{"id":1801,"date":"2024-02-29T17:02:02","date_gmt":"2024-02-29T17:02:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/?p=1801"},"modified":"2024-02-29T17:02:02","modified_gmt":"2024-02-29T17:02:02","slug":"la-universidad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/2024\/02\/29\/la-universidad\/","title":{"rendered":"La Universidad"},"content":{"rendered":"

Universidad, as you might guess, translates to university. Sounds fancy, right? A few times, I\u2019ve made the mistake of calling it \u201ccollege.\u201d I didn\u2019t realize that \u201cel colegio,\u201d which looks like college, doesn\u2019t have the same significance that it does in the States. In general, \u201ccolegio\u201d refers to any schooling. \u201cUniversidad\u201d means a third-level education that comes after high school and is geared towards a specific degree.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I go to Universidad de Antonio de Nebrija in Madrid. I\u2019m taking four classes in Spanish. The first one is \u201clengua espanola,\u201d which literally means Spanish language. (No, they don\u2019t capitalize it.) This is my only class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We tend to focus on grammatical topics that aren\u2019t necessarily verb tenses, concepts like \u201cser vs estar\u201d and \u201cpor vs para.\u201d In another class, specific grammar problems, so far, we\u2019ve been focusing on verb tenses. After a quick review of the imperative (commands), we\u2019ve spent a lot of time forming the past tense. It doesn\u2019t seem like it would be difficult, but when there are four different tenses to speak about the past, sometimes it can be a bit confusing. This is my first class on Mondays and Wednesdays. Right after, I have \u201cpanorama de la literatura espanola.\u201d Most of these words are cognates: panorama of Spanish literature. I expected this class to be the most difficult for me. I expected to have to read entire novels and interpret complex poems. So far, this is one of my favorite classes. Our teacher does a fantastic job of explaining the historical context of a few literature works. Then we read a part, and she explains the rest of it. My last class is \u201cArte en el Museo Prado\u201d. We focus on three specific artists and learn about the eras in which they painted. We get to talk about and critique art and even go to the Prado Museum three times.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Each week, we have three hours of each class, which is equal to 12 credits in the US. This is the least amount of college classes\/credits I\u2019ve taken. I have so much free time that I sometimes don\u2019t know what to do. I have time to journal and watch Netflix! My latest class goes until 1:30, while some students don\u2019t finish their school days until 7:30 at night. I have the entire afternoon and evening to do homework and explore the city. Not only am I taking fewer classes, but the homework load is a lot lighter. Some classes, like lengua espanola and grammar problems, assign homework every class period. Luckily, this homework takes maybe half an hour, depending on the topic and number of activities.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After classes, finding things to do that feel productive but require spending money can be challenging. Occasionally, we go to a cafe to have a different atmosphere while we journal or do homework. On other days, if the weather is nice, we walk around to nearby \u201cbarrios\u201d or neighborhoods. Sometimes we walk to the shopping street and browse stores (and buy clothes). The best part about the schedule is that we only have classes four days a week, and on Thursdays, we end at 10:30. Because of this, we can make travel plans, even to visit other countries. Recently, we went to Portugal for the weekend and could take the cheaper bus option because of the time we had on Thursday. I\u2019m planning a few more weekend trips in the future, too.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So far, I\u2019m loving so much about Madrid, and I\u2019m excited to be here another three months! <\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0 \u00a0 \"\"\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Universidad, as you might guess, translates to university. Sounds fancy, right? A few times, I\u2019ve made the mistake of calling it \u201ccollege.\u201d I didn\u2019t realize that \u201cel colegio,\u201d which looks like college, doesn\u2019t have the same significance that it does in the States. In general, \u201ccolegio\u201d refers to any schooling. \u201cUniversidad\u201d means a third-level education […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7Lhdr-t3","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1801"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1801"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1807,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1801\/revisions\/1807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}