Written by Chessie Scott ’17 to recount Tuesday, March 15, 2016:
Today I took one of the few remaining, daily, morning walks to school up the dreaded hill, in the chilly Madrid morning air. At CEM, we enjoyed another school day filled with interesting and different classes. They take many different subjects and we each get to experience a new type of class every day. Today I had Technical Drawing for the first time. I had no idea what it was or what I was doing, but I sat in the back trying to follow along with the teacher. After we attended the first two classes with our hosts, we met for a third class, just Norfolk Academy students with the Science teacher for a hands-on lab class. In our lab class, we not only had the opportunity to dissect a cow heart, but the opportunity to dissect a cow heart with instructions all in Spanish! The teacher was really helpful and good at explaining everything to us slowly so we could understand how to follow the procedure (but for those of us with weak stomachs, all we really noticed was the fact that he was really not afraid to stick his finger right into that Superior Vena Cava and point out the different parts of the heart and their functions). All in all, the class was pretty fun and interesting, despite the smell of chemicals and the bloody lab coats.
After the first three classes we had a break, which for me was a walk down to the café for a mid-morning snack of coffee and a torija which is a slice of bread dipped in egg then soaked in milk, fried, and sweetened with sugar and cinnamon. Torijas are typically sold in bakeries around this time of the Holy week. After the break, we reconvened in our meeting spot at the library and rested for a bit as a group. After about an hour rest, I attended my first philosophy class per request of Emily, who by now has gone to about ten philosophy classes and really seems to enjoy them. In today’s class they discussed beauty and how they saw it and addressed each of the senses individually and how they could sense beauty that way. I spent a lot of time trying to understand what the teacher was saying, but I was surprised at the end when I realized that I knew what was going on for the entire time more or less! Safe to say, I was pretty proud.
After lunch, we met for a fencing class. We learned the basic steps of fencing before the coach split us into teams to duel it out with our new fencing skills. The class was pretty fun, but guaranteed it was a lot more fun for the students who got to watch us chase each other with blue and red, plastic swords.
It was yet another successful day at CEM but sad to say, one of our last.