Roots

So this week has been kind of uneventful, but academically very satisfying.
Monday my first class was canceled and we just had film class, which was pretty nice. Sleeping in is always a good thing.
So in film class we prepared to watch this film called "El Espíritu de la Colmena" or "The Spirit of the Beehive", which was both filmed and set during Spain under Franco. My Spanish classes have sort of left me unable to know who knows what about the Spanish Civil War, but after it ended the country was run by a fascist dictator named Fransisco Franco from 1939 (the end of the Spanish Civil War) to 1975 (when he died). So to prepare to watch this movie we talked about the stages of franquismo (which I'm pretty sure doesn't translate to English, but it's like franco-ism, the ideology and the country that he ran) and where this movie is set and when it was filmed. Which was fascinating. Because people here talk a lot about the war, and a lot about the general misery of the  dictatorship, but they don't talk a lot about specifics of it and how it changed over time. The US also doesn't talk about its support of Franco, but that's another story. One of the things that our teacher said in our very first class when he mentioned we would be studying Spain under Franco is that the hardest thing for Americans when learning about this topic is to understand what a dictatorship is. Now, obviously we can give you a definition and some good examples, but he's also kind of right. Unlike a lot of the world, we have no recent cultural memory of something like Franco or Hitler, and that does make it a little bit more difficult to teach us that.
We also talked about the Spanish penal system, which was fascinating. A lot of modern Spanish social policy is based on a rejection of franquismo, and, while there is never a 1-1 correlation, I get the feeling that the same is true for the penal system. Franco used the garrote vil to strangle people as a method of execution. Spain's MAXIMUM prison sentence is 30 years, and most people don't serve that long. Film class is really interesting, because the professor gives us time to talk about stuff like this. We did it a couple weeks ago with the idea of state-funded cinema. There are some things like this that are just so outside of the American perspective that it is nice to have some sanctioned time to just figure them out, talk them out, see how we see them.

So then I came home and took a nap and ate lunch. I also got my phone. I am so happy to have my phone. But after that, I left my phone in my room and went to Elena's class. We talked a lot about Cuba. Elena's family is from Cuba and the EU (side note. I really hate translating acronyms, it totally throws me off. For example: everyone (except the French, what is it with the French?) think that United States of America is just too long to say all the time, so we get an acronym. The Germans are like, "screw it, we don't want to use a V, and just call us "die USA", but the Spanish use (for some reason!) EE.UU. No. I don't get it either.) Right. SO we talked about these trade relations and a little bit of her family's story and that is very interesting. We're a little removed from the situation in Cuba in this generation and getting a perspective from Europe and America and Cuba was very cool. Also, I learned that the Cocktail War was a thing, so there's some great useless trivia. Not as cool as the Great Emu War (it's an actual thing. The emus won.), but I digress.

haha. I digress. Has this email/post been anything else?

Right, so then I come back, do some reading for class Tuesday, chill, read, and go to dinner.
At dinner, I was sitting there by myself, chillin', reading Lord of the Rings, and Dr. Baker noticed that I was by myself and came by to check if everything was OK, which it was, I like reading. He then asked me what I was reading and I told him, and as it turns out (and I mean this as the highest of compliments) Dr. Baker is a total LOTR nerd. So we had a great 15-20 minute talk about the books and the movies and the comparative merits of each book and movie and the actors and the Council of Elrond, and it was a lot of fun. But then I came back to my room and went to bed.

Tuesday I got up and after breakfast went to my lit class. That class is a LOT of fun when I'm not sick and/or tired. We talked about Don Quijote and Miguel de Cervantes. It turns out that Cervantes had a pretty tough life, and that actually kind of saddens me. Like, he's famous for this hilarious work, the first modern novel, this totally postmodernist voltareian satire of life, and he wasn't very happy. He wound up in prison for a long time, lost his hand in battle, had an unhappy marriage. It's always especially sad to me when funny people have horrible lives. On the other hand, it's probably because of his miserable life that he was disillusioned enough to write this wonderful hilarious satire.
And in the same way, I kind of both agree with and disagree with Don Quijote. So, brief recap, because despite it being hugely influential, nobody has read it. Don Quijote (apparently spelled with an x in English. That's weird) is a satire of the tales about knights (Like King Arthur) that were really popular in Spain at the time. Don Quijote is this incompetent, poor minor nobleman who has read a bunch of these books and decides that he IS a knight errant and he goes off on a question, which is, of course quixotic because he's not a knight errant, and the Spain he lives in is not the fictional, magical land of all these stories.
But here's where I both agree and disagree: Don Quijote believes it. He totally believes it. Like, when he is tilting at windmills, he genuinely sees giants. And that's kind of... admirable in its own way. Because fiction can be a great escape, and sometimes it is worth looking like Quijote if your life is just a little bit better thinking that you can beat the giants and save the princess. And that's also why Cervantes' life is so sad, because I find it tragic that he became so cynical that he couldn't find solace in the stories and therefore felt the need to mock them, to tell the public that they were impossible and foolish.

