first and second impressions

Waiting for class to start. 16.00...16.05...16.10. I was joking with the girl next to me that everything starts late in Spain, even an hour-long class. A person of athority entered the room, said something that I didn't catch, and everyone stood up. In my haste and surprise I asked, "What'd he say?" She answered, "I don't know." She's from Belgium. She speaks Spanish, which was what we were conversing in, Irish, French, and English. She writes notes like a court reporter and is taking all the classes at Universidad de Sevilla that I thought about taking, including the two that i'm currently trying out: Teatro Hispanoamericano y El Relato Hispanoamericano.

Apparently there was some problem (if I understood right) with the heating/cooling in the other room. No one bothered to tell the class that the room changed. I have a friend whose professor hasn't bothered to show up to class for the past two days, but the school claims the class is still going on. Despite these organizational hiccups, Spaniards seem to take their classes as seriously as the desks we sit in. They're horrid enclosed rows of straight-backed wooden fold up chairs and skinny wooden desks that lack the room for anyone to scoot past you. Not to say the classes are horrid. They're very interesting, and the class sits there scribbling furiously and listening completely, not chewing gum or sleeping like the normal American classroom.

The professor's a middle-aged Spanish man with black hair and a goatee. Bueno, he might not actually be Spanish, but Latin American like the subjects he teaches. Yesterday he came to class (ten minutes late, of course) wearing a black suit, a maroon dress shirt, a red belt, carrying a red briefcase. I've noticed that Eurpean men, even professors, have a considerable sense of style. Without talking he pulled a big stack of crisp, white sillabi out of his briefcase and started passing them out. He counted every student in each row to make sure there were enough. I could understand most of what was going on, but the bibliography still boggles my mind because there are about 20 different books on it, a couple of which he highlighted while he was talking. There is one test at the end of the semester that determines my grade. Despite all this, the classes fascinate me, and this semester I actually have the time to enjoy them.