Complutense

My classes are at the Complutense University on the edge of Madrid. There are 90,000 students spread out throughout the different schools, making it the largest in Spain and more than twice as big as Michigan. The campus is large and sprawling, covered with trees and really hideous specimens of 1970’s architecture. My class building (see picture) reminds me quite a lot of Communist apartment buildings in Baku. The funny things is, despite all of that, the campus really isn’t ugly. In fact, I think it’s quite pretty. I can’t under-emphasize the trees—there are so many of them and they are so lovely. There are oaks and sycamore and many fir trees, the delicate kind that only grow in hot places. Also, they don’t have gardens or landscaping on campus (though there is a large botanical garden), but the untended to hills and green spaces are filled with wild grasses, poppies and some kind of purple flower/weed. The wild grasses shine gold under the hot sun…I wait for class to start on a little hill in front of my class building, and looking behind me into the grasses and pines you would think I was in the countryside. I took a picture of myself for you to see how pretty it is (please note the golden grasses : ).

There are only 6 people in my class, and 7 teachers. In fact, the ‘teachers’ are composed of 3 professors and 4 grad students getting their masters in education. The odd thing is that all of them come to class—we have four hours of class a day, in a row, and all of them sit behind us through each class. Well, they take turns teaching the classes, so only 6 of them sit behind us at a given time. The teachers are all very lively and kind, and all speak very fast, “becauseSpanishpeoplespeakfast,so[we]needtolearntounderstandthematthatspeed.”

In the class there is one Russian (Valeria, 27, who never wears a bra, has permed, peroxide blond hair—dyed dark brown at the roots—whose fluorescent clothes were all purchased one size too small, and whose “life’s dream” is to own a pink Porsche), one Italian boy named GianPaolo (23, who was looking for a ‘girlfriend’ from the beginning and who has quickly taken to making out with Valeria in front of the classroom), Meital (who is 34, Israeli and very sweet, and whose name means “dew.” I’ve been spending quite a lot of time with her and her husband, who is here working on some kind of Masters degree in International law. Both of them are lawyers), Liv (a 26 year-old red-headed Norwegian nurse with dreadlocks and body-piercings), and finally Lala (an 18 year old girl from Baku who arrogantly declared on the first day that she speaks 5 languages fluently, among which English is her very best non-native language, but who can neither speak nor understand English. Example:

Me: “So Lala—do you have any brothers or sisters?”
Lala: (blink blink blink) “you do? Family is good.”
Me: “umm….so you do have siblings?”
Lala: “Yes, I want to have many child. My father is of 7 child.”
Me: “oh, I guess class is starting. It’s nice talking to you.”

Another striking feature about Lala: she has large, lovely wide-set eyes and a very large space between her eyes and eyebrows—she paints this space in the colors and shape of a peacock’s tail-feathers.