Spain Part 28 – ¿Es la semana de exámenes parciales? ¡No me digas!

This is the time of the semester when you think to yourself, “where has this half gone and how can it possibly be time for midterms?”  Now is the time for essays, hours of studying and all that lovely stuff that goes with it.  It is a shame that this weekend will be lost to essay writing, but I guess that is part of the whole going to school in another country thing.

 

End of complaining, I am here to learn after all.  The essays for the most part sound like fun to write.  For Spanish lit we’re comparing two texts by the same author and pointing out the specific characteristics of the literary style, and for grammar we’re writing a description about a moment in time.  Economics is pretty basic, just the usual summary of what we’ve learned in class, but Latin American lit is the class that’s going to be difficult.  We get to write an 8-10 page paper on pretty much whatever subject of whatever piece of literature we choose as long as it is by a Latin American author and we haven’t studied that particular text extensively in class, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s 8-10 pages.  It should be interesting to see how that goes.

 

Other than the realization that exams are only a week away it was a typical Monday of classes, a bocadillo for almuerzo, lots of tarea assigned etc.  In Mass Media we watched an episode of “Yo Soy Bea” which is the Spanish (from Spain) version of the originally Latin American show “Béti la Fea” which was adapted into the US show “Ugly Betty.”  The Bea in the Spanish show is very VERY different from Betty in the US show, much more mild, trying to fade into the background personality instead of the vivid person that Betty is in the other shows.

 

After class, there was a movie showing as usual at school, and I decided to watch it this week.  This was unfortunately a bad decision because the movie was disturbing and I didn’t really like it.  Basically, this guy doesn’t work, lives off of borrowed money from his friends, family, what his wife’s family gave him when they were married, and all that sort of thing, but everyone thinks that he works in a bank.  Long story short, he meets a girl who wants to work in the bank who is obviously a lot younger than him and proceeds to lead a double life, one with his wife and son, and another with this girl.  At the end it all blows up in his face and he kills himself and his family and girlfriend.  Not what you’d call uplifting, but it wasn’t even fun to watch, more along the lines of sickening.

 

I walked home in the wet streets, since it’s still raining in the mornings.  The sidewalks are often half-flooded because they aren’t used to having rain this often here.  La cena de sopa de verduras (vegetable soup) and pollo con papas fritas (chicken and French fries) was very good as usual, and I did my tarea afterward until it was time for bed.