School Finally Starts (Las clases empiezan por fin)

It has been a long time coming, but this past Monday, I finally started my spring semester.  I have to get up on time, get dressed properly, take the bus to school, everything.  Still, it was a welcome event, something to give structure to my days.  Also, I know going to class is going to help my Spanish dramatically.

Class starts at 9:10 and ends at 12:10 and is divided into two parts, grammar and conversacion (gramatica y instrucciones orales).  Our grammar professor is maybe the best professor I have ever had.  He has more energy than anyone I have ever taken a class from.  During class, he jokes, sings, slaps people with rulers, sits on desks and sweats.  He gives people nicknames and calls them up to the blackboard for writing, all while he pretends he is holding a mic and gives play-by-play.  But Manuolo is also a genius at making the sometimes difficult concepts of spanish gramm

ar comprehensible, which mnonic devices and other things.  We all love his class.

After a short break, we then have conversation, which is ironically with a much quieter (callada) lady named Susanna.  She is a little harder to understand, but still explains things well and I think does a good job.  In conversation class, we practice speaking (always humorous) and learning how to talk in conversational ways (duh, claro). 

The only thing that frustrates me is that we are unable to practice more as group members.  It's just much easier to talk in English to each other, so we do, with some simple Spanish thrown in.  I am hoping that this changes as we grow more comfortable with the language.

Now, in Spain, people live in what are called pisos, or flats, apartments.  Very few people have more than one floor, but there are exceptions.  Like large cities in America, usually the bottom floor of every building is a business of some kind, and there are tons of businesses- this place is a shopper's paradise.  The second floor is either used by the businesses or is more like office space for lawyers and doctors and etc.  After that, you have where people live. 

 I take an elevator up to the fifth floor everyday to get to my piso.  I imagine that houses vary somewhat, but mine has a living room/dining room off to the right as you enter the piso.  Going forward from the door and two the left is a narrow hallway, with the kitchen (cocina), office (despacio), and bathroom (cuarto de bano).  At the end of the hallway is another office (my

 Senor y Senora have seperate ones), and the two bedrooms across from one another.  It's small, but plenty of space for 3 people and easy to get around.  I like it alot, but it is such a change from the newness and spaciousness that I am used to.