Escuela Oficial de Idiomas de Malaga

Ahhh, being in a language school and being surrounded by foreigners.  I used to work at a Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada program, and I always knew what it was like on the teacher side of the relationship.  Being a student is a whole different ballgame.  These are my interpretations on the whole experience so far.

First of all, this school handled the registration process very poorly.  Everything was so disorganized! I felt like I was at a third world country or something... people all clamoring at the gate of the school to try and get in, lines around the block, no one speaking english or making any sense.  The line up was around the block just to get a registration form! I went on two separate occasions to try and aquire one of these ellusive forms.  The first time was the day that people wanted to register for English school, and it was crazy.  Luckily, I had my host mother with me and she was able to undestand what was going on.  Apparently they were only giving forms to people who knew what level they were going to register in (like individuals who had attended the school before or are transferring from another school).  I knew I would be registering in the most basic level, but they still said I needed to take a placement test a week later to be sure.  The second time I went to the school to try and register, I went alone.  I went the next day (when Spanish school and other language school registration was), and the line up was still around the block.  I just went home after that and figured I would have to write this silly placement test which I essentially won't understand and will hand back in after I put my name on the top.

The day of the placement test was another day of chaos.  All the instructions (and the test itself) was written in Spanish, so I obviously did not understand anything.  After I "wrote" the exam (put my name on the top and wrote BASIC LEVEL 1 across it), I tried to hand it in but they told me to just wait.  People started walking out of the room with their finished exams, and I was getting antsy, so I just decided to follow them.  Turns out I made the right call.  But then we ended up in a crowded hallway of classrooms with no instruction of where to go or what to do.  So I just waited in line for something to happen.  Finally someone announced the room to go in for all level one students (right before I entered another room for an oral exam of Spanish).  We were then handed forms to fill out and return to the school before our first day of class.  When I asked what we were supposed to do with our completed placement tests, I was told not to worry about them, since we were in level one.  Frusterating, as I was trying to get these forms a week ago and was told I HAD to write this test.

So with these forms in tow, I headed over to the bank to try and make my payment for the tuition.  Four banks later, I was finally able to make the payment.  The first bank was requesting a card for the identity number the school told me to put down, the second bank told me that my passport was invalid, and the third bank told me I had the wrong payment paper from the school.  Thank god for Unicaja, which didn't give me any problems and let me make the payment...

The first week of Spanish school is coming to an end, and so far it's been good.  The teacher only speaks Spanish, but I feel like I can understand what she is saying.  Right now, the hardest part is to memorize the exceptions to pronunciations of letters and assigning masculine and feminine words.  I met a girl in my class from Ireland, and we sit together.  Most of our class is Chinese and Eastern European... and they are all a little weird.  They all laugh at the stupidest things in the class, and all yell out the answers to every question (even when the question is directed to one person).  And I still can't get the hang of writing an upsidedown question mark... they always end up looking like squiggles!