First Week of Classes

After a long week of trial and error, I finally have a set schedule of classes. On Mondays and Wednesdays I have classes from 11:30am to 9:00pm with a few breaks in between. That may seem a little crazy, but I have no classes on any other day so I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I am taking advanced grammar, linguistics, Spanish literature, Hispano-American literature, and conversation. They are all taught in Spanish...even the syllabi are in Spanish. Understanding what everyone is saying is still really hard, they have a very distinct accent - different from anything we hear in the U.S. So far they are alright, the literature ones, however, are going to be very difficult. I had the wonderful luck of getting the same teacher, Professor Mamonde, for both literature classes...each an hour and 15 minutes...back to back. He literally sits in one of the desks and talks and talks and talks and talks in monotone the entire class period. I can understand the gist of what he's talking about for the first half hour or so, but after that I can't hold on anymore - and once you loose track of what someone's saying in Spanish, its difficult to catch up. I really hope it gets better or my GPAs going to hurt. The conversation class is my favorite; we are learning colloquial phrases and how to fit into the Spanish culture. On Tuesday we all went to the TV room to watch the inauguration - pretty much everyone showed up, including a TV crew wanting to document our very American reactions to the new president.