First Day of Classes

So we finally have (officially) started our Spring Semester here in Valencia. While everyone in Athens has been slaving away at UGA, the group here has enjoyed an extended vacation at home and a three day party in Madrid before we began our classes to day at the Universitat de Valencia. Yesterday we received our schedules and unfortunately we were all disappointed to find out that we had classes on Fridays. This was a blow to most of our travel plans because its pretty difficult to plan a fun weekend of sightseeing and travelling with only one full day to do activities and see the destination of choice. Fortunately, our classes are done at 2pm at the latest so we always have our afternoons free to do whatever here in Valencia. Yesterday after our orientation, I, along with Caroline and Mary Clare, ventured into the downtown/business district of Valencia to find the Corte Ingles. Now Corte Ingles is the Spanish version of Walmart meets Macy's. Each of them is about 5 to 6 stories high and has everything from designer clothes to dish washing detergent. Needles to say it is a popular shopping spot for students traveling abroad that seek all the comforts of a supermarket and a mall. They also sell cellphones so most of us have purchased our temporary cell phones there as well. After wandering around and missing the store by several blocks, we finally found it and proceeded to stock up on shampoo, snacks, laundry detergent and other sundries. It is a very convenient store and often there will be two buildings next to each other that has clothes/grocery store in one and the adjacent building will have furniture and electronics.
On Tuesday, we all had our first FULL day of classes. Even though most of us only have two per day (an unlucky few have three), each class is a solid 90 minutes. We get a short 15 minute break and/or a class period break depending on the schedule. I luckily only have one class on Monday and two back to back on Tuesday through Friday. The first class I had was Topics in Spanish Culture. Our profresora's name is Maria Estelles. She is very enthusiastic and bubbly. She said that to appreciate and understand the Spanish culture we will have to truly make an effort to interact with Velancianos and other Spaniards, learn to dance and sing traditional Spanish music, explore the city's cultural offerings and, pick up the nuanced differences between the Spanish and American lifestyles. All of us enjoyed her class. We spent the majority of the time telling her what differences we have observed since we have been here. She then proceeded to explain them and why we see things differently. I really look forward to learning the culture to improve my Spanish.
My second class of the day was 20th century history of Spain. Our Resident TA Aitor Esquerrez teaches that class. All we did today was go over the syllabus and view a slide show of some famous places in Spain. I think that class will also be interesting because I feel not that many people outside of Spain know a lot about the history of this great country. I guess I'm glad I signed up for it then. Tomorrow I have Spanish for Business and Spanish "Cine" or film in English.