Strikes
Courtyard at Uni
Following the
University strike last Thursday and a bank holiday on Friday, I was intrigued
when I arrived to class this Tuesday and heard my classmates talking about a
strike that was apparently happening this week: Tuesday - Thursday. To my knowledge, the strike didn't end up happening, but I've begun to wonder
whether it's some kind of conspiracy to give me an extra day off per
week, in addition to my already three-day weekend. If it's not a university
strike, it's a bank holiday, and if it's not a bank holiday or university
strike, it's a metro strike...
Maybe I'm
exaggerating slightly, but the frequency of these strikes has caused numerous
debates in class, and has led my Literature teacher into a little rant about
the fact that the word for strike in Catalan - vaga - shouldn't be
used to replace the Spanish word huelga, and how he doesn't want
to hear his students using the Catalan word while speaking Spanish. This
sounded more like something my Spanish Grammar teacher would say as she
diligently teaches us how to correctly speak and write the language, in an
attempt to turn us into an army of little grammatically-perfect robots. In
her class I have learnt many useful things, such as the fact that hippy
should be written jipi, the plural of barman is bármanes,
and that the Real Academia Española - i.e. the people who write the rules
of Spanish - recommend Spaniards not to pronounce Shakespeare as if they were
copying English pronunciation, but rather as if it were a Spanish word: "shack
- ay - spi - are - ay".
Despite some of the
weird things we seem to cover, I do enjoy her classes, which always start 15
minutes late as she falls into the classroom with her bag and books, reminding
us of the 'quart d'hora academic': the fifteen minutes break at the beginning
of the class for us to change classroom, or down a quick coffee. It was in her
class I had my first class test: 4 paragraphs of unaccented text, on which
we had to put the accents. Here in Spain marks are out of 10, and for this test
one mark was deducted for each mistake. My mark - 2/10 - made me glad that
Leeds doesn't count our marks for our year abroad, but also made me realise I
still have far to go to become a grammatically perfect robot.
Free Furniture
In Spain, the
equivalent of Christian Unions is Grupos Bíblicos Universitarios -
GBU for short. I've been going to some of their international meetings which
are held at my friend Indi's house, up on her roof terrace! The furniture
on the terrace is an amazing mix of everything, bit and bobs put together from
pieces of furniture that I think they've found on the streets, as every now
then people put furniture they no longer want out on the pavement to be
recycled. One of my favourites
is the table which is made up of a bath tub, with a pallet and a sheet of glass
on top, and bricks at the bottom to keep it stable.
GBU: International Group!
On the way to GBU this
week I saw a pile of furniture on the pavement and there was a little
chair/stool that I thought might be useful up on the terrace. I got some
strange looks on the metro, but it proved useful even before it reached its new
home as I had somewhere to sit while I was waiting for the metro :).
Cakes
Cakes!
And finally, I have been waiting for an excuse to make cakes for a while now, and this week was my flatmate Maite's Saint's Day! I don't think these days are celebrated here as much as they used to be; according to wikipedia, at one time they were more celebrated in Spain and Latin America than birthdays. However, you do congratulate the person - "Felicitats!" - and then maybe they have a meal or a small celebration with their family. Apparently my Saint's day - Santa Raquel - is September 2nd, the same day as Íngrid's! As for the cakes, the supermarket had all the ingredients I needed except for icing sugar, so I had to resort to a ready made packet of icing with an attached piping set...
Strikes
Strikes
 |
| Courtyard at Uni |
Following the
University strike last Thursday and a bank holiday on Friday, I was intrigued
when I arrived to class this Tuesday and heard my classmates talking about a
strike that was apparently happening this week: Tuesday - Thursday. To my knowledge, the strike didn't end up happening, but I've begun to wonder
whether it's some kind of conspiracy to give me an extra day off per
week, in addition to my already three-day weekend. If it's not a university
strike, it's a bank holiday, and if it's not a bank holiday or university
strike, it's a metro strike...
Maybe I'm
exaggerating slightly, but the frequency of these strikes has caused numerous
debates in class, and has led my Literature teacher into a little rant about
the fact that the word for strike in Catalan - vaga - shouldn't be
used to replace the Spanish word huelga, and how he doesn't want
to hear his students using the Catalan word while speaking Spanish. This
sounded more like something my Spanish Grammar teacher would say as she
diligently teaches us how to correctly speak and write the language, in an
attempt to turn us into an army of little grammatically-perfect robots. In
her class I have learnt many useful things, such as the fact that hippy
should be written jipi, the plural of barman is bármanes,
and that the Real Academia Española - i.e. the people who write the rules
of Spanish - recommend Spaniards not to pronounce Shakespeare as if they were
copying English pronunciation, but rather as if it were a Spanish word: "shack
- ay - spi - are - ay".
Despite some of the
weird things we seem to cover, I do enjoy her classes, which always start 15
minutes late as she falls into the classroom with her bag and books, reminding
us of the 'quart d'hora academic': the fifteen minutes break at the beginning
of the class for us to change classroom, or down a quick coffee. It was in her
class I had my first class test: 4 paragraphs of unaccented text, on which
we had to put the accents. Here in Spain marks are out of 10, and for this test
one mark was deducted for each mistake. My mark - 2/10 - made me glad that
Leeds doesn't count our marks for our year abroad, but also made me realise I
still have far to go to become a grammatically perfect robot.
Free Furniture
In Spain, the
equivalent of Christian Unions is Grupos Bíblicos Universitarios -
GBU for short. I've been going to some of their international meetings which
are held at my friend Indi's house, up on her roof terrace! The furniture
on the terrace is an amazing mix of everything, bit and bobs put together from
pieces of furniture that I think they've found on the streets, as every now
then people put furniture they no longer want out on the pavement to be
recycled. One of my favourites
is the table which is made up of a bath tub, with a pallet and a sheet of glass
on top, and bricks at the bottom to keep it stable.
 |
| GBU: International Group! |
On the way to GBU this
week I saw a pile of furniture on the pavement and there was a little
chair/stool that I thought might be useful up on the terrace. I got some
strange looks on the metro, but it proved useful even before it reached its new
home as I had somewhere to sit while I was waiting for the metro :).
Cakes
|
| Cakes! |
And finally, I have been waiting for an excuse to make cakes for a while now, and this week was my flatmate Maite's Saint's Day! I don't think these days are celebrated here as much as they used to be; according to wikipedia, at one time they were more celebrated in Spain and Latin America than birthdays. However, you do congratulate the person - "Felicitats!" - and then maybe they have a meal or a small celebration with their family. Apparently my Saint's day - Santa Raquel - is September 2nd, the same day as Íngrid's! As for the cakes, the supermarket had all the ingredients I needed except for icing sugar, so I had to resort to a ready made packet of icing with an attached piping set...
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