UB, Mills, Hate, Love

Up until a couple weeks ago, I'd been functioning under the belief that the realization about my not being in Kansas (read: Mills College sanctuary of estrogen) anymore had finally touched down in my psyche.
That is, until I had to confront the duct-taped hash of plumbing that is the Universitat de Barcelona in general and its art department in particular. I've already written about AWOL professors, but I hadn't yet gotten around to my two-week human anatomy course. The class had so many students that the professor morphed into a biter snake. Country mouse that I am, I kept approaching her with questions only to be forced to retreat from her snapping jaws.
Okay, exaggeration. Yes. She's calmed down and adjusted her expectations a bit since the first couple days of class. So have I. And that experience was nothing compared to what I went through the other day while trying to add a fourth class to my schedule. Lucky for me the professor took pity on me in the end and allowed me to register in his sculpture class. I guess even he couldn't stand to watch me get passed from person to utterly clue-less person any longer.

The sculpture class is more entry level than my other two classes, though no less based on student autonomy. Here in Barcelona, art school so far seems to be mostly about leaving you all alone with your muse. Only, I don't have a muse, I just have a lot of vague anxieties about my capabilities or lack thereof, and that makes it unbelievable hard to make stuff. Saying it makes me feel like a spoiled brat, but, well... I'm used to a more nurturing environment. I'll (probably) never complain about Mills classes ever again.

This sort of transplantation is especially rough on the introverted homebody bookworm type. For a person like me, living in my analysis of events rather more than in the events themselves, this heaping helping of perspective is a lot for my mind to chew on. Part of me hates, hates this experience with a totality that leaves me having rosy visions of perfectly ordinary home activities such as walking the dog or doing an English assignment.

But I'd like to believe that a bigger part of me is loving it. How else can I explain the high that sometimes rises in me just from walking down a street that is thousands of miles away from any other street I've ever walked down? What is it that I am recognizing in my fellow UB students? Is there some innate European quality passed down from my German/Italian/Argentine ancestry that makes me respond to them in a certain way? I'm not sure how else to explain the ease with which I've been able to befriend certain people (or maybe they've befriended me). It's not this easy for me in the States. Maybe if there were more cheek-kisses it would be.

I realize this post has a serious deficiency in the me-doing-cultural-stuff category. I'll try to correct that imbalance in the next one--Carnaval and Tarragona, anyone?

Besos.