Today is the first day of March, and it has ended a fantastic first half of the semester and is going to begin the a really exciting second half! In January and February, I saw Franz Ferdinand in concert for FREE, I have been to the beach numerous times, have gotten sunburn, and have attended a Valencian futbol game. I traveled through Madrid, Toledo, Valencia, Barcelona, Albufera, and the Sierra de Enguerra. I trekked through these mountains of Sierra de Enguerra for 9 miles with about 100+ Erasmus students, my professor from school, and a donkey (he apparently belonged to the hostel we stayed at :))
Erasmus is the European exchange program, and apparently Valencia is the second most popular Erasmus location with more than 5000 students! To make things more interesting, most of the people I met spoke more than 4 languages. It interesting to me how fa
r behind Americans are with language skills. Some people in my program, including myself, have been studying Spanish for more than 5 years, but we still aren't fluent! There were people on this trip who spoke Dutch, English, Spanish, Italian, and German. Americans are the most far behind in languages, and it's going to become a problem very soon. Out of every student that has stayed with my house mom, she says Americans are the slowest to catch on to Spanish. Europeans rank first, Brits second, and us last. How depressing. A lot of people have said that Americans come to Spain and speak English and never Spanish. Plus, we are constantly told our geography is lacking quite a bit. I had a French guy tell me I had bad geography because I didn't know the small town in France he was from! But, who knows if a Spaniard, German, Italian, or anyone not from France would either?!The new half of the semester includes London, Granada, FALLAS, Italy, Switzerland, France, and Basque Country. This Wednesday I will be heading to London. I feel really guilty to be excited to speak and hear English everywhere, but I'm certainly not going to take it for granted. I will be able to understand everything going on at once! I cannot wait :)
When I get back, FALLAS WILL BE ALMOST HERE! Fallas is the third largest festival in the world, placing behind Rio de Janeiro and Mardis Gras. The entire city has already started preparing for it by setting off mascletas (HUGE displays of bomb-like fireworks in the center of the city or in the park by my house which now happen every day at 2pm), hanging Valencian flags everywhere, wearing Fallas panuelos (scarf/handkerchief things) and dressing like Falleros/Falleras. Falleras are really interesting and wear costumes that cost around 3,000 euro. It's like any festival in that it chooses a representative; they choose one "Fallera Mayor" and one "Fallera Menor". There are parades of floats and ninots, but only one can win! What happens to the rest? They burn them at the end of the week! Way cool. Right after Fallas when we are all tired and dragging from the awesome festival, we are headed to Granada with the program!
When April arrives, I have around 8 actual days of class. Spain RULES. In the beginning of April, I'm meeting my friends to travel around Europe for Semana Santa and for our descanso (basically Spring Break in Spain). My host mom was saying how Spanish students have too many days of vacation and I agreed, but I certainly don't mind.
Is Spain just a country where students slack off? Maybe Americans have more of an opportunity for that in Spain than Spaniards! Students here have exams for a month in January and in June. These basically determine their grades, and, from what I hear, are impossible. However, it may be the same throughout Europe because Polish students were having exams when I arrived there last June. A student's life ceases to exist during this month, but afterwards it seemed that the population of Valencia doubled! I can't imagine having so much pressure put on me at the end of my semesters, and I thought midterms and finals were bad!
In one of my classes the other day we stumbled onto the topic of health care and education. A Spanish student only pays around 700 EURO for school per year! Right now, that's around $900. We pay more than that for our MEAL PLAN! Our educational system in America would not function with this method, mainly because we are capitalists. Spain's government is still a little confusing to me, but, according to the news (the little of it that I can grasp) and my house mom, Spain has two presidents: one from the Socialist Party and one from the Popular Party. Spain's educational system functions this way because they are a pretty socialist society. EVERYONE has the right to health care. 60% or more is paid by the government and your contribution starts at 40%. Along with this, emergencies are free. My professor says that the only doctors that are wealthy are dentists because that's really the only privatized practice. What a foreign idea to me, as well as most Americans. However, America has some fantastic medical care, and honestly, I dig it.
5 comments:
Scotland also pays for most of tuition costs here. I've found that students dont seem to take their education as seriously (they skip class all the time, and dont care if their professors are bad). Have you found that to be the case there too?
I think most European educational systems in general are sooo different from the States. I have 4 classes that meet for two hours a week each, no exams at the end, only two group presentations and 4 papers. It seems crazy to me that I have all this free time!
What you said about America being so behind really reflects what we have been discussing in class(LEAD 203) these past couple of weeks. It also really proves that what I am learning in the DEL program with my international partner really is true. My DEL partner knows 3 languages and is very fluent in them. She informed me that everyone from her native country learns 3 languages and you must be fluent in them just to graduate high school! You are very correct when you say America is behind.
I can't tell if I would thrive or die in that kind of society. I have always taken education pretty seriosly becuase for the last 12 years it was not just a given. My parents paid for me to go to a private school and are now paying for my education here. If my education was only $900 a yaer I would probably act the same way you see Spaniards slacking and how Katy rarely sees them in the classroom. Then I wonder how we can be so far behind in forign lanquage education? Some languages translate better to each other(French, Spanish, Italian).
Anyways, I was wondering if you have noticed any daily rituals in Spain? We are studing Jewish people in 203 right now and some of thier rituals on the sabbath. Have you noticed anything out of your norms? do shops close early for church or do families have a certain custom before meals?
Can't wait for your next post!
-Jake Verdoorn
Jake:
You're right that we are really behind and when something isn't at a high cost we don't appreciate it as much. However, the reason Americans are so far behind, in my opinion, is because we are using our language as a crutch. It's so incredibly easy. Sometimes I accidentally slip back into it here without even realizing it. It's just something that we need to work around and not become too comfortable with our language being the language of democracy and business. I mean look what happened to the French. Yes, romance languages are similar because they are derived from latin, but it is still a task for Italians to learn Spanish and those are the most similar languages in the Romance family..that or Italian and Romanian.
Customs in Spain don't really revolve around religion anymore. It is still technically a Catholic country, but really it's just a name and they get all their major saints' holidays off of work. I don't typically see any unusual religious practices. In fact, the churches here are quite empty and tourists roam around in them while mass is going on. It's very strange and very distracting. Still, mostly everything is closed on Sunday.
Meal customs are the hardest to get used to. We eat a small breakfast and then "La Comida" around 2:30 pm. This is the biggest meal of the day and people leave work to eat it at home. After lunch, a siesta/nap starts where all stores close and civilization stands still. This lasts until around 5 when people start heading back to work. Then they quit work at 9, go home for a light dinner and watch the news. It's a bit different from the 9-5 we're used to, no?
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