USA, u-u-u-USA!

Cool New York Times blog about the capital:

E Pluribus Unum

El Campeonato

Of the Barcelona Ultimate Frisbee Fall League. That’s right, De Puta Madre beat Churros 10-8. A great game played in a misty night under the lights. I scored a couple of points and threw the game-ender.
Frisbee puts me in such a better mood, you know?
And now to work- I have a presentation to give in my 9 AM Medieval History class tomorrow. The topic is too risque for the blogosphere (hate/love that word) so if you want details, hit me up in private.

Also, I’d like to welcome the female side of my family to Barcelona: My mother and grandmother flew in from STL this morning and Haley (middle sister) flies in tomorrow morning.

What I’ve learned about European education

Two concepts of which I had previously had no knowledge: Erasmus and Bologna process.

Erasmus is the system of study abroad for EU citizens.  It’s actually an acronym, standing for “European Region Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students.”  Personally, I’m shocked that the acronym works out so well.  The predecessor was the Socrates program, but that didn’t have a cool acronym, so they got a new one.

So European students at one University in the program can go to any other program University in Europe (there are 2,199) and take classes, easily bringing the credits back home.  Also, the tuition stays the same even when going abroad, and there are a lot of scholarships/extra help for Erasmus students.  It’s pretty cool how universally the term is used and how typical it is for students to “do an Erasmus”.

During my medieval history class today, a Barcelona student sitting behind our row of Americans asked us where we were from, and told us she was planing on “doing an Erasmus in the US, just like we’re doing here”.  I sometimes classify myself (mistakenly) as an Erasmus student, especially when talking to professors who don’t know what “The Consortium” is.  Also, Erasmus people have better parties, with themes like “Mexican” or “Brazilian”.  Aley and I contemplated crashing the Erasmus trip to the Dalí museum, only to realize that the Consortium is doing the same trip, just later in the year.

Going hand in hand with Erasmus is the treaty that allowed for the standardization of classes/credit systems, the Bologna Treaty.  It was signed in 1999, with the goal that in 2010, Universities across Europe will have a more “American” system of education.  In the past, Spanish classes were all lecture and one final exam at the end.  If a student didn’t do well on this exam, they would be able to study over the summer and retake the exam.

Now, classes are slowly becoming more “Bolonya” (as spelled at the overwhelmingly Catalan Universitat Autonomo de Barcelona).  There are consistent exams and some midterms, and papers due along the way.  Written all over the walls at UAB are slogans such as “Stop Bolonya” and some nonsensical numbers.

From my point of view, the Bolonya classes still haven’t reached the level of consistent accountability that American colleges have.  I can understand the wish of Spanish students to stop the process; however, if it’s 2009 and the Bologna treaty hasn’t been overruled yet, perhaps they should move on to the next protest.

The Bologna process standardizes all universities into the ECTS (credit transfer system) so that one university can understand how much effort goes into one class and so the ERASMUS program can easily function.  Coming from Brown U., which doesn’t do any credit system (30 classes to graduate), I still do not understand what credits truly mean.  All I know is that my medieval history class is 6 ECTS credits.

So that’s what I’ve learned so far, and figured it to be an interesting contrast with our system.  Now perhaps I should actually learn what I’m supposed to be learning, instead of this silly meta-learning.

I caved.

Sunday morning, Emmy and I woke up around noon, with an intense mutual desire for Meeting Street Cafe, on Brown’s campus.  We wanted brunch food, American food and free refills

So for dinner that night (at the American dinnertime of 7 at night instead of the Spanish 10 at night), we went to Hard Rock Cafe, in Plaça Catalunya.

It ended up being Emmy, Aley, Dana and I.  Dana and I had our inaugural Hard Rock visit.  To cure our choque cultural woes, it did not disappoint.

We ordered milkshakes, sodas, hamburgers (with bacon and cheese) and french fries.

This is what I ate. And it was good.

So what if it was way more expensive than what it should’ve been? It was a magnificent dinner, and *bonus* there were leftovers for lunch today.

Celebrity, Consortium style

So as many people know, I love the game Celebrity, learned when I visited my sister Mallory at Middlebury.

Basically, it’s a multi-round game of taboo/charades. Every member of the two teams writes down 10 celebrities/well-known people and puts them into a bowl. The team members alternate pulling names out of the bowl and getting their teams to guess the character names. In the first round, the actor can use as many words/actions as possible. The second round, the actor can only use one word. The third round is charades: no words.

So I had wanted to play the game with my friends in the program for a little while, knowing that everyone in la Residencia Onix would be appropriately competitive and spirited. We played tonight, as a primer to going out in Barcelona, and had a blast.

For the first time in the recent history of Celebrity with Paige Hicks, my team won. Even better, everyone enjoyed the game and had a blast. I love sharing my favorites with others.

sick vid

Inappropriate?

In an application essay discussing my drive and passion, I seem to have typed, “My passion is like the swine flu: communicable”

Rain, rain, go away

Barcelona is raining like Providence right now. I do not have my rainboots.

FC Barça game

FC Barcelona 1 – FC Rubin Kazan 2

They sell non-alcoholic beer at FCB’s Camp Nou sporting events.

New Fave

Mika Choco-Swing chocolate bar.
Basically, it’s a layer of milk chocolate, then a biscotti, then cream, then another layer of chocolate. It looks like some sort of inverted s’more and tastes like awesomeness.

THIS IS IT!!!

In other news, I’m pretty sore from the race yesterday. Delayed onset muscle soreness is my nemesis.