The end of Session 1

We had exams this week at school, which means that session one is over. I'm pretty sure that I dominated both my Lit and Arts & Museums exams. Woo! Actually, I know I did really well on my Lit exam. 98! I also was able to answer all the questions on the slide that I got. It was a Goya painting that I knew by heart. Snap!

A lot of my friends are leaving on Monday to go back to the States, but I'll still have Brooke, Erin, and Alex. I also am making friends with some more of the non-drunk fratties.

Which leads me to add two things to my Things I Don't Like about Spain List:

1) Complainers. I'm not going to name names, but there have been certain people on this trip complaining all the damn time. I absolutely cannot stand that. I can understand the difficulties that can come with adapting to a new culture, but this is just absurd. I've heard the following phrases so many times:

"Why doesn't Spain have American food? I hate eating seafood! This all sucks!"

Answer: Yes, they do. But who in their right mind would come all the way to another country just to eat at Burger King and Taco Bell? Oh, that's right. Dumb American college students.

"Do people not know about air conditioning? I'm sooooo hot!"

Answer: They don't have the same electricity prices everywhere, so a good way to save money is to not have the air on all the time or not have it at all. Even when I've explained this to people they still feel the need to make a comment about Spain being so stupid.

"I hate speaking Spanish all the time. Ugh!!!"
Answer: Why are you even here?!?!

"Spaniards are so rude!"
Answer: Stop trying to impose American culture values on them. Also, stop speaking English to them.

"My professors hate me. Why am I failing?!"
Answer: Don't show up to class hung-over or worse, drunk.

2) Drunkards: I'm having all kinds of reverse culture shock being amongst my college peers again. I've forgotten how the Greektastic college culture at Bama promotes getting drunk every night, even if it means making a damn fool of yourself.

Mainly, I'm pissed about this because on more than one occasion a lot of students have shown up hung-over to class. I understand the excitement that comes with being in a foreign country, really I do. I mean, France and Spain are both really exciting and I went out to celebrate being in a new place. However, I still don't see the point in getting pants-shitting drunk every night in a country where it looks incredibly immature, since it's something they all got out of their system when they were 14.

Not only this, but it makes the whole group look bad.

Mainly, I'm still kind of mad about this one incident. This kid turned 21 while we were over here. Yes, I understand that the rite of passage in the States is to get so drunk that you barely remember the night. Cool, that's totally fine. However, if your birthday falls on a day when you have class the next day, it would be smart and logical to do the hard core partying either the weekend before or after said birthday and do something a little more low key on the actual day.

That's not the route that some of these kids decided to take.

20 people showed up hung over to class. I was late that day b/c this one guy asked me to walk with him and then he almost puked all over me. Gross. It barely missed me. Needless to say that the professors were pissed. But the real kicker was the birthday boy himself. He decided to show up to class still drunk from the night before. Who does that?!

We have one day that we have reserved for sick leave. He could have taken it. Instead, he showed up drunk, passed out in class, insulted the Professor, and made the whole group look bad. We got a huge lecture that day. I don't blame Dr. Cano for being mad, but he handled the situation really well.

Sigh.

To balance it out a bit I'd like to add one thing to my Things I like List:

Genie pants: What are they? Well, they're brightly colored pants that look like Jasmine's from the Disney version of Aladdin. At first, I was appalled, but now I really want a pair. I'll probably buy some and then post a picture. They're fantastically terrible =).