America Looking In

October 1st

I had my "Relaciones Internacionales" class at 9:00 and left my apartment 15 minutes before to leave plenty of time to walk to class.  The class is interesting and I like the professor.  She speaks rapidly and many times finishes her sentences with a question and I miss it as I'm about 2 or three words behind.  I was still able to participate in class; disagreeing with a student who thought that all countries believed in human rights and asking some questions.  As I came to notice throughout the course of this class and the other classes throughout the day, is that the United States truly influences the rest of the world.  I've always known and read about America's vast influence in the world, but I never imagined a level quite this prevalent.  Neither good nor bad, the United States appeared in every one of the discussions during the day as a benign force, an outside variable that seems to have a hand in some part of every country and region.  Seeing this kind of presence and power, I understand how important it is for my country to act responsibly in the world.  The most salient issue at the moment is of course the economic crisis that has the potential (and already is) to affect the rest of the world.  Many of the other students and professors have never met an American and I'm doing my best to a good ambassador for my country.

The rest of my classes went well.  After class, I picked up syllabi from the "fotocopiadora" and then went back to my apartment to cook lunch. 

We hung out the rest of the afternoon until that evening at around 10:00 when we went out for tapas before the Erasmus party that would be starting later that night.  "Erasmus" constitutes any student from an EU member state that is studying abroad in another EU country.  I'm not an Erasmus student, but I get invited to their myriad of social events as my two apartment mates are German Erasmus students.  Tonight was a "Mexico" theme party at the one Mexican food resident in the city.  We cruised a few tapas restaurant with our international crowd of Spaniards, Erasmus students, and Californians.  The Erasmus party was fun and I talked with a lot of different kids from all over Europe.  I didn't have class until 5:30pm the next day so I wasn't worried about going out on a school night.  The weekend here in Granada starts more or less on Tuesday night and goes straight through until Sunday afternoon.  Monday is a slow day but there is always something going on.