Busy morning!!!

Busy day! Busy morning! I've got a bit of downtime right now before my next meeting, so I thought I'd get some of this down before everything that happened this morning feels like a blur I can hardly recall. Plus I'm feeling super jittery cause I just had my first cup of Spanish coffee (OMG DELICIOUS) so I need to just chill out a minute.

 I have been up and running today, getting questions answered and things figured out, which is so great. I skyped with Casey in the morning (who was up at 2am because he'd gotten back from a late student film shoot) which was comforting. Mornings are the hardest right now, because there's an overwhelming day ahead of me and I am still adjusting. As I said yesterday, thank god for skype. I can use it to call cell phones even now, which is awesome. And giant Spanish oranges are great at breakfast. I love fruit because I can rely on knowing it will taste just as I expect.

Anyway, took the metro to campus on a chillier morning, found it takes about 5 minutes longer than I'd budgeted for but managed to make it more or less on time to meet with Dr. García-Serrano in the upstairs faculty area. He was very helpful in finally getting a sense of what it's like to research abroad. I told him about my topics both for the dissertation and for the conference. He seems interested in both, and I look forward to getting some feedback from him as those projects progress while I'm here. I appreciated that he understood that I'm just beginning dissertation work and that this is my very first time doing research abroad, explaining the differences between how libraries work in America, and how they work here. He identified three libraries for me to start with here, the Biblioteca Nacional, the Complutensian University Library, and a smaller library in a nearby Dominican convent that will be helpful for Dominican history and sources. He told me to start with secondary source research while I get accustomed to the workings of the libraries, and then we can move onto looking into archival work. This was nice to hear. I'm eager to get started but I know that to avoid getting overwhelmed I need to take it one step, one library, one meeting, one resource at a time. This afternoon he's going to provide me with a letter of recommendation to help me get a card to work at the Biblioteca Nacional.

Faculty desks while the third building is under constrution

I also asked him if there might be an opportunity to do some guest lecturing while I'm here. He has a very full teaching load right now so he sort of jumped at that idea, telling me that yes I'm welcome to take over some of the lectures for his 111 or his medieval class. I was thrilled to hear that I will have an opportunity to teach while I'm here and that he seems very open to letting me do just about whatever I please! I'll have to email him this evening to ask more about that, maybe see the syllabi for his spring semester courses. I wish I'd brought more of my teaching materials with me, but I'm sure that Casey wouldn't mind scanning and sending me a few things if I end up needing them, like he did all my Martí sources the other day, which was so nice.

After that meeting I stopped in the Finance office to fill out my health insurance form. For about a hundred bucks I'm officially insured for the next three months. I'm hoping it will end up being a needless expense, but that's not a lot of money for peace of mind that I'll be taken care of here.

Temporary insurance certificate. Let's hope I never need it. 

Back in the main building I ran into one of my 111/112 students from last year, he took both semesters and was one of my favorites, and I was so thrilled to see him I nearly hugged him, but since I was his teacher and that would have been totally weird, I restrained myself. Nevertheless we chatted a bit about how he's liking it here and what I'm doing here, and I couldn't get over how nice it was to see a friendly familiar face. I asked him what he usually does for lunch (something I still haven't quite figured out beyond the little snack cafe) and he jumped up and grabbed me a map of the SLU Campus that had a few cafes, the pharmacy, the supermarket, etc. all right near campus starred, and pointed out a street that he likes to grab lunch at. I have never been so excited about a little photocopied map before. So glad to have had such a nice student last year.

BEST MAP.

I also investigated the "library today" which is just a little room with a few reference works, two study tables, and a little old librarian named Julie. Not much to see really! She seems sweet and gave me the instruction manual for how the library in transition works at SLU Madrid. I have to go back later today and talk to her again; apparently she can tell me how to get set up to work at the other nearby university libraries, like the Complutensian.

Library to my left 

And to my right. That's it!

