Logistics...Ugh

Over the past week I have been trying desperately to get classes taken care of. I know that the whole process of picking classes, trying to schedule them, and then registering seems difficult anywhere, but bring it over here and it goes to a whole new level. Since I am an American student, the program that I am in requires me to take a certain number of classes with other Americans, and my university requires that I take at least one with Spaniards. I knew two of the classes that I had to take, and one is taught by my WashU director and set in stone, so I really only had to pick one class. Simple, right?

Unfortunately, the way things work here is that all of the students in all of the majors are split up into different groups. If you are a sociology major in group 33, for example, you take all of your classes with the people in your group, and the administration makes it so that the timing doesn't conflict and you have what you need. Unfortunately, almost ALL of the regular classes conflict with our American classes. On top of that, each regular class can only accept a certain number of American students. To make a long story short, it has been a constant headache, but I think I've finally gotten my schedule down.

Spanish Theater

Spanish Language course

WashU Culture and Civilization course

History of Journalism in Spain

Current International Conflicts/The Revolutionary Decades of the 60's and 70's

Sounds like a pretty cool schedule! The last line of classes are mini classes, meaning that I take the first one until March, and the second one until May. I am taking the journalism class and the mini classes in the regular Spanish curriculum, in Spain, with Spaniards. So we shall see how that goes!

Last weekend was amazing in terms of food, something that always makes me excited. I had both a real bacon cheeseburger (usually the burgers here are made out of pork and not beef. They seem to consider 'carne' -meat- to be any kind of animal other than chicken), and I also had chicken fingers and pizza. It was a little party in my mouth. I need to start bringing my camera with me so that I can take pictures of everything that I see. Last weekend I also went to El Parque del Retiro, Madrid's version of Central Park. It was absolutely beauuuutiful. I think it was less wooded than Central Park is, but it had more fountains and interesting things to look at. Unfortunately, I got sick on Saturday and have been fighting off a nasty cold ever since, but food wise, things have been good.

I know this is a picture-less post, but the most accurate picture to describe my past week would be a screenshot of the Carlos III class schedule, and a photo of me about to pull my hair out. I didn't think I should grace you all with that. Also, it seems that some things never change as I am blogging and about to watch American Idol on Ninjavideo instead of doing my work. Oh well. C'est la vie.

More to come!