And so starts another week in Espana...
I had my second of three very stressful meetings today. Stress and I don't mix--it tends to make me stupid. Add to that a second language and you have quite the ass-making cocktail.
I tried to take what I had learned from my first, rather bumpy meeting--people will want to know what I have read. I guess this is reasonable; they want to know what you know before they start lecturing. The problem is; if someone were to ask you, point blank, what have you read? How would you answer? Would you rattle off Authors and dates? List books? Mention specific studies and results? Honestly, all of that information flees my head in the face of this question, especially in Spanish. Its the kind of thing I write down specifically so I don't have to remember.
This aggrivating moment aside, I think my second meeting went rather well. The museum at Paterna, unlike the crazy barroque museum, is a small municipal museum, that only houses the materials from local excavations. That said, it has metric tons of ceramic materials. Tons. Basically it's stacked in crates three feet higher than me, filling a large courtyard and rooms and a separate building. There are the whole pieces, the show pieces, and then they are slowly working their way through cataloging and reconstructing the rest (apparently that's still done here, with some pieces?). Tons.
They are also much more casual. When I cam in this afternoon, they basically seemed ready to give me ceramics on the spot, to put in my suitcase or something, I'm not even sure. I was so rattled by this, and it must have really shown on my face, because for the rest of the afternoon when they introduced me to people they joked I was visiting for "First Contact." I met the director of the museum, who seemed to rather not want to be the director, and another woman who never gave her name, but seemed to be equally in charge, they bickered like a married couple, and was generally a little more in support of protocol. They were both immensely kind, showing me the museum and collections on the day it was closed, taking me on a tour to a roman excavation in town, and lending me boots to wear in the mud.
I'm not entirely sure what they thought of me, but I think I will be able to get materials from this museum and maybe (maybe) come work there this summer, helping with general cataloging, and mostly making a nuisance of myself. If I can get the grant.
Thus go my adventures in Spain! I found a decent study-bar today, though it still has those damnable tiny tables, and the public library is a super-busy place, so it probably won't work out well unless I can figure out the best hours. I went to a pharmacy and successfully bought bandaids. Tomorrow I shall conquer the laundry mat! I suspect I will be thinking about Ninja Assassin the entire time.
I tried to take what I had learned from my first, rather bumpy meeting--people will want to know what I have read. I guess this is reasonable; they want to know what you know before they start lecturing. The problem is; if someone were to ask you, point blank, what have you read? How would you answer? Would you rattle off Authors and dates? List books? Mention specific studies and results? Honestly, all of that information flees my head in the face of this question, especially in Spanish. Its the kind of thing I write down specifically so I don't have to remember.
This aggrivating moment aside, I think my second meeting went rather well. The museum at Paterna, unlike the crazy barroque museum, is a small municipal museum, that only houses the materials from local excavations. That said, it has metric tons of ceramic materials. Tons. Basically it's stacked in crates three feet higher than me, filling a large courtyard and rooms and a separate building. There are the whole pieces, the show pieces, and then they are slowly working their way through cataloging and reconstructing the rest (apparently that's still done here, with some pieces?). Tons.
They are also much more casual. When I cam in this afternoon, they basically seemed ready to give me ceramics on the spot, to put in my suitcase or something, I'm not even sure. I was so rattled by this, and it must have really shown on my face, because for the rest of the afternoon when they introduced me to people they joked I was visiting for "First Contact." I met the director of the museum, who seemed to rather not want to be the director, and another woman who never gave her name, but seemed to be equally in charge, they bickered like a married couple, and was generally a little more in support of protocol. They were both immensely kind, showing me the museum and collections on the day it was closed, taking me on a tour to a roman excavation in town, and lending me boots to wear in the mud.
I'm not entirely sure what they thought of me, but I think I will be able to get materials from this museum and maybe (maybe) come work there this summer, helping with general cataloging, and mostly making a nuisance of myself. If I can get the grant.
Thus go my adventures in Spain! I found a decent study-bar today, though it still has those damnable tiny tables, and the public library is a super-busy place, so it probably won't work out well unless I can figure out the best hours. I went to a pharmacy and successfully bought bandaids. Tomorrow I shall conquer the laundry mat! I suspect I will be thinking about Ninja Assassin the entire time.