Araceli San Martín

Araceli is my Spanish professor. My first impression of her was that she was very charismatic -I could tell by her unruly curly hair. I was right! She's been a professor at SLU for about 3 years now, but she's been teaching a lot longer. She was born and raised in Madrid, and she also went to college at nearby university.She told us she LOVES LOVES LOVES grammar! ¡Ay dios mio! I mean LOVES it. 

She gave us 4 reglas (rules) for the class: 

1. Be punctual. If you are late she will chop your head off. Or you have to tell her an interesting story or dance/sing a Spanish canción. ...and Feliz Cumpleaños (Happy Birthday) doesn't count. 
2. You have to be a fan of the equipo de fútbol (soccer team) Real Madrid...NOT Barcelona -otherwise she'll chop your head off. 
3. The ONLY language to be spoken in the class is SPANISH and SPANISH only. No Japanese, French, Mandarin, Hindi, English, Portuguese, Italian...nothing but Spanish. Or what? We get our head chopped off. 
4. This one isn't exactly a rule, it's more of a declaration: We will all have a Spanish novia o novio by next week. Even if you have a boyfriend or girlfriend currently. She told us that is the reason we are learning Spanish in her class the way were are -so that we can get our Spaniard significant others. I have NO problem whatsoever with this declaration :)  In fact, I'm rather excited about it! 

She told us that is incredibly difficult to make an A in her class, but I am up for the challenge! My host mom, Mari, told me that anytime I need help or need to her to edit my papers she'd be glad to. Thank you in house tutor! 


The class is mostly American students who go to SLU in Missouri. There's me and another chica from Baylor in the class. There's a girl from Belgium, and cutie boy from Brazil. 


So basically, if I don't come home close to fluent (at least conversation wise), then I suck.