Free at last, free at last!!

Thank you, exams, for consuming my life this week. It's been a while since I've had an ENTIRE week devoted to exams. Not since high school, really. The last two semester at Calvin have included education classes, which don't have exams, just final projects. I can't decide which I prefer...
This semester, I had 7 final exams (6 of which were this week):
-History of Spain and Hispanoamerica
-Literature of Spain and Hispanoamerica
-Spanish Conversation
-Spanish Grammar
-Composition for the Spanish department at Calvin
-Contemporary Spanish Civilization
-THE DREADED ORAL PROFICIENCY INTERVIEW

A lot of you have been asking how the OPI went. To be completely truthful, I think it was some of the worst Spanish I've spoken this semester. I was nervous all the night before, all the morning of, and if possible, even more nervous during the exam. I felt like my speech was really clunky and full of pauses, and that when I didn't know what to say, I would simply rephrase what I had said earlier. I felt pretty terrible about how it had gone, but the proctor (Professor Slagter) told me that she thinks I did well in spite of my nerves. One of the important aspects of the OPI that separates the Intermediate Highs from the Advanced Lows (which is the level I needed to reach) is the ability to tell stories in many different tenses and to maintain that tense. Many times, when students get tired or frustrated or nervous, they revert back to a tense they can use comfortably, like the present tense. She told me that I maintained my stories in the past tense, so that's good. Hopefully it was enough to get me that Advanced Low. If not, I've got a couple more opportunities to take it in the fall before student teaching in the spring. And my lifeguards at the Grounds (cough, Kevin and Marie) can help me practice this summer. :)

Okay, so finals are done, as of 12:16pm this morning. I celebrated by getting sunburned at the beach. It's just my face though, so don't get all worried. We have a banquet tomorrow to thank the host families and to commemorate Calvin's program in Spain because this is the last year. We'll have slideshows, a game show (pretty interested to see how that turns out), some fantastic vocal performances by us students, and a good lunch. On Sunday, Josiah is hosting all of us students at his house, which will probably be the last hurrah for our group. Chances are pretty high that it will be the last time that we will all be together, at least for this trip because not everyone is coming back to the States at the same time. It will be bittersweet, at least for some of us. We've grown pretty close and we make a really good group. I honestly believe that the group is what has made the non-academic side of the semester so awesome.

That's what's up for the weekend. After that, we have Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday and an outrageously early departure from Denia on Thursday morning. We're talking 2:30. AM. Good times. Many, if not all of us, are planning to just camp out on the beach all day every day next week. If we can. We've got to come back with good tans, right? I'm sure we'll be getting our fill of the good Spanish food before we have to leave as well.

I'm headed out to hang out with some amigos. I hope you all are having great weather and a good day! See you GR people in 6 days!!