Mañana

As I have been procrastinating writing my final paper (I have the worst case of senioritis right now), I have been messing around with the blog. Check out the new poll feature at the very bottom.

Grrr...finals

Classes are almost finished...now gearing up for finals. I have two final exams and a final paper. The paper is tough, since I would much rather just show up for a test and be done with it all. Hopefully I can hammer out the paper this weekend, touch it up Monday and have it turned in on Tuesday. It's only 6-8 pages. Finals shouldn't be too bad. The dialect variation class will be fairly easy and the theater class is just a matter of reviewing and studying really well over the weekend.
I'm heading off to the mountain house for the weekend, one last hurrah by the pool with my notes and enjoying Margarita's great food. Marcos and Sandra are going too, I'm actually riding with them Friday night instead of taking the bus out on Friday morning. A little less pool time, but a much more comfortable ride (and free!).

Más fotos

My awesome friend (and official personal graduation photographer) Karri sent me some of her pictures from graduation night. I probably won't get mine developed until I get home, so this is a sneak preview.

Here are all the masters graduates--all 8 of us, waiting for the ceremony to begin.

De marcha in Huertas. Me, Daniel, John and Kayce. John is the only one in this picture without a masters degree :)

The four graduates who went out after the ceremony. We were the four who weren't old women or ultra-conservative crazies, who probably stayed home praying for the souls of those of us who did go out to celebrate.

Karri and Susan. Karri was nice enough to use her feminine influence at the bar to get them to play a song by El Canto del Loco. Susan did the windshield wiper dance all night.

John and Kayce. Kayce was the only person crazy enough to choose poetry as his speciality area on the Masters exams.

Me with Kayce and Michael. Michael lives in Rome and works with the study abroad program that Duquesne University has there. Kayce is a modern day hobbitt.

Laura, Daniel and I celebrating our graduation. Perhaps a bit too much? Nah.

El niño

Soooo, apparently my son likes to cause trouble.
A couple weeks ago, he evidently pressed himself against Colleen's kidney area, causing a backup of fluid which led to a urinary tract infection. After about 10 antibiotic prescriptions, things seem to have cleared up. The nausea is back, painkillers are helping with the back pain, and I don't think there is room for me in the bed when I get back. It sounds like sleeping requires some complicated system of pillows and stuffed animals positioned in just the right places. Of course, this set-up has to be repeated after each of the several bathroom visits during the night. I almost forgot the heartburn that comes with eating anything, even plain toast and water has been known to cause some reflux at times.
On top of all this, his favorite position to be in is with his butt wedged as far as he can get it into Colleen's ribcage, which, I am told, is incredibly uncomfortable. But at least he takes a break from this position around 10pm every night to swim laps back and forth (and hopefully practice his fútbol moves!).
I also want to point out that any of this behavior causes him to immediately be labeled "my son", because any trait that causes his mother to be annoyed is my fault, of course.

Cojonudo

Tonight about 5 of us from the masters program went downtown here in Madrid. Placido Domingo was performing at the Royal Opera Theater and they were showing the concert on a big screen outside the theater in the plaza. If you know Madrid, you know that the Royal Opera Theater is just across the street from the Royal Palace. So there we were, in the plaza with the Royal Palace behind us, watching and listening to one of the greatest voices that has ever lived on an absolutely gorgeous night in Madrid. After the concert, there were fireworks, both from the roof of the opera house and from in front of the palace. It was amazing.
After the concert, we went for some tapas around Plaza Mayor. We just hung out for awhile, went to about two or three bars for a cerveza or two, then ended up having churros and chocolate at the best place for such a snack in Madrid, the chocolatería San Gines.
Now it's about 4:30 am and I am heading to bed so I can get up and work on my romanticism paper tomorrow.

A friend passed along her pictures from the evening, so I am attempting to put them here. This is my first time posting pictures, so be patient if things don't quite go as they should.

Top picture: Daniel, Susan, Kayce and I in the plaza before the concert.

Picture 2: The sun setting behind the Royal Palace

Picture 3: The fireworks at the end of the concert, a few feet away from where we were standing

Master of my Domain

Master being the degree and Spanish being the domain. Yep, passed the oral exam today with little problem (stupid linguistics and language acquisition theory). So all I have left is to finish my current classes. As far as that goes, two midterms down--93/100 on one and today's was suuuper easy. One more midterm on Wednesday, two presentations in class this week and then finals on the 30 and 31.
Graduation is on Thursday. Why the graduation ceremony occurs two weeks before classes are finished is a bit of a mystery. And ceremony is a bit of an overstatement. Basically, this things consists of all the masters students (about 50) and professors gathering in the patio of the classroom building here. They say who is graduating, the graduates get the chance to make a little speech if they want, and then there is food for everybody. I think there might be a small gift for the graduates, who knows. It also tends to change a bit from year to year. Hell, I just found out today that it is this Thursday. But it is a nice chance to have some free food and drinks, talk to the few other students who I can stand having a conversation with (usually complaining about the other students we can't stand), and getting to talk to some of the professors outside of class.
Updates on the homefront, baby issues and etc will be forthcoming, now that the comprehensive exams are out of the way.

Aprobado!

I passed!

