This may be kind of a short entry, as I don’t have too much to talk about, but there are just a few tidbits to update you all on.
Yesterday was one of our field trip days. My group went to La Itálica, the ruins of a Roman city that housed some of their soldiers during the Punic Wars. In the center was a giant gladiator ring. The professor who was guiding us told us how these gladiator games weren’t just entertainment, they were sort of religious sacrifices to appease their gods of war, and that people attended these games with a sense of reverence. Unfortunately, it was raining while we were there, so we didn’t stay long, but I actually kind of liked it in the rain. It seemed to fit with all the memories and the history of the place (ok, now I’m waxing silly and pseudo-poetic; I shall move on).
You may be wondering about the title of this entry. We (Kerry, Alicia, and I) decided that we were extremely craving a few American type foods, namely, Oreos, peanut butter, and chips. Most of the food here in Spain is very fresh and unprocessed, and when you go grocery shopping, generally you go to the frutería to buy fresh fruit, and the carnicería (butcher shop) to buy meat, and the panedería (bakery) to buy bread, and rather than shopping for a week’s worth of food, you go every day or too. If you want to buy something packaged and processed like Oreos, or peanut butter, which, as in Scotland, hardly even exists here, you have to go to a supermercado, which are rather less common than all the little specialized stands. So, we ventured once again to El Corte Ingles, because we knew if any place in Spain would have such distinctly American foods, it would be El Corte Ingles. And sure enough, we found them, although it took some searching to find the peanut butter. When I checked out, my purchase consisted of a package of Oreos, a jar of peanut butter, a package of Snickers bars, and a bottle of Diet Coke. My blood pressure wept at the purchase, but my taste buds rejoiced.
A random side note here: I have been having to come to terms with the fact that I am probably going to have to kiss my academic virginity good bye. TU requires that language majors who study abroad take a class at the local university; accordingly, I am taking the class on Lope de Vega that I mentioned earlier. However, European university class structure and grading are very different from those in America. Rather than giving you homework assignments throughout the year, the only grades are a final exam and maybe a final paper at the end of the semester. The students are expected to pace themselves, and study and do the reading as needed to be ready for the final. Furthermore, they grade on a scale of 1 to 10, with a 5 being a passing. Most Spaniards consider it a huge accomplishment to get a 6. It’s not exactly that American grading is inflated, but while an A is considered good but totally attainable in the U.S., here a 10 is almost unheard of. The problem is, that a 6 translates in an American grading system to a C. Michele Duran, the academic director of my program, said once they had a student who worked really hard at his university class and got a 7.5, and the professor wrote “excelente” on his final paper, and it was the highest grade they have ever seen—but a 7.5 still only translates to a B. Michele explained that anyone who looks at a transcript and sees that someone got a B from the University of Sevilla will know what that means, will know how much work that cost, and furthermore understand that it was work done in a second language. And I understand this. But still . . . I really like my 4.0. A lot. And although I know that’s not the most important thing for life or even for getting into grad school, I am rather upset about losing it. Because it seems impossible that I will get a 9, which is the minimum to translate to an A. It’s extremely frustrating knowing that no matter what I do or how hard I work, my beautiful, unsullied little 4.0 will become after this semester a 3.8 or .9 or something. My only hope is that TU might have a different system of translation, and adjust a 7.5 differently, but I have very little hope of that. If this is the price I have to pay as a language major to study abroad, then it is definitely worth it. My semester here in Spain is worth far more than 0.1 GPA point. But still . . . sigh.
I suppose with that somewhat emo note I am done for now. Tomorrow I am going to Córdoba, and a week from tomorrow I am going to Morocco—so super excited!
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