Constelación Bogart
For the past couple weeks I’ve been walking the red carpet every day on the way to school. The Retroback film festival was going on (February 2-14 I think) and the red carpet lined with movie posters (all of which featured Humphrey Bogart) was part of the publicity for the event. I saw “Casablanca” last Saturday, “The African Queen” on Sunday (“La Reina de África” en español). Even though I’ve gotten much better at Spanish already, I was so glad that the movies weren’t dubbed and instead had Spanish subtitles.
It was nice to go back to the movies on Sunday because it let me get out of the house for a while. Sundays are usually pretty boring; usually I’ll go out for coffee and a pastry, church, and do homework. Since none of the stores are open, people literally window shop. It’s kind of fun though, especially if the weather is nice. Plus all the walking around the city is great exercise, one of the reasons I’ll never need to join a gym here.
In other news, my classes officially started last Tuesday. So far so good! I’m required to take POE (Producción Oral y Escrita – Spoken and Written Spanish) and the GRIIS program seminar, leaving me with space for two electives. I really like both the courses I chose: “Political System of the European Union” and “Spanish Culture and Civilization.” Both of the professors are awesome and really funny. My culture and civ professor was talking to us about the course and said we’d be learning about Spanish wine so he’d be bringing some in for us to “sample” (keeping in mind that the class is from 11:3-1:00). Best of all, they’re going to count towards both my Spanish and IR majors. They’re also completely in Spanish, which I was intimidated by at first. Fortunately, it’s really not as difficult as I’d thought it would be! I’m really glad that I chose to do the intensive course, though, because it definitely gave me more confidence in my regular semester classes. I’m also convinced that I have the best schedule ever: there are never classes on Fridays for anyone, so automatic three-day weekend, and I only have one class on Tuesday and Thursday from 3:30-5 in the afternoon!
