Day Nine - Thursday

PLAN BOLONIA

This section is just more proof that I probably actually should pursue that teaching degree, because I kind of geeked out during this:

In El Cuento today, Eva was talking about how she had a big problem that needed to be dealt with – the EU is apparently implementing this union-wide education reform plan called Plan Bolonia, the particulars of which include a standardization of all of their educational systems, in order to make it easier for students to exchange among the countries and have similar educational experiences. I'll try and find some articles to show to you all, it's interesting stuff.

Eva was upset because none of the members of the committee that voted it into existence are educators, directors of a school, et cetera, so they have no background knowledge of whether or not this could actually work – not to mention the obvious cultural logistics that would have to be worked out (example: all students are expected to be at school, let's say, 8:30 – 3:30. Spain can't do that, because they have their siesta from 2:30 until at least 4:00. So now, she's got a mountain of paperwork to sort through and even more meetings to attend to be brought up to speed with the program, and she hates it.

Personally, I can't say that I blame her – we're a long ways off from total standardization of pretty much any aspect of life, and education is something that can't nor should be taken lightly. It all sounds good on paper, but I just don't see how it can work effectively in practice.

LANGUAGE BARRIER OF CHAMPIONS

So you know how you go to a foreign country and are expected to speak the local language? Whoo boy, have I got a tongue twister for you.

I was walking out of the public library on my way to class, and a couple stopped me on my way down the steps. The husband asked me, in Spanish, “do you know how to get to la fachada?” Something about his Spanish, though, didn't sound native (as if the question itself wasn't a dead giveaway), so I took a chance and asked back, “where are you from?” It turned out that they were visiting on holiday from Germany! I replied, “wow, I'm from the United States! What languages do you speak?” and we got into a fun conversation about languages entirely in mostly-functional Spanish. Neither of them knew any English and I didn't know any German past guten tag, but we got on just fine.

After a few minutes, I directed them on their map to where the famous fachada was, and we all went our separate ways. What I found so interesting was that we were all from different countries and only had the local language in common with which to communicate. I've run into members of other American and British study abroad tour groups, and they've all defaulted to English because it's the easiest for us all to express ourselves in, but in this case we didn't have other common ground to fall back on to. It was very different and unexpected, but they were the nicest people and we had a lovely conversation, so that was just how things panned out!

SO CHALLENGING BEING 16

Another day at the colegio – and an entirely new set of students! Here they are:

Rosana : (16) Intermediate-Advanced level, enjoys music and movies (mostly American-made), has a huge crush on Orlando Bloom, really enjoys learning English, wants to improve her grammar and pronunciation

Maria : (16) Intermediate-Advanced level, very mature, likes traveling, wants to teach Spanish in an English-dominant school (or work in an interpretation job for the government), wants to improve her grammar, improve her cultural awareness and perfect her pronunciation

Natalia : (16) Intermediate level, knows three languages (Spanish, Italian, English), has family in northern Italy that she visits fairly often, skittish about messing up her English in front of her friends, can't wait to be old enough to go to clubs and party with her friends, wants to improve her grammar and listening comprehension

We chatted about our lives and such, they asked me the standard questions (“What part of the US are you from?” “Do you have a boyfriend? Is he cute?” “What is the airspeed velocity of a laden swallow?”), and then we started into the same Stereotypes game as I had done yesterday. They ate it up!

The worst moment was when we were discussing Teachers... Rosana started to say something, got this confused look on her face, and turned and asked Maria for a translation of a term, which got Maria's eyes as big as Montana's blue skies. None of this I could hear well enough to attempt to interpret, so I waited for Rosana to turn and ask me as well: “que es un _________?”

When I realized what she meant, I was hesitant to interpret it, but I figured she might hear it later and should probably start it off with as clinical of a translation as possible: “it means pedophile.”

Her face lit up. “Ah, yes! That is the word! Yes, we have a Maths teacher who is like that. He touched my friend once, on her behind. We told our English teacher, who said that it was probably an accident.”

Yeah. I was speechless. Like mouth-hanging-open-chin-to-the-ground speechless. What do you say to that? “Um. Well. It's good that you told someone, especially a teacher. That was a very good decision.”

