The Big Day!

Today was my first day of classes at UAB. My first class of the day wasn't until 1:40, but I woke up at 8:45 and decided I would get ready and go to campus early. There was a group leaving the Residencia at 10:20 so I decided to tag along with them so I would know how to get to campus. Because I left so early, I decided I would sit in the computer room and use the WIFI, make a shopping list for the mercado, and make a to-do list for myself. Several different groups of people filtered in and out throughout the day. But some of them were rather annoying. One guy managed to chomp on 3 or 4 mandarin oranges while watching a TV show online and laughing (rather loudly I might add) at whatever show he was watching.Needless to say, I was ready to get out of there by the time my first class started.

My first class of the day on Monday's and Wednesday's is Doing Business in Emerging Markets. The class is taught by a Romanian woman who has lived in Spain for 9 years. Today was primarily a review day and we talked about a lot of things I learned last semester in my business classes. The majority of the students in the class were Americans, but we had 5 or 6 Brazilians as well! I then had a little over an hour break before heading back to campus for my Spanish class (which is held for 1 hour and 40 minutes, Monday-Thursday). I placed into an intermediate level Spanish, but was nervous about how it would go. We didn't cover much in the class, but took a quiz to determine if we should move up, stay, or move down a level. I am still feeling a little rusty on the listening part and I feel like I have missed out on A LOT of vocabulary, but we will see what Marc Garcia says about it!

The world truly is small. One of my friends Felicia who came on the trip through AIFS is from Cleveland and I met a girl in my Spanish class is from Ashland, Ohio and attends Ashland University.

Tomorrow I have my first Spanish Culture and Civilization class, so that will definitely be interesting. The Culture and Civilization class is taught on the beautiful campus of Sant Pau to which I have to take the metro, definitely not my favorite. Dale had the same class today and seemed to enjoy it, so I'm hoping it goes well for me too!

Our AIFS group decided in London that we would try to do family dinner certain nights a week. Tonight was our second family dinner in Barcelona and Dale and I once again failed miserably at making dinner and socializing. Our rice didn't cook and the corn was okay. We are definitely going to make a trip to the market soon! Hopefully we will make it to a family dinner at some point this semester, but at the rate we are going we will make it to the last one.

More on tomorrow's first day of classes and our cooking adventures later!

xoxo
Kelcey