First Day of (Real) School

So today was slightly terrifying. Because today I had to begin classes at the actual university, not the silly culture-conversation-grammar classes I took with International Courses when I first got here. And I swear, I was more afraid to go across town to my first class than I was to get on the plane.

The street my music classes are on–I was too nervous to take a closer photo!

But the first class went really well. I know that I definitely didn't understand everything he was saying, but I got most of it. And when he asked me a question in front of the whole class, I was actually keeping up enough to answer it. Even if I didn't know how to say trumpet. Turns out it's trompeta so I felt really smart after that, but at least I wasn't that foreign kid who's just like "uh…" the whole time. And I made friends with a girl from Granada and another girl from Salamanca. Win.
The other fun thing about being an exchange student is that errybody knows who you are, because the professor always asks you something about where you're from or what kinds of music classes you've had before (uh, roughly none), but no one else. My second class was a lot more terrifying than the first, partially because the professor asked what kinds of musicology classes I'd taken and I had to say basically none, and we actually started on the material. Here's a fun fact: the Spanish don't take notes like Americans. Most of them had notebooks with either blank sheets or graph paper (I was the only one with a lined notebook) and instead of bullet points, they basically write out entire sentences. It's insane, I do not understand how they do it. I couldn't even do that in English!!
But on my way home, while in my Spanish-fog-headache, I overheard some lost American tourists, so I stopped to help them out. I was basically the farthest thing from helpful, since I had no idea where the restaurant they were looking for was, but we totally had a small-world moment when I found out that one of them was from Steamboat Springs, CO! Plus, her daughter is best friends with one of my sorority sisters! Plus, that sorority sister is currently studying abroad in Sevilla, another town in Spain. Small world indeed.