And then they started chirping about American movies, as if it had never happened. Needless to say, they had to ask me twice whether or not I liked Johnny Depp, my mind was clearly otherwise occupied.

THIS MOMENT BROUGHT TO YOU BY: WIN

After I left the girls (and the horror that was the awkwardness of the conversation topic choice for a few minutes), I came home to find Pepita ready with lunch:

PAELLA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This classic Spanish dish is sensational. I encourage you to go out and get some, right now.

THE UNIVERSITY'S SECRETS

For Historia de Arte, Jesus had told us that we would have a two-hour class in order to make up for the hour lost due to canceled class on Friday (for their trip to Portugal), and that one hour of class would be spent out on the calle taking in the local architecture. The reason for this was so that we could experience the time period that we would be talking about and learn why the famous fachada looks the way it looks. And so that we wouldn't fall asleep during two hours of lecture. (his words, not mine)

I arrived to class, and we talked about Christian art and architecture, Muslim architecture as their expression of art, and the layout of the Catholic Kings and their resulting children's alliances that guaranteed Spain (at the time) holdings in the Americas, Germany, and Portugal. From a nonexistent country to 100 years later becoming the ultimate political power was a seriously excellent story that I encourage you to check out.

After we had lectured for an hour, it was time to head out onto the street – and straight for the fachada, which is an addition to the main structure of the Universidad de Salamanca that glorifies all that is Carlos I and his reign. I'd looked at the structure before, but never known who all of the figures were supposed to represent – the result of one day of class was remarkable, because this gorgeous structure suddenly became this awful declaration of the king's command for complete respect and loyalty from people that had just tried to overthrow him from power in favor of his legitimately-powerful (but completely crazy) mother, Juana.

After noting all of the fascinating additions to the structure (and believe me, there were quite a few of them), Jesus beckoned us inside the building, something that I didn't think that we were allowed to do unless we were students! We got stopped briefly by a security guard, but after Jesus displayed his teaching badge and explained that we were only touring the building as an Art History class, we were given free reign of the building.

The structure itself is not as large as it appears on the outside – it is a square building with a glassed-in courtyard in the center, within which stands a massive Californian sycamore tree that was a gift from one of America's presidents to the university. As we walked around the lower level, Jesus stopped and pointed above the doors, where the name of the class taught within the room and a brief description of the course were cut into the stone wall in Latin. Each different discipline (medicine, law, languages, et cetera) was given a different background color from the others to distinguish itself, and the colors were from when the structure was first built! (example: medicine was yellow.

We walked into a room where theological studies were once held, in a room with a turret-like podium (like in the cathedrals where the priest would stand and give his sermon) at the front and long, timeworn benches that filled the rest of the space. We weren't allowed more than a few feet into the room, because none of the furniture had been altered in any way since the 15^th century, apart from light dusting and cobweb removal. Jesus pointed out a bench a few rows up and told us that there was student-written graffiti from when the famous Lope de Vega had been a student at the university, and had written his name into the wooden table where he worked! SO COOL OH MY GOSH!!!

We saw a lot more, but I'll make it shorter and mention two more incredible sights:

Upstairs, we saw the famous library that had not been altered, again, since the 15^th century. You couldn't walk more than six feet into the room before you ran into a glass box that allowed you to look in, but not to touch a single thing. The reason for the high security was that within the library were some of the oldest and rarest books in the world, the oldest of which was an 11th-century Bible! Needless to say, I geeked out like whoa.

The other really cool place that we saw was the cathedral within the university itself, where if you, your partner, or both were alumni of the Universidad de Salamanca, you were allowed to get married there! It was breath-taking and incredibly intimate, and we were all in love with the gorgeous decorations along the walls.

Jesus started talking about history in general: “everything that you do now, becomes history. Seemingly meaningless moments can become something great, like de Vega's scribblings on his desk. That was preserved for generations. Your actions and thoughts will be preserved for generations. And this class, now, is history.” He smiled, quietly turned on his heel, and walked back down the stairs, leaving us to stand there.

I totally had chills.