Monday, December 8, 2008

A Solo, Hour and a Half Presentation in Spanish About the "Social Class Hierarchy of the United States."

December 1st.

This first day of December, the star of what will be my fourth month in Spain, was a lot of fun.

I boiled water in a large pot to take a sponge bath as our shower is still flooding.  

In class, something had newly clicked with the language as I felt that I understood almost everything in regards to the professors' lectures in Relaciones Internacionales and Historía Politica Social Contemporanea.

My friend Jonathan Garvey, with whom I'll be traveling to Prague, came with me to Salsa class as he is interested in enrolling.  It was a good class as usual.

I had lunch in Plaza Trinidad with my friend Ashley who is also in the salsa class and then went back to my piso to recheck that I had everything that I would need for my presentation (I took my large California flag with me to use as an extra prop).

Análisis de Políticas Públicas was a good class although I left 5 minutes early to set up my project.  I was glad I had brought my computer as the school's version of powerpoint wouldn't open many of my visual effects.

In the end, I think my presentation went really well.  I was presenting on the "Social Class Hierarchy of the United States" and then was expected to talk about my own life in America.   I basically read my notes for the first half and then talked about growing up in the United States for the second.  I then had about an half an hour question and answer session in which I fielded questions from the audience ranging from Universal Health Care to Pop Culture (one of the girls came up to me after class and asked if "Prom was real?").  I received a big applause and the professor shook my hand.  After cleaning up, I went down to read in  the library until it closed.

Back home I made dinner and talked to Nathalie about her trip Madrid.  I sent some messages to different "couch surfers" as Blake and I want to minimize our cost in Italy.  Before going to bed, Alberto and I made a "free style rap" with the garage band music program on my computer.  It took us about 20 minutes and is pretty good.

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