Sorry for another double post, but there really just wasn't much that happened either of these days so I decided to combine them. On Tuesday, we had our second to last day of class where a couple of our classmates gave their student presentations since they were leaving the next day. Then after class, I ventured home for lunch and to begin working on my own presentation. This was actually what I spent most of my day doing since I hadn't started my presentation yet and I was presenting it the next day, but more on that later. Around 8:30, I headed over to the Opera metro station to have dinner nearby at a restaurant called "El Excentrico" with my classmates. We had a four course dinner, which consisted of a round of tapas, some seafood paella, something very similar to pot roast, and then a chocolate hazelnut brownie for dessert. There was also a Flamenco show happening in the basement of the restaurant which we caught glimpses of when we would go downstairs to use the bathroom. I don't know if you've ever watched a Flamenco dancer before but it was REALLY intense. It's certainly not a happy dance. It seemed to embody struggle and hardship. It was very slow, with sudden spurts of rapid movement and lots of stomping and loud movement. I am definitely interested to see more though. My parents and I have planned a Flamenco pub crawl for next week, so hopefully I will have more information on that later. Dinner didn't get over until about 11:30, which meant I got home around midnight, which also meant that I was going to have to stay up super late (or early if you choose to see it that way) to finish up my presentation. Unfortunately, I only got about five hours of sleep that night, which was just enough for me to have a little bit of energy to present and then relax for the rest of the class until I could go home to sleep again.
The next morning came bright and early considering the lack of sleep I received. I was feeling about as prepared as I could be though, and volunteered early to do my final presentation in class. I think I had a pretty interesting presentation, although I'm sure it's not everyone's cup of tea. I decided to go through the history of Spain in its entirety and demonstrate this history through the art that has been produced over the years. I began with ancient times when there were cavemen who painted animals on the walls of the Altamira Cave on the northern coast of Spain, up through the Moorish reign from 711 AD to 1492 which ended when King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella conquered the Moors. I touched on the monarchical line which has some pretty interesting connections in other countries such as the youngest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella was Catherine of Aragon, who married King Henry the eighth of England who is infamous for his six wives and creating the Anglican church because the Catholic church wouldn't grant him a divorce. Then I talked about Spain's golden age that was filled with beautiful art, literature, and lots of riches coming in from the New World. I discussed the French occupation in Spain after their golden age petered out, which led to a revolt, independence, and then civil war in the 20th century. Then I wrapped it all up by discussing the Fascist dictator, Franco, who ruled Spain from the end of the civil war in 1939 to 1975, which was the year of his death, after which the monarchy was reinstated and a parliamentary system was put in place. And all of this was in much greater detail and in Spanish. It took about 20 minutes for me to get through my whole presentation which was significantly over the time limit but I suppose it was better to overprepare than to underprepare. This brings me to our palabra del dia. Since I was so prepared, you could say that I was "lista" which means that I was "ready" to take on my presentation. This word also in the masculine form, "listo," is a way that Spaniards describe a man who has a good job, is handsome, and very successful. So be careful how you use it! After I got home from class though, I was pretty exhausted and ready for a nap. I didn't even hear my alarm clock go off and ended up sleeping for almost four hours. So you could say I was pretty tired. I didn't really do much for the rest of the day though. Now that I finally was finished with my class, I decided to get all caught up on my blogs and begin planning what I was going to do next week when my family arrives in Madrid, only a mere three days from now!
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