some aspects of grammar & the like which I still struggle with. My Comparative Politics Class (Spain vs. U.S.) seems like it'll be interesting, but we haven't done much in the class yet. The class is team-taught & the professors told us things will pick up next week. Regardless, I planned completing my government major on the assumption that I fulfill my comparative government class requirement abroad, so I'm stuck like a truck with it. Already with the elections coming up in Spain, my lack of knowledge of Spanish politics is already showing so I suppose I can benefit in one way or another regardless. Lastly, I'm taking a 100+ student lecture class on Human Rights to satisfy the requirement that each PRESHCO student take a class directly offered by the University of Cordoba. It seems large, but my favorite college class was Renaissance-Modern Art at UMass which had ~230 students! So far, we've only had a brief overview of the class during orientation, since it's a "direct enhanced class" (meaning it's offered by the University of Cordoba instead of PRESHCO but PRESHCO offers a mandatory weekly tutorial session for all its students in the class to ensure we understand the material), but the topic of theory & practice together seems interesting.

Sorry to not include any pictures this time, but I promise that I have these posts coming up that will include pictures galore straight from my camera:

-Our visit to Barcelona (likely divided into 2 parts, since I have so many pictures to post!)
-My favorite works at the Museu Picasso in Barcelona
-Our visit to different sites in Córdoba (la Gran Mezquita, la Casa Sefarad, el Alzazar, the Madinat Al-Zahra ruins).
-A post with photos around my "daily life" here.... so far
-Our visit to Zuheros this Friday, a small village in the province which is apparently known for great cheese. Maybe I'll be able to have some wine with that cheese considering it is Spain after all!