11/8/10 to 11/12/10= Just Another School Week

Nothing too exciting happened this week.  We got a few of the exam scores back and there was a wide range of scores on the midterms.  It is hard to judge what the scores actually mean since they use a different grading system over here.  They use a scale from 1 to 10.  For the US grading system, a 6 or lower would be failing, but I don’t think it is the same over here, because a lot of other students got fives, sixes and sevens.  I’m pretty sure the directors of the programs just make up our grades at the end, because the professors give them our exams and papers after they grade them, but I think that these only serve as “guidelines” for our actual grades. 

            I started and finished my first essay this week!  I have 2 essays due by December 1^st and another by December 9^th.  Three 10 page papers is not that bad I guess, since I haven’t had any other work this semester.  This first paper was about the reforms of the eighteenth century of Spain.  During the eighteenth century, the Bourbons (a French royal family) took the thrown from the Habsburgs.  The Bourbons reformed a lot of things, especially under Carlos III, helping to modernize the government and economy in the country.  That is my brief English summary of the paper I wrote in Spanish.  One down, two more to go…

            Friday, I worked on my paper some more in the morning.  No one was really around to do anything.  Half the kids were on trips this weekend and the other half were retaking the Pre-semester course final exam.  I didn’t have to retake the exam, but I met up with some people once they got out.  Emily and I walked around Las Ramblas and stopped in a gelato shop.  I got a gofra (waffle) with caramel syrup and whipped cream.  She got a crepe with nutella and bananas.  I’m saving my crepe experience for Paris.  We then went to the festival in Raval.  Raval is a part of Barcelona that has a large immigrant community.  Many of them come from Morocco or northern Africa.  The festival is meant to bring the immigrants together with the Spanish community, by allowing them to share their cultures with one another.  We caught the end of a Bollywood concert.  From there, I headed home for the night.