March 24

Hola todos
Today is March 24th, and we all know what that means. Well, maybe you don´t, so I´ll tell you anyway. Today is the 2 month mark from when I arrived in Madrid. It seems like I just wrote a blog exclaiming over how quickly one month had gone by, and now I´m already here again at two months. I think this second month has been a lot less eventful, with more school and less traveling. But it sure has flown by! I think the routine of school has probably had a hand in that. Time seems to mush together when it´s all the same thing day after day. Luckily there are plenty of weekends to have crazy adventures! :) I´m looking ahead in the calendar and realizing that I don´t even have two months of school left! I´m past the halfway point of Madrid (but not of Europe!), and I feel like I just got here! Well, in some ways. In other ways it feels like I´ve been gone for ages. This next month will be fun, because it includes spring break (Budapest, Vienna, Salzburg, and Milan) and Easter, for which I´m hoping to find a mass to go to. I don´t think there are protestant churches in Madrid. At least, not that I´ve found. But it should be cool to see a Spanish Easter service. I don´t know if Manuel and Rosaura will go to church, but if they do I´ll see if I can tag along. It will be weird not to be with my family for Easter. That´s never happened before. And I bet there are no Easter baskets in Spain! Sad! Oh well. I´m getting ahead of myself. It´s still March, and I have plenty of time before then.
Speaking of looking ahead, I got my scheduling information for next semester and, as always, its an absolute disaster. There is only one Spanish class offered that I haven´t taken, and it conflicts with a music class that I absolutely have to take in order to graduate, that won´t be offered again for four semesters. So I don´t know if I´m going to be able to take any Spanish classes next semester, which seems to bode ill for my Spanish major. I don´t need any more credits for that one, and I could take two classes next semester to get all the requirements in, but I feel like I don´t want to skip a semester of Spanish, especially right after I get back from Spain. And if I don´t take it, I´ll be taking exclusively music classes. Now, there´s nothing really wrong with that, but I´m not sure how many classes outside of my major I´m supposed to have, so I´m a little wary about that. There is one class in particular, a theatre class on costumen construction and design, that I really really want to take, but it conflicts with not one, but two of my other classes. It´s a MTW class, and I have a class on MWF and another on TR at that same time. Go figure. And I´m most likely going to be jumping into a Conducting II class even though I haven´t taken conducting I (which is offered this semester, of course. I talked with the prof and she thinks I could probably learn enough on my own over the summer to not be completely lost), but I really want to take a conducting class, since I want to have a choir some day. I´m also debating taking Orchestration, which doesn´t conflict with anything, but that class looks hard and that might put me over the limit credit wise. It´s all a huge mess. I emailed my Spanish advisor this morning begging advice, but he hasn´t gotten back to me yet (I suppose I´ll forgive him since it´s not even 8:00am there!). I wish there could be one semester in my entire life where scheduling wasn´t a disaster! Why does Ripon College hate me so?!
Well, that´s enough ranting for one post. I´m sure more will come later. ;)
Bethany