Un Día en la Vida

Really I don’t want to talk about classes because I’m already really tired of them, but not really I guess. (that’s three ´really´s in one sentence, a masterpiece) I just dislike the process of going to classes, especially when I feel like I could be doing something better with my time. It’s so much easier to talk about places I’ve seen because I wanted to go there to see them. Likewise I will enjoy writing about things I enjoyed and wanted to learn in classes, I do have several of those things. But in general, I just hate being talked at. It is a very interesting psychological thing I suppose. When I am at a job, I take great pride in fulfilling whatever task I am assigned and seeing it done completely and to the expanse of my total satisfaction. I really enjoy being able to present something I have worked hard on, especially if I learned something in the process. I really like working hard. This may be because in work I am usually given some sort of freedom to do as I see fit, which I enjoy exploiting to my personal satisfaction so that I can present not only something satisfactory to my superior, but also something satisfactory and interesting to myself as well.

In school, it feels like professors are working for the satisfaction of themselves or the university, not in the most remote sense the satisfaction of the student. It is tiring and sometimes not insulting but... I don’t know, a feeling of completely wasted time when a teacher is lecturing on and on about something that no student is interested in enough to actually remember. Besides those who have the incredibly gift to just remember whatever is said to them, I know I am one of those who easily forgets unimportant or obscure details that don’t interest me. Even things that do interest me are easy to forget, unless they hold some strong personal connection - to food, culture, history or random music, movie or theater trivia (fascinating what people value, eh?). I think there must be a much better way of teaching things, a way to make things relevant and interesting enough for people to have some sort of drive to actually want to learn things: for example, to make anything interesting at all to me, you can make it relevant to food. Relate something to the historical or anthropological or traditional aspects of food and I’m all over it. Yes, you can say so easily ´So why don’t you make those parallels yourself if it will help you? ´If I could do it myself, there would be no reason to go to school, would there? I think it is the teacher’s job to demonstrate while teaching. I can go to the library and informational is available. Helping students to understand concepts and information by relating it to the students in a useful way should be the work of a teacher. Too many teachers are under the assumption that they are there just to make information available to students and that the students have to do all the work. It’s true absolutely that it is the work of students to want to learn and to have an interest in what they’re observing and make an attempt to learn the materal, but there is only so much interest that one can attempt to pay to paint drying.

Every morning I wake up still dead tired after about 7.5 hours of sleep at about 8 or 8:15 or 8:30, whenever I decide to finally get up, then I decide what I’m going to wear, then eventually settle on something that I later think is stupid looking and wish that I had Spanish shoes. Then the past two days I would head off to Latin American studies, which looks to be an interesting class, It’s being taught in English by a teacher that came with us from JMU and goes with us on all our excursions and hangs out in the JMU office. Dr. Bill Van Norman. Above all I believe him to be trying really hard to be our friend, which is helpful and unfortunately can be taken the wrong way by some of the girls. Unlike most of us, he is actually quite fluent in the language having spent time in Cuba and Spain before to do research, but like many of the students he has a very American accent, as if someone who took Latin were just reading written Spanish. I suppose as long as Spaniards understand, it doesn’t quite matter what accent you have. Although in some cases it can seem somewhat disrespectful to me how some people don’t even attempt to pronounce the Spanish words correctly, perhaps figuring they’ll get the idea and they don’t need to inconvenience themselves with learning the local pronunciations. I would liken this personally to how insulted natives can be if you say ´Stawn-ten´, VA instead of ´Stant-n´, VA. Also some people I guess don’t realize that their bad pronunciation can in fact be saying different words than they mean, which can be entertaining to watch unfold, but still the disrespect is aggravating.
ANYWAYS, the beginning of this class on Latin American culture was with some discussions of pre-Spanish cultures of the Mayans and Incas and Aztecs and so forth and so on. We got to read this really fascinating and interesting article about the culinary habits of the Mayan and Aztec people. Corn or maíz was the most important thing to their nutritional lives as they had gods that encouraged the growth of their crops and if they were properly fed with sacrifices, their crops would grow, if not, then no food. It is also a part of daily life that the men would work with the women to sow and harvest the grain while it was the work of the women to grind the maíz into masa harina, a kind of corneal that was generally mixed with lye, a basic (in opposition to acidic) chemical derived from ashes originally, which would remove the hard and indigestible outer layer of the maíz so that the cornmeal could then be mixed into thin rounds and made into tortillas! It was also popular to mix this mush with vegetables and if one was particularly lucky, wealthy or attending a festival, some meat. The Mayans and Aztecs, however, did not have domesticated animals so they could not eat meat on a regular basis, only the nobles and rich people could afford the scarce hunted meat - which helped them to grow on average up to 10 centimeters taller than the common folk who did not have the protein from the meat. Very very interesting stuff I think.

After class, usually I come here where I am to the computer lab of the University to check mail, write mail, whatever. Then at noon I ran back to class to business Spanish, but Monday I couldn’t find it so I just walked around the city and want into a HUGE cathedral, took some awesome pictures, then went to bookstores and such. Yesterday I did actually go to business Spanish, and it looks like it’s only vocabulary, not a real study of business in Spain and how it differs from the US or anywhere else for that matter. So I think I will drop that class in favor of Spanish Civilization which I will describe later. After the Business Spanish that I no longer have is Spanish Politics, which is taught by an Argentinian man named Agustinus. He looks Russian and speaks a very difficult to understand dialect of Argentinian Spanish whereas he slurs a lot of things and does not pronounce d’s or s’s at the end or middle of words, instead sometimes he uses an ‘h’ sound to us or a ‘j’ sound to Spanish speakers. His class is extremely freeform and is based on getting newspapers and reading articles to discuss politics. He has interesting stories to tell, although he’s awkwardly not very funny, but he tries and in some other way he is amusing. I really enjoy talking about political structures and figures, so the class will be interesting to me, I think, since I don't really know a whole lot about Spanish political structure except what I found myself this last semester for that research paper. I also sat next to Katie and she is very friendly and after class ends, it is 2pm, so we have to rush home for dinner. Walking with Katie, however, we pass by all the confiterías (pastry shops) and inevitably go in one or two of them to try the delicate delicious and very sweet treats that we can’t get from our madres.

