a estudiar

Since classes began on Monday, I've hardly had a moment to sit down and think let alone to write. It's been an interesting feeling I've had these past couple days - in a country and a city that is so chill (especially for its size) I find it strange to feel slightly rushed or stressed. I'm not talking stressed like I have a mountain of midterms and projects and various commitments to attend to at the same time, rather in the sense that I've had a week of doing absolutely nothing at home followed by two days of travel and several days to play in three gorgeous Spanish cities and on Monday I found myself suddenly confronted with tarea. For those that know me well, it may seem surprising that I balk at my workload, which to be honest is microscopic compared to my normal load at Duke. As a pre-med mechanical engineer, it surprises me as much it does you that I should be nervous for literary homework. I think I may have contracted senioritis about a year and a half early, or maybe its just the infectiousness of the laid back atmosphere and (non-humid) 80-something degree F weather we've had all week.

If I'm being honest with myself though, I actually find the classes themselves to be quite interesting, though that could just be the result of how radically different they are from the number-filled courses I've become accustomed to in the past year or so. Our Monday/Wednesday class is centered around violence. Spain has had a history of oppression and cruelty that you would never guess from the generally amicable vibe that the population exudes, and this class intends to investigate it historically, through literature and through our own experiences with the culture. I've been watching more of las noticias since arriving in Spain than I think I have in the last year (which is probably a good thing as I should probably be at least slightly better informed about what's going on in the world...Anna, I miss your daily texts from CNN in AP physics! Haha good times...) and all of the talk is of la crisis. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, here has something to say about the economy and the opinions of the different political parties. No one that I've talked to seems particularly overly concerned - they're all making their way through life just fine - but it's kind of like an overhanging presence. We met this one memorable 86 year-old man while stretching in the grass next to the river after a run. He reminded me a lot of my Serbian soccer coach - super fit, overly healthy and very friendly/willing to impart his opinions - and he engaged us in a conversation (over the course of which he told us that to be healthy and live a good life, we had to run or swim everyday, climb a mountain, eat fish at least three times a week, never drink and only ever eat fruit for dessert). He's retired now and utterly and completely happy with every part of his life except for the fact that he didn't study past high school (to reinforce this point, as we talked at least a dozen people walked by and greeted him with a hug - seems like he's the man of the river's paseo) and despite the fact that four of his seven brothers' families were hit pretty hard by the economic crisis, nothing could dampen his high spirits and his obvious love for his country. Anyway, returning to thoughts about the violence class - we're reading four novels and the first (La Familia de Pascual Duarte written by Camilo José Cela) has to be completed by Monday with an accompanying two-page reacción. The reading isn't long, but it's very dense and quite graphic. I'm a little over half-way done and so far we've seen the deaths of two parents, a son and a brother, the shooting of a dog, and the stabbing of a friend and of a horse, but I'll spare you the rest of the details.


Our Tuesday/Thursday class is an investigation into la literatura y los artes visuales de España and the best way I can describe it is as multilateral. Everyday our classes last three hours in the same classroom and honestly the hardest part for me is not understanding or answering with the depth of thought required of us but the fact that I have to stay in the same seat for three hours. Normally, we get a break about half-way through, but sometimes (like today) the professors get so wrapped up in what they have to teach us (at least they're super passionate about their subjects though! that's a nice change from the past semester...) that they forget to pause the class until someone asks to go to the bathroom. In this class we're reading to obras de teatro, both written by Antonio Buero Vallejo. Actually, these books have caused me a lot of trouble - the book store associated with our university didn't receive a full order of the books so there are a couple of us who were left without. I've searched high and low on the internet to see if I can find a pdf or eBook copy but to no avail. I've also tried over seven different librerías and it seems that Las Meninas and El Sueño de la Razón aren't actually that popular of books here. Well, por lo menos, I now have an extensive knowledge of the locations of Madrid's finest bookstores (one of which was like a Barnes and Nobles or a Borders on steroids - five stories high! They carried every single other work written by Buero Vallejo except the two I needed...). For today, we had to have read the first third of Las Meninas, which is a fictional interpretation of the life of the Spanish painter Diego Velazquez around the time that he was creating his most famous painting which was also named Las Meninas. We're also looking extensively at the poetry of Jorge Guillen and other authors and artists from about the time of la Generacion 27 to the early 1950s, not only for their content but also for the ways that they influence each other and create stories about the time period during which they were written/painted.