Instruction here in Spain

I've been taking classes here at Alcalingua, a division of the Univerity of Alcala, for a month and a half and have said close to nothing about it.  Well, the classes here are pretty amazing.  There you have it folks.

For one, the instruction in class in completely in Spanish.  No English at all.  Maybe once a class a professor might use an english word to look smart, but aside from that nothing.  This works well for a couple of different reasons.  There are students of many different nationalities in class and not all of them speak English.  In my class alone there are people from Korea, China, Saudi Arabia, and America.  The Koreans and the Saudi Arabean speak hardly any English.  You could see how using English to explain the material would be problematic.  More than just the language problem, a Spanish only classroom means that everyone is immersed in Spanish.  You cannot escape it.  It is like being sucked into a black hole.  Of Spanish.

This black hole is fairly representative of the
immersion experience at Alcalingua.

By the way, the multicultural classroom makes everything a whole lot more fun.  I have learned a lot about different cultures just through talking to people around class.  Very awesome.  Did you know that Alchohol is illegal in Saudi Arabia?  I didn't before my classes.  Needless to say the Saudi Arabian students are very glad to be in Spain.  I also didn't know that many people moved from China to Spain either.  I thought I was just being random when I took Chinese and Spanish as foreign languages at MSU.  I never thought that there would be such a huge Chinese immigrant population in China.  Thanks Alcalingua!

Saudi Arabians enjoying being able to
buy alcohol legally in Spain

We take two classes a day five days a week.  The first is from 9-11 and the second is from 11:30-1:30.  The first class is strictly grammar while the second is conversation.  The grammar class is generally boring. I think that just goes without saying.  We mainly do worksheets during grammar class.  Conversational class is fairly exciting.  We discuss whatever.  By whatever, I mean anything is up for discussion.  We have discussed everything from our family lives to past drug experiences.  I was once asked how I flirted.  I was quite at a loss with how to proceed on that one.  The craziest class discussion happened the other day when we were talking about the word enrollarse.  This word means to bore someone by talking too much.  In typical conversational class fashion, we got side trekked onto something else.  Today's something was the word rollito, which means make out with someone for a night and then never acknowledge the person ever again.  In America, we would probably not discuss this word at all.  In Alcalingua we had one hour of class devoted to this very singular word.  After explaining what this word meant, the teacher went around to every student in class and asked how many times they have enrollado in their lives and in Spain.  This wasn't just a walk quickly around the room asking people to say you did it kind of thing.  It was a bit more like the inquisition: the teacher took a lot of time with each student and inquired until the person confessed to the correct amount.  There was one girl in class who very guiltily said that she had never had a rollito before.  The teacher was not convinced.  Another girl in class, out of nowhere, said that girl 1 had had two rollitos in Spain.  Girl 1 was ridiculously embarrassed to have the whole class find that out.  Later, when it was girl 2's turn to confess, girl 1 brought out fotos of girl 2's rollito.  Girl 2 was as mad as I have seen anybody in my life.  To ease the tension in the room, the teacher showed the picture to the whole class and had us judge how hot the girl's rollito was.  He was a 7.5, in case you were wondering.  It was the best class in my life.

Sonia: the face of the inquisition

Spain is a whole lot more open to discussing taboo topics than America.  Two seperate teachers on two seperate occasions have went around the class and asked each of us individually what our religions are.  This would never, ever happen in America.  In Spain, it happens quite frequently.  It is just something you discuss here, nothing more.  I really like that.  One day, I shared about my faith in Christ to the class.  To the teacher, this was just conversation class.  Nothing out of the ordinary.

One amazing fact about Spanish class is that it never starts on time.  If the teacher says that the break is 10 minutes long, you can be sure that class will start 15 minutes later. Everyday our 9am class starts at 9:10 and our breaks are always 5 to 10 minutes too long.  And the teachers don't mind it at all.  It is just a part of life here in Spain.  I wish my 9am teachers had the same easy going classroom philosophy.

For the past 2 weeks, I have also been learning Hebrew as well.  I met my teacher, Alonso, in Church 3 weeks ago.  We were just talking about the Bible, and it came up that Alonso knew Hebrew.  He then told me that he would like to teach me a bit of it.

Alonso, my Hebrew teacher

Did you know that Hebrew is ridiculously hard?  Ancient Israelites had a knack for creating super-difficult alfabets.  Although it is nothing as difficult as Chinese, it is still pretty rough.  I am grateful for his help in understanding this difficult but beautiful language.

By the way, it has been really cool to have real relationships with Spanish speaking people.  I took Spanish classes for the purpose of being able to communicate with and build relationships with people who speak Spanish but not English.  It has been so cool to be able to sit down on the bus with a complete stranger who only speaks Spanish and build a relationship with them.  I came here to Alcala to be able to do that better, and now I am beginning to see it happen.  Don't be afraid to take risks and talk to people you don't know.  All your best friends were once strangers. I would never have gotten to meet Alonso and many, many others if I had not gone up and started talking to them.  There, I'm through preaching.

Until next time,
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