So now with the written tests out of the way, the only thing standing between me and my masters degree now is the oral exam. Well, I have to pass my courses this summer, too, but you get the idea.
My oral test is on Monday at 4pm. That's 9am for you central timers. The good thing about that time is that I have a class at 5pm. The professor who teaches that class is the chairman of my jury. So I am guaranteed an oral exam of no more than one hour. So I have this weekend to study and prepare. The jury of three professors can ask me anything about any class I have taken in the past 4 summers here, including the classes I am currently taking. Today, I talked to the chair of the jury about what I should focus on and if there was any advice he could give me. He more or less told me the questions he would ask me about each of the four classes I have taken with him. So that was very helpful, especially since he taught the literary theory class that was the scariest in terms of remembering all of the theories and names, etc. He narrowed that class down considerably for me, so I am feeling much better about it now. So it's a question of studying everything and then not getting so nervous that I either forget it or lose the ability to speak.
And to top it all off, it is midterm. So I have a test tomorrow in my theatre class, another Monday morning in my dialects of Spanish class, and one more next Wednesday. 4 tests in one week--woohoo!

No more writing!

The wrriten Masters exams are done! Second day went about as well as the first, I rocked the first question, because I knew the book very well and also because it was the book we read and discussed last week in my Spanish Romanticism class! So after writing 3 1/2 pages on that, I moved onto the second question. Luck would have it that the second day the two latin-american lit questions were over books I had not gotten to on the list. But, knowing this the night before, I looked up some of them online and found lots of useful information. There was one author I couldn't find and one I could only find general info about, not really anything about the work of his that was on the list. Which two authors show up on the test? You guessed it. BUT--the wheel of fortune keeps spinning and one question was "Talk about the general aspects of Emilio Carballido's work and what makes it stand out". This was the author I could only find general information on, and the question was asking for general information! I threw in a couple examples from his one play on the reading list that I was able to find and wrote what I could.
So given that it is a pass/fail exam, I would say I passed. But I guess we will see when the results are posted later this week.
After the test, a bunch of us started drinking at a bar near the campus here in Madrid. It was about 11:45 when I started there, then we moved downtown around 4:30. I got home around midnight, because we called it a night early, thinking that 12 hours of straight drinking was good enough.
Today I am reading a play for class tomorrow and working on the presentation I have to give over it. I also plan on going out this afternoon somewhere to watch Rafael Nadal in the final of Wimbledon. ¡Vamos, Rafa!

One down, one (two?) to go..

Day 1 of Masters exams is now over. Today was the written test over the general reading list. I went in thinking: 6 questions, pick any three. Since the university doesn't like to share information with us, I found out today that the test was broken into areas. So the test was: Spanish peninsular literature-two questions, pick one; Spanish American lit--two questions, pick one, and Applied Linguistics, two questions, pick one.
This was completely different from how I studied the list. I was under the impression that I was going to be able to pick any questions, the majority of which would be on Spanish peninsular lit. But, I got a little lucky (a lot lucky actually).
The peninsular lit questions was a matter of choosing which one I could answer in more detail--I knew both easily.
The Spanish American section, I was lucky enough to have had one of the books in class last summer, so I answered that question with half of what I could remember from class and half of stuff I made up.
The linguistics section was a total curve ball. One question asked to compare two specific authors and their theories of second language teaching/acquisition. Yeah, right. The other one was discuss the differences between the Spanish used in Madrid and northern Spain vs. the Spanish of Souther Spain and the Americas. Cha-ching!! This was the topic of the past three days in my "Spanish in the World" class this summer.
So, a little bit of luck.

Tomorrow is the test over my chosen area of specialization, which is theater. I am currently conducting a quick cram session on the five Spanish American works on the list--just in case.
I'll find out next week if I passed the written exams. If I pass, then I have to sit for an oral exam over my coursework the past 4 years.
Wish me luck!

The Stones, the Gays, and the Tests

This past weekend in Madrid was an eventful one.
1. The Rolling Stones were in concert on Thursday night at the Estadio Vicente Calderón (home to my beloved Atlético de Madrid, 7th place in this year's Liga). They didn't sell out the joint, I think only about 30,000 tickets were sold. I thought about going, but then the idea of paying 70 euro and missing a night (and part of the next day) of studying deterred me. The next day, while the crew was tearing down the stage, two guys died and two more were seriously injured.
2. The past weekend was also gay pride weekend, or "Orgullo Gay" as they say here. Not only was it the traditional celebration in Madrid's gay district, Chueca, but this year Madrid was host to EuroPride, the gay pride celebration for, you guessed it, ALL of Europe. Huge parade right down the center of the city on Saturday afternoon.
3. I did not witness any of this. Since I have my huge comprehensive masters exams on Thursday and Friday, I fled the city for the weekend. When classes were over at 12:30 on Thursday, I packed my bag and headed to the mountain home of my Spanish family. I spent all weekend there, sitting by the pool rieading and studying, having wonderful home-cooked Spanish meals prepared for me. Afternoon café con leche and a snack, and a perfectly quiet place to study.
Now back in the city, just spent the evening having coffee and reading through my notes. Now I have to read the second half of a play for my theater class tomorrow. I will be VERY glad when this week is over!