Wait, I live here?

First day of classes! As much as it's been fun playing tourist, I have been yearning to have a routine and getting settled. I am also really excited about my classes this quarter, which makes it even better :)

Our mama's friend walked us to class since she had work, and it's a 30 minute walk from our house to the language school. Such a longgggg walk. And we have Spanish class 5 days a week, for 3-4 hours each day. So much Spanish, but I'm hoping this will help us learn the language faster. We have a class for grammar, oral expression, and culture. We are all in separate classes according to our level of Spanish we placed at. There are about 10 other Cal Poly students in my class, along with a few other international students. We have people from Taiwan, Germany, India, Afghanistan, Sweden, and Japan in my class - I love that our common language is Spanish (though most of them so speak some English). Oh here is the language school:

So after our Spanish classes ended (after 4 hours of trying to think in Spanish, I thought my head was going to explode), Emily and I stopped at a florist shop on the way home to pick up something for our Mama's birthday. We picked out a huge and beautiful plant in this cute pot, and she was so excited when we brought it home! She put it right onto the patio, and she kept telling everyone who called her to wish her a happy birthday that her chicas bought her the perfect plant for her birthday. We felt so proud :D

For her birthday, we drank some delicious champagne with lunch, and shared some of these mini pastries that someone must have given her as a gift. Yummm

Then we had our Cal Poly classes. It only takes about 10 minutes to walk to the Law School, which is nice. My first class was Humanities 310, where we will learn about the culture of Spain. I actually enjoyed that class more than I thought I would. Dr. H is an awesome teacher, and I definitely connect with his teaching style. Plus it is awesome that everything we are learning is relevant to our lives right now. We're learning about the history and culture of Spain while living in Spain! What a concept!

My next class is History 306, which is about the history of the Witch-hunt in Europe. This class is going to be sooo interesting. Most of the text we have to read are primary documents from the time period, describing certain events about the trails, torture, and first hand experiences.

I do have a lot of work for both classes though. Besides the copious amount of reading we have to do, we have weekly quizzes (geography and reading), as well as papers due for each class. And of course exams. This is going to be a tough course load, considering how much I want to travel while I am here.