The past two days, because they have been festivals there was no school and the whole extended family came over for the largest most important meal of the day here, lunch! It is fun to talk to the family and ask them questions about the culture and tell them stories and hear them tell me what they know about it or if they agree or what’s normal to them. They’re also just a fun-loving family that really obviously cares a lot about each other. It is quite interesting to me the usage of a kiss in Spanish culture. All older relatives or friends always ask for a ‘besito’ or little kiss from their younger kids. It is almost an expectation to show love and affection here, as open kissing and schmoozing in public between young or old lovers is considered beautiful and right. I must say one thing I miss from home is physical affection from Bethany or hugs from friends or whatever it might be. Because we’re so uncomfortable and we don’t really know lots of Spanish people, there is generally little touching between the JMU kids unless people have grown to be pretty good friends... it’s somewhat depressing. Just to feel comfortable to put your hand on someone’s shoulder or to give a hug or to touch someone’s arm or muss someone’s hair or to shake a hand or high-five or pound it... touching is an important thing between people and maybe that’s causing some of the tension and withdrawal I have from home. I just want to be in contact with someone.

After lunch, I usually take a nap until it’s time for another class or when I’m just ready to go out and do something. The past two days my last class of the day at 6pm was Spanish Civilization. Taught by a woman María, I think it will be my favorite class since she is teaching helpful things about the society and geography and traditions and history, all of which I’m absolutely dying to know about Spain! She is also very very friendly and makes quite clear what we need o know for the test and is open to any questions and does not dwell on seemingly unimportant or irrelevant things, something you no doubt have noticed I value in teachers... although I guess that is a relative thing, as things that are culinarily relevant to me that I may ask questions about quite frequently would not be relevant to you in the least. But that is the nature of perspective. Yes, we looked at geography quite a bit this last class and I´m rather excited to see what it will be like on Friday. Yes, Friday. I guess I should explain that each of our classes consists of three 50 minute periods during the week, but they are not consecutive. There could be two periods in a row on one day for the same class and then a third period on say Wednesday. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the arrangement of the periods for each class, they are more or less just shuffled throughout the week. Unfortunately they are shuffled in just such a way that I have to get up every morning for 9am classes. Wednesday through Friday, though, I have no classes after lunch, which will be good I think. I am not a morning person, but then I can dedicate that afternoon and evening to resting and doing whatever. So then after class I usually just walk around and maybe find a bookstore to stand in and read a little bit about Spanish wine and food. But inevitably everyone clusters to the JMU office between 4pm and 8pm during the weekdays. There we can talk to each other about what’s going on and how things are going and for some people make arrangements for their vacations. Then we have to leave at 8 and take our time getting home for dinner at 9pm.

Several days ago, I decided to start a tradition I hope to continue in Spain and perhaps beyond – a glass of wine with dinner. I went to the store, took time to look at the selection and find something that looks new but different and settled on a Ribero del Duero red wine with Tempranillo grapes from I don't remember where that said it was aged for 6 months in oak and has a full red flavor with hefty but not overwhelming tannins. Sure, I said to myself, and after asking madre if it was ok, popped it open for dinner. MAN is this an interesting wine. It seems like a whiskey of red wine, very smoky with traces of fruitiness – which tells me it was indeed aged for quite a while and was made with very sturdy grapes. I must be getting used to wine because I can drink it instead of just the occasional sip of the past. I really enjoy a glass or two with dinner, not only for the unique flavor and warm feeling, but also because I am starting to notice how it can complement food. This is what I’ve been waiting for! I’ve been curious for many years how this pairing of wines and foods is supposed to happen, it just takes a knowledge of grapes and vintner methods to determine the flavors of a wine and then take that into consideration when deciding how to balance a dish or meal. I am by no means proficient with this yet, but hopefully in due time I’ll learn more and be able to match wines reasonably with dishes.

Dinner is an interesting time since usually it is just Ian and Austin and I. Lately things have grown tense because Austin and I seem to have made clear our differences from Ian, as have many others from the group. I generally attempt to hear him out and really talk encouragingly while attempting to point out reasonings or points of view or whatever it may be. Ian has a habit of talking whenever he feels the urge, particularly when someone is in the middle of making a point. He is trying to tell us that he’s comfortable with who he is and no one needs to judge him and why can’t we all just get along. He is right, but at the same time there is such thing as courtesy and empathy. Taking into consideration that something you’re doing may bother someone else and so thus refraining to me is a matter of courtesy and respect. If you make me aware that something I’m doing is bothering you, unless I have particularly strong convictions about it, I’ll generally attempt to accomodate and refrain for you. We’ll see how that progresses.

Anyways, usually after dinner I will run off to an internet café for as long as I can until they close to IM Bethany and then I go home and read or write or just go to sleep. And every night to help me go to sleep I watch an episode of Good Eats on my iPod, when get to sleep about 12:30, only to wake up tired again at 8am.