Anyway, goodness, I suppose this would be a good time to reflect back. I don't know if I'm too good at that though. Well, I guess I've adapted fairly well to the Spanish way of living. The milk, eh, isn't the best, but not bad. I get hungry at 8:30 now instead of 6, which means I only have a half hour of starvation left until dinner. I've also learned that I'll eat pretty much anything. Well, minus that langosta. *shudders*
The smoke doesn't bother me as much. During those first weeks, it seemed like there was cigarette smoke everywhere. However, I must honestly say, I've noticed that they smoke slightly, slightly, less than my first impression.
Fraternities are not that big at Santa Clara (although a lot of sorority girls and frat guys from SCU are here in BCN) so it was interesting for me to see frats boys from other schools. Personally, they are pretty funny to me. But again, less than 5% of SCU kids are a part of the Greek life. So anyway, that's another thing, although not Spanish, that I've been exposed to.
Deoderant is actually pretty darn important and useful.
Hmm... What else? I've just flat out learned a lot more about this city and of Spain. I also know where a lot of things are. I can get around pretty good in Barcelona. I also speak more Spanish. I guess you could file that under the "duh" column, but I'm impressing myself a little.
Okay, it's a little hard to think of these things on the spot. Regardless, things have definitely changed since that first, crazy day.
Going off that excellent lead in, I have had a crazy 24 hours. Not a whole lot of sleep. I woke up early to talk to my family (which was awesome!) and then studied some more before my first midterm. It was my religion/history/art class. I basically had to write an essay on how I would describe Islamic art to people in the United States (or the West) who don't know anything other than what they see on TV. As you can see, it was pretty open ended, but I think I did well.
I also think I rocked my Spanish quiz. However, I just can't seem to do well on the small compositions we have each week. I got a 8.5 and my friend got a 9.5. He had 6 small errors and I had only 1! You are also graded on content and difficulty, but I saw no big difference between our two papers. Err. I gotta step it up. Oh, also, at the bottom of the page, she wrote, "bien Talon." Um, that's the name of the only black kid in our class.
As I was studying before my Management Across Borders class, I ran across something in the reading that I found funny. It was saying that in some countries, like the United States, if there's a conflict, things are solved in court. In other countries, such as Japan, you work it out through relationships, etc. Here are some interesting stats that was there.
Lawyers per capita (100,000)
- US - 279
- UK - 114
- Germany - 79
- France - 29
- Japan - 11
And Happy Birthday Mom!!
2 comments:
Hi Chad, congratulations on your 50th post. I look forward each day reading your logs. You crack me up in so many of your logs.:) Have a fun break and will look forward to reading about the adventures you had when you return. Take care. Love, Pat
Chaddy, (don't you hate it when I call you that). Have a great break. We are going to Randys over the weekend. Like Pat said "You crack me up" Love Donna
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