Hello, my wonderful readers! I am having a lovely Saturday morning. I got up and went to the public library to meet some other English majors from my program and a Spanish graduate-student-in-English, Rocío, so that we native speakers could help Rocío edit her master’s thesis. So I sat in a library for about two and a half hours, reading 40 or so pages about the treatment of the idea of imitation in literature from the time of the ancient Greeks through the 16th century, correcting idiomatic expressions, and pointing out errors in syntactic structure. It was fun to edit something in English again. Then, guess what: She paid us! Today is a good day.
Yesterday IES took us to Córdoba, supposedly one of the warmest cities in Spain, on apparently one of the coldest days of the year. I was pretty freezing all day long (as was everyone else), but it was definitely worth the hardship. We got to see the ruins of the city that was THE powerhouse of Europe right around the year 1000; it had lasted less than a century before it was abandoned, and then the ruins were only found just over a hundred years ago by some British archaeologists who paid (or bribed with candy, ha!) the local kids to find artifacts. Rather interesting, in my opinion.
We also visited the mosque-turned-cathedral in the city center. The Christians basically just knocked down a few columns on the inside, inserted an altar and other necessary furnishings, and converted the outermost areas into chapels. Lots of pictures on facebook…They’re pretty neat, I have to say.
On Thursday night I went back to the UGR choir. Great again. This time, Marianna (the other IES girl) and I invited a couple of the other exchange girls (one from Canada, one from the Czech Republic, and one from Germany) to go out for tapas and then to IES’s Open Mic Night. We had some delicious sangría and good live entertainment (including performances by my friends Hannah and Malachi, and Rob’s medley of everything from The Lion King—yes!). I definitely get better at speaking Spanish when that’s the only language I have in common with the majority of the group I’m with. Imagine that :)
On Wednesday I attempted to use the bus system for the first time instead of walking for 45 minutes to my UGR class. I successfully bought the ticket, with a sympathetic look from the bus driver who could obviously tell I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. Then I found out I was on the wrong bus. I blame that on the guy in a UGR sweatshirt who got on it before me. Oh well, my Granadino internal compass got a little better when I got off the bus and walked the rest of the way to class.
On Tuesday morning after class I went back to the Modern Languages Center to return Cannery Row and check out Oliver Twist (Charles Dickens), which I am quite enjoying so far. I also bought myself some Nutella and some fresh walnuts. Together, they make a tremendously excellent combination. And I got some bread and cheese, because I was out of those and at-home dinner was looking pretty sad. On the way home I ran into Hannah, so we got ourselves a chocolate-filled/-covered pastry for second breakfast and sat on a bench in the sun chatting for a very long time. Oh the companionship of a kindred English major spirit. Kind of new for me...
Oh, a shout out to my lil sis Mary: Thanks for the plug adapters; very handy.
No comments:
Post a Comment