Oh the dreaded final exams. Those started last Monday, but guess what? As of today I’m DONE! Woooooooooooooo I did it! I survived a semester of 4 classes with Spaniards taught about subjects I knew nothing about, in all Spanish! I passed all of my classes. Another Wooooooooooooooooo!!
At school at home we usually have a day or two of “study time” after classes end before finals start, where absolutely no exams are scheduled but here I ended classes May 17th and have study time since then. It was nice to actually pace myself for once.
Another difference between school in the USA and school in Spain is that if you fail the first exam you have a chance to take a different version of the exam about 3 weeks after the first one. Pretty sweet, huh? NOTE: this is only for students who are in special programs like mine that are in normal university classes, most study abroad programs aren’t like this.
I had four exams and one 7 page paper to write all within the last week and it’s so nice to be done. I did have one brain fart and thought my Contemporary Political Ideas exam was on Monday the 4th, but it ended up being on Friday the 1st. Thanks to my friend, Andre, I didn’t miss the exam and managed to study enough to pass with flying colors.
So what now? I don’t leave for the states until July 1st and have lots of adventures between now and three weeks from now. On Saturday I fly out to Mallorca, a small island in the Mediterranean Sea with my best friend, Sidney, for a relaxing beach/hiking vacation . Next Sidney and I meet up with our other best friend who will be studying in Rome for the summer to go to Greece for 5 days! Naturally we convinced her to come to Europe early so we could travel together. I’ll tell you “we could be like the girls in Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants!!!!!!!” and your friend can’t say no to coming to Greece. After that I meet my mom, dad and (newly graduated from high school) brother in Madrid for a whirlwind trip around Spain and Portugal.
The weather is perfect in Salamanca now. Hot, breezy and lots of sun. There has been an extreme influx of American students studying for a month of so… today I swear I heard more English than Spanish on the streets. Weird.
I’m getting so excited to go back to Knoxville, Tennessee. Not a homesickness excited, but a man I live in the coolest place at in the states and I can’t wait to take advantage of every coffee shop, hiking trail, music venue and bar (21 yeah yeah yeah!) and spend some Q.T. with my friends and family.
As for tonight, I’m going to celebrate being done with school by watching Coming to America– preparing myself for reverse culture shock, right?– and hit the hay early. I leave you with my view as I polished off my studying this afternoon. Life is too good.
lilyinspain 