At noon I went to meet Paul Vita, the academic dean of SLU Madrid. He was in a meeting, so I chatted with Jamie, a student I'd met yesterday at lunch and ran into again. I suppose it's true what they say, that at this small campus you run into everyone, every day, all the time. He was telling me about one of the professors at the history department that I've not had a chance to meet yet, and how great he is. Apparently Jamie has a learning disability, and this professor's teaching style really works for him because he is engaging and draws the students into participating. He was telling me how hard it is for students with learning disabilities to learn from straight lecturing. It was a quick conversation, but I wanted to file it away in my memory as something to think about when I teach my own classes, to be sure I'm consciously working to reach all types of learners, especially because a large number of students with learning disabilities do not apply for specific accommodations.

Anyway meeting Dr. Vita was great. He has the most genuinely welcoming and enthusiastic personality. Although everyone here has been great so far, he seemed the most excited to meet me, and so glad that I am here. We talked about my research and the status of my dissertation and prospectus (he has a PhD in literature, so he can relate), the research I will be doing here. He was excited to talk with me about how to get started and it was good to hear him repeat a lot of the advice Dr. García-Serrano had about the libraries I should use and what I will need to do to obtain access. We also discussed the conference we're hosting in April. He told me to be in touch with Jessica and Vicky in Finance to coordinate a lot of those details so I'll be sure to email them once Damian lets me know what needs doing. Apparently Dr. Vita has a few different nice spaces in mind for the conference, depending on its size and whether or not the new building will be ready (they're hoping it'll be totally done April 1st, so fingers crossed that'll be the case!). He also gave me plenty of encouragement on diving into research here. He told me to start right away and not waste any time! (He probably wouldn't approve of me taking this hour to sit, relax, and write, but it's so needed right now!) He says these three months will go so fast, and I should't wait until next week to dive in. He reminds me of Hal Parker a bit in his kindness and enthusiasm for getting lots of great work done.

He took me out for a coffee and tortilla snack (a delicious Spanish potato pancake thing) at a nearby cafe. He showed me the secret unmarked lunch spot in the nearby convent that the professors and grad students go to but the undergrads don't know about. Hah! I hope I can remember where it is! I'm looking forward already to the next time I have to meet with him to discuss the conference or something. He also told me that as a phd student and potential guest lecturer I'm welcome to use the faculty floor as a study space when I'm on campus, which was nice because I wasn't sure if it was kosher for me to be there or not.

Ferro's Cafe, as seen from an outside window also reflecting the street. 

We also talked about hopes for future interaction between our history departments, and using my trip as a precedent for future graduate exchange (I'm looking at you, fellow SLU Medievalists!). He said the campus is such an ideal base for MA and PhD students to come do European research and he'd love it if they'd come! He doesn't understand why I'm the first. I am surprised too, in a way. I know Patrick stopped by the campus when he was doing research in Spain but I don't think he worked with anyone here or had any connection to this campus in a formal sense. The library itself isn't that useful, but the professors are a wonderful resource, and especially for Spanish history, have such expertise to share with visiting graduate students. Dr. Vita was happy to hear about how smoothly everything went setting up my trip despite my unique circumstances of not being enrolled in classes, being a PhD student where no graduate program exists, etc. Everyone's been so flexible and I haven't run into any red tape bureacratic nonsense, which I guess is the beauty of a small school. He also wants to talk more about the history program at SLU's "home campus" (that's the lingo I've been hearing in reference to SLU in St. Louis, Missouri) because currently there's no history major here, but they certainly have the resources for it, and if they put a semester abroad at the home campus as a requirement they'd certainly be able to establish a major. It'd be great to have more exchange, at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.

And now I'm just sitting in a sunny corner of the third floor, relaxing and processing the busy morning. It's sunny and warm. Out on the patio next to me there is a barefoot Muslim student who has brought his prayer mat out in the sun for afternoon prayers. I'm trying not to spy, but I am curious, as I've never seen prayers in person before. I'm right next to the chapel/music practice room where a piano is accompanying a voice lesson, and lovely tunes are drifting into earshot. It's all very pleasant.

A sunny spot for posting about the morning

In just a bit I'm headed to meet Maggie, one of the American grad students doing her MA here in Spanish, for lunch, along with a few of the other grad students. I'm definitely looking forward to that!
There's also a GSA mixer tonight for students, which might be fun, but I haven't made up my mind if I want to do go to that or not. It's later in the evening and I'd planned on being back at my home stay by then.