Sweet - just bought plane tickets to spend 9 nights in Morocco with a friend from my program during our spring break. Still have to plan the rest of the break. Lisbon, Barcelona and Paris are all on the table at this point. Regardless, Morocco should be pretty incredible.
In other news, while Madrid has been pretty awesome, by far the most middling part of the stay has to be my classes. I don't know the explanation for this, but some of my professors seem to absolutely love the sound of their own voice at the expense of showing even a passing interest in the students they're teaching. Maybe I'm just used to the relatively more interactive style of even the most traditional-style professors I've had at Swat (i.e. Lillian Li's survey of Chinese civilization), but it seems like pedagogical practices have some universal components that go deeper than cultural differences. Without any interaction it often seems like the point of the class is kind of lost, particularly if the class is concerned with the arts, where individual responses to the works are key to their relevance as something to be studied in the first place.
Enough complaining though. Life in Madrid is a lot of fun. Saturday afternon I was just walking around, passed by the Reina Sofia and said to myself and a couple of friends, "Let's go check out some Picasso." Minutes later I'm standing in front of "Guernica" - 'nuff said. Had my fair share of the truly insane nightlife - spending my first night/morning getting home at 7 am after a mix of bars, jazz clubs and dance clubs. I don't think I can do that on a regular basis, but it can be pretty damn fun once in a while. Just found out about a possible Howe Gelb concert this weekend at some club, so that looks to be on tap for the more immediate future.
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