So after class I went and ate lunch and chilled and then went to dance class. This was a make-up from the one we had last friday that only I showed up to. Everybody showed up and we were in the little gym in our building, and it was a lot of fun. We learned a bit of salsa and merengue, and some other dances whose names I don't know, but I like dancing, and it was good fun. When it came time for us to learn the choreographed dance, I was the only one who knew it (having learned it from Alexz and Elena Friday) and so Alexz and I performed it for the class so they knew what they were going to do. This was slightly awkward, but kind of fun, and I wound up with people telling me that I could dance well (which I don't really agree with) and that I should come out with them sometime and actually go dancing. That I probably will do, sometime. But then Alexz and I couldn't remember what we were doing and had to call Elena, who came down and totally rocked out with us for the rest of the class. She can actually dance. But it was a lot of fun, and even some good exercise. My favorite part, though, was when a Spanish guy living in the Rector Peset came in to try to work out and was met with 16 awkward Americans (and Elena) putting our "manos arriba". It was priceless.

So the rest of the day was chill. Homework, reading, dinner. The usual.

And now we come to the reason (well the excuse) my post is so... convoluted and tangent-y. I woke up yesterday morning un poco constipada (most awkward false cognate ever, it means "congested"). So yeah, I got sick again. the downside to this is that I slept horribly Tuesday night and could barely stay awake in class Wednesday morning. Which is a shame, because it was very interesting. We talked about Valencia's history and the river, but also about abortion in Spain, which is REALLY interesting, considering the politics, religion, and history of the country, and then people who studied Spain, including Hemmingway, and I think I have to give a presentation about him Monday. Fun times.
So in-between classes I took a nap. I actually lay down and slept for like 10-20 minutes, which was good since we were watching a movie that I have to present on Monday, and my nap made me awake enough to actually watch it. It was fairly interesting. Our teacher said at one point that American films are about extraordinary events, but European films are about ordinary events. And this is generally true. Or, as one of my favorite comedians put it, British films tend to be "A Room with a View with A Staircase and A Pond" and then if it makes any money Hollywood remakes it into "A Room with a View of HELL and Staircase of SATAN and Pond of DEATH". This is also generally true.  But this movie we watched was definitely a European one, very understated. Except that I kept making entirely inappropriate Disney references for the whole movie (not out loud. mostly) but I was just happy to be awake. And I did appreciate the movie. I don't mind the sort of slow European movies. They definitely have their own value and this one made some really interesting points.

So then I went back to my room and took a deep deep sleep for 2 hours.

Then in lieu of Elena's class and to make up for Monday's missed class we went on a field trip. We visited two different museums in Valencia to learn about the origins of the city. Our teacher kept referencing things that were 200 years old as "modern" and things 50 years old as "new" and after that field trip I understood why. Valencia was founded in 138BCE by the Romans. The city was then destroyed and refounded before we got to CE. That's a LOT of history. We went into this museum and went down all the way to the literal metaphorical roots of the city. The old Forum is underneath the cathedral and the street I walk down to get to class follows the old east-west road from the Roman era exactly. What the Romans accomplished was amazing. They found and reconstructed some pillars from the forum and they were huge, for a town of only 2000 people. They had a forum and baths and a temple and a circus, and it was incredible to go down and see the remains of this old city. And then we sort of wound our way up through the history of the city. I have never quite understood how cities seem to sink over time, but they do, and Valencia is no exception.
After we left the museum, our professor made a fascinating observation. Valencia was founded over 2000 years ago, and they put the forum and the temple and the senate on one spot, and then the Visigths came and built their cathedral on that same spot, and then the Arabs came and built their castle on the same spot, and then the Christians came again and today there is a cathedral, the archbishop's house and the town hall all over the old Roman forum. That's incredible. Especially considering, that not all of them knew what they were doing. The city has been razed, and yet some things never quite managed to change. It seems that the sacrifices (not human sacrifices, don't make it weird) the Romans made in 138 BCE for the protection and prosperity of the city did their job.
And then we went to a museum and saw an old villa that had been found when they were working on the train line and moved to Valencia. It was pretty incredible. The mosaics and the tiles were really amazing. We also saw a statue that had sunk on a Roman ship that was then found a few years ago and restored and brought to the museum. It was in INCREDIBLE condition.

Then we came home  and I was very tired and not feeling well so I hid in my room until dinner and then went to bed early.

 Alright, now I am going to bed, because I am very sleepy. I apologize for way too much history and tangents. I'll fill you in on what happened today with my next post. It's mostly more ranting about Spanish lit and history anyway.