Art Class with a Mad Man

Today was the first official day of classes. I woke up extra early so I could stop by the book store before my 9am class and still had to practically run. I made it with just seconds to spare and sat down in my first class "Barcelona: the Cosmopolitan City". The professor seems nice and although the subject isn't something that I'd usually really enjoy taking, it should at least be entertaining. I'm most excited about the field trips and glad that she says it's hard to get anything lower than an A. That always makes it easier if you're learning it more for yourself than for the grade.

My next class was a 7 credit spanish class which I've been doing since last week. Most of the kids in my class are cool and I really like the professor. She mainly teaches us stuff that we can use on the streets like the slang, common expressions, gestures they use all the time, and stuff about the culture as a heads up. We've talked about our host families and stuff that we thought were weird that they do, about the food we've been eating, and our homes in general. Today, we learned a lot of vocabulary about the human body and then went on to talk about expressions they use in regular conversation. That'll come in handy because sometimes my family here says things that do not translate at all like "he/she is taking your hair". In spanish, it means the same as our expression "he/she is pulling your leg"... good to know.

After class, I hopped on the metro and was thrilled to come home and find the house empty. Silence! I spent an hour just sitting in my room by myself drawing for a little bit and then going online. I was gladd to have a little me time today. Tomorrow should be even better if all goes as planned... I want to drop one of my classes that I'm in for a different one. If I can add a mon/wed class somewhere between 1:30 and 5:30 then I'll have thursdays off completely and just one class on tues 9am-10:30. We have a lot of fridays off because of optional trips with the study abroad program so that would give me 4 day weekends every couple of weeks... perfect for traveling!

At 5:30 I had an art class that I just picked up today. It was the one class that I really wanted to take but wasn't placed in up until this morning when I talked to someone from my program. Luckily, there was one spot left. Lola said if there wouldn't have been that I'd just have to "complain, complain, complain" and if that didn't work that she would. She thought it was absolutely outrageous that I couldn't get into the class that I wanted to. I'm so glad my host family is cool. I love them! Anyways, when I got to art class, I walked into the classroom to find a chubby man with a full beard and plaid shirt already waving his arms infront of the class. I sat down at the long white table with the other 16 kids and tuned into his lecture. He lectured for probably the first half of the class and after he was sure that we knew what he wanted from us, he handed out 8x11 sheets of paper. We all took two and started drawing the displays he set up in the middle of the table. Ours was a plastic water bottle filled with water and a bouquet of plastic flowers. On the table next to the makeshift vase was 3 plastic fruits... I guess it didn't really matter what it was that we were actually drawing since the whole lecture was on making things proportional. Soon after we started drawing, he walked to up behind a kid sitting 2 chairs away from me and asked something along the lines of who the chinese kid's name is. The kid sitting there turns around pissed and says that he's actually half philipino and half white. The teacher appologized and goes "I know, I should have said asian". I wonder if he realizes how bad he insulted that kid. Maybe that's considered okay to do in Spain but everyone else in the room had their jaws dropped to the floor. It was after that when he started yelling at this girl for not listening to a single word he said. He repeated many times that we should start with the basics and then add details worrrying only about proportion but she immediately went into the details. Then she gave him lip and he stood up and made a speech that if we didn't want to learn that we should get up and leave. It's funny that I like him. I guess I tend to like the professors that everyone else hates. I'm excited to be finally taking an art class even if he is crazy.

I got home from class at about 8 and was absolutely starving. Something smelled good so I had high hopes for something other than ham and was not disappointed. We first had some bread with olive oil and salt, a salad, and a "puree of pumpkin". It was basically pumpkin soup but it was delicious! The main course was some sort of fish that was really good! I ate like 4 big pieces on top of everything else. For dessert, we had fruit (like always) and some homeade cheesecake made by Lola herself. It was a really good night to come home hungry. Over dinner, the whole family sat down to teach us to random spanish expressions that I wasn't taught in class today. They're really good at helping us with our spanish... we practice what we learn every night at dinner. I'm learning a lot

Anyways, I'm going to pass out. I'm tired yo... and I have class tomorrow at 9am so I'd better get some sleep. I'll talk to you guys soon