Week One of University Classes

I was able to find out this week what university classes are like in another country. I am taking two classes at the University of Granada. One is called ¨Sociology of the Religions¨ and as for my other class....well that is still being figured out. I am enrolled in a class called ¨Introduction to the Music of Al-Andalus¨ which is a class about music during the Arab reign of Spain. It seemed interesting until I went to the class both days last week and the professor launched into two lectures about ideas and concepts that I don´t even think I could understand in English, let alone in her rapid Spanish. She was writing arabic words on the board and it was so hard to follow what she was saying. Another one of my friends from the University of Michigan is also in the class and he has been just as lost as me. I think for the sake of my sanity I need to find another class. I tested out another class that seemed interesting and ran into just the same problems. It was called ¨Technoscience, Culture and Medicine.¨ I thought it would be intertesting since my major is medicine and science -related. However, there were 8 people in the class and most were native spanish speakers. There were three American girls but one had been here since September and could understand/speak well and the other one had only been in Granada for three weeks but was very good at spanish. We had to split into two groups of 4 to discuss a list of questions about our opinion on many different challenging questions (that once again I could barely think of a sentence to defend my opinion in English, let alone contribute anything positive to the conversation in Spanish). So I don´t think that is the answer to my problem. I have all of next week to change classes so I am going to keep looking for more options.
It was a frustrating week. We are all hitting the point in our trip where it is just frustrating to not be able to fully communicate with people. It was ok to completely struggle for the first month but now it just seems irritating. Oh well, we will all keep plugging away and keep practicing. It doesn´t help that the beautiful weather we were having for over a month seems to have disappeared for a while. It has been cloudy, gray, and rainy for the past three days! No fun!! But I won´t complain too much since it is not snowing or below 20 degrees outside.
Well that´s about it for now from Spain. I hope everyone is doing well! I can´t believe February is almost gone! Time is just flying by!
Emily