The new and improved

Well, the first blog post I made for this blog was a rather philosophical and non-traditional post where I just explained what I was thinking.  Most of the posts will be about school and other things happening in my life, especially my upcoming trip to Valencia, Spain with the SDSU Modern Languages Department.  I am very excited and I actually have a class meeting for this trip in about an hour.

This post I would like to actually give some insight on the trip and what I have done so far to lead up to the trip.  There are 13 of us traveling to Valencia, and this trip will be from May 12- June 15, 2011, so exactly one month from now, we will be leaving.  We are doing home-stay while we are there, and my host-mother's name is Sefa, a somewhat elderly woman that has seven children and from what I've read and heard, has grandchildren as well.  She lives in the center of Spain so that should be an awesome location for getting around.  The plan is that we will be studying Spanish in groups with the company called EUROACE.  We will be in classes from 8am-noon or 1pm I believe, so this trip is not completely a vacation.  Also, we have many events, tours, and visits planned, including trips to Madrid and Barcelona, and wednesday night activities in Valencia.

We have been meeting for our orientation class on Tuesday nights at 8pm and Saturday mornings at 8am since Spring Break.  We only have three more class meetings.  We have to make a presentation on a topic we choose at the beginning of orientation class and also write a 5-page research paper on our topic.  My topic is the physical, political, and economic geography of Spain, and I have already given my presentation, but I still have to write the paper.

The trip is going to be a blast.  Every week I get more anxious and excited about the trip.  I have never been out of the country, so this should be a unique experience.  Until then, I have tons of work coming up for my classes before finals.  Finals week is May 2-6, but I'm done with my finals May 4, Wednesday morning.  However, I still have a 2-page reaction paper, 5-page independent study, 15-minute final research project with statistics, an 8-10 minute presentation in Spanish about a hispanic artist (musician, painter, architect, etc), a GIS final module, 5-page paper for Spain, and 3 finals.  It was exhausting making that list, but it will be more exhausting doing all that work. Wish me luck! Nos vemos!