España

Going through some of my notes from the intensive course that I took at the beginning of the semester, I came across some quotes I had written down from the class that made me laugh. One, for example, was of a girl in the class who remarked to the professor (a 30-something mother of two young boys with a PhD), "Gosh! You always have so much energy in class!" to which our professor replied, "Well, yeah, it's because I do coke before class starts." Another comes from the review session we had before our exam. The profa. remarked, "...so those questions will all be about that topic. Now then, you need to know that I'll be leaving during your exam to get coffee - that's the time you should copy and ask each other questions." I muttered under my breath, "I love Spain...," which she heard, and replied, "that's why we live here."

Of course, my professor was joking - at least about the drugs. These things, however, could never be said in an American classroom - certainly not by a professor who is still up for tenure. Things are much more laid-back here. I also notice this in the way that every class starts about five or ten minutes late, one of my professors would occasionally be at his beach house and simply not come to class, and the way that everything shuts down for three hours in the middle of the day. It's not bad, though, just different, once you get into it. I started thinking about all of this yesterday, the last day of classes before our exams started. This was after last weekend when I had Friday off, Saturday everything was closed for Constitution Day, Sunday everything was closed because it was Sunday, and Monday everything was closed because it was the day of the Immaculate Conception. The country was shut down for three days in a row! Then, yesterday class was interrupted by the sound of champagne corks (more accurately, cava corks, Spain's home-grown version of the French stuff) popping. We all left the classroom to find some sort of celebration going on for everyone in the atrium, with long tables set up around the Christmas tree, candles and glowing mini tree-shaped lights hanging from the ceiling, and an enormous manger scene of the Most Holy Family complete with real sand. On the tables were almond sweets and cookies made by local nuns and hundreds of glasses of wine. This was all at about 12 noon, and in a government sponsored school no less! Turns out it was all for some sports team-related awards ceremony, but that didn't stop everyone from imbibing a little.

Someone mentioned to me once that Spain is about where the US was 40 to 50 years ago in terms of it's culture. I don't think that's true with everything - they're a lot more liberal here in regards to some things - but they're certainly not what you would call politically correct. Sometimes I think it's great and refreshing, but not everyone's always comfortable with it. For example, there are several Jewish people in the program, and Granada in itself is still quite a center of Islamic culture, despite the best efforts of the Catholic kings to quash that. That doesn't stop anyone from putting up huge Belenes (Bethlehems, essentially walk-through diorama towns) on the street, holy families on the roofs of department stores, and Christmas trees in the universities. My "brother" told me that Catholicism is especially alive and well here because it was so hard won; I can believe that, but it was back in 1492. I'm having a great time with it, though. Just an observation.

This is exam week, so I don't plan on being too interesting in the next few days.