So before writing this post, I had to take notes to figure out everything that happened this week. I can't believe I'm writing blog post outlines. I take this seriously, peeps, so you better appreciate it. Anyways, these weeks are long, crazy, exciting whirlwinds. Things are already starting to get a little mixed up, and I hope I'm not forgetting little details.
Monday was a pretty chill day, and a good way to start off the week. After class, and most likely a little siesta, Emily, Elena and I walked to a park downtown. Emily and I found a shady spot and did some journaling while Elena went for a run. Little did we know that a men's league soccer team was doing some running around the grassy area that we were laying in. All of the sudden we saw this heard of men coming at us, and like split in half just to run around us. It was a little ridiculous, especially since it happened, ohh, 3 times?
Tuesday we had an excursion to Olite, Spain. It was a verrrry small town, that had a huge castle! It was so old, and really cool just to walk around. We also got a taste of Holy Cross as we walked up the millions of stairs to get to the tops of the turrets. After Olite we took a stop at another small rural town, where there was no castle. There wasn't much there, but Julian and Nekane (the program directors) bought a baguette and some chorizo and made us all a little chorizo sandwich that was delicious! It was so nice of him to get it, and adorable to watch him cutting the bread and meat like at the register in this little corner grocery store. They also bought us some weird sweet, milk/juice product that is apparently made from potatoes? That was a little weird for my taste, but they made up for it by buying little marshmallow treats that they call "nubes" (clouds).
Wednesday we didn't have anything after class so Emily, Dan, Andy, James and I took a walk to the center of town. We first stopped at this park that has a little "zoo". It's hard to describe, but it's more just like an area where you can watch peacocks, ducks, chickens, goats, and deer all roam free in this green area. There's about a 20 ft stone wall around it, and us humans just look down on them. After watching the animals we were just walking around the park when all of the sudden we saw a huge group (50ish people) of young people appear. They had been swimming/playing in a fountain, were all chanting/yelling something and were clearly drunk. Naturally, the 5 of us American were intrigued, so we all kinda of shimmied in closer, and sat on a bench watching as the police came, talked with some of the kids, and observed who left and who stayed. We were all dying of curiosity of what was going on, so we finally worked up the courage to ask 2 Spanish guys. When we asked what it was they said that it was a "novatada" none of us had any idea what this was, but they kindly gave us an explanation that we quickly translated to mean, hazing. Although not many collge students in Spain ever live in dorms on campus, I think that when they do it's all years/ages. So apparently every year they have hazing for the first year students! It was pretty exciting just to watch it all unfold, police drama and all. It was also pretty exciting that we had some contact with a Spanish person our own age.
On Thursday we had Rumba dancing! It was about a 20 minute walk into town, and literally 2 minutes into the walk it started to rain a little, 5 minutes into the walk it was POURING. Emily, Elena, and I all tried to fit under a baby umbrella, but clearly that didn't work out. Nobody had rain jackets, and Emily was the only one with an umbrella. We had to walk a little bit to get to a bus station that would get us to the right place, but at least we didn't have to walk all the way there. We were all soaked, but I think everyone just kind of laughed it off as a "what are the chances" kind of thing. The dance class was SO much fun. I'd never really done anything like that so it was just a good time to try something new. I would also describe it as "Bikram Dancing" due to the fact that the dance studio had no A/C or fans. After dancing a group of us stayed downtown with Nekane (our culture class teacher who's around 25 years old) and she brought us to this really fun store where we could get some pretty good deals. I got a couple shirts, a bag, and a belt (first clothing purchases in Spain, woot woot!). After shopping we went to get pinchos (tapas) where I got a dish called Tortilla with ham and cheese. It's kind of like quiche that has potatoes in it, and in the middle it has a layer of ham and cheese. It was a pretty big triangle, with a peace of bread, all for 1.50 euros.
On Friday after class Emily, Dan, James, Andy, a girl named Brady, and I all walked into town. After some shopping Dan and Brady both left to go back to the hotel. Emily, Andy, James and I kept walking around and got some ice cream at our favorite spot. We were planning on going to a park called La Ciudadela to see if there was a concert going on, so James and I spontaneously decided to buy a bottle of wine to bring with us. There was no concert but it was fun to just sit under a tree in the park, share a bottle of wine without any glasses, and talk. There were 2 weddings going on, so it was really good people watching. The four of us were there for over an hour just talking about ourselves, and just kind of learning about each other.
On Saturday we had a trip to Bilbao, the fifth largest metropolitan area of Spain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilbao). We first took a stop at a town called Loiola where St. Ignatious of Loyla (who found the Jesuits) was born. There's a basilica there that was beautiful, and we got a tour of his house, which is huge! Once we got to Bilbao we first went into the Guggenheim Museum. Emily, Andy and I stuck together and really took our time with it. We got the audio tour things, which were really helpful to help us know what we were looking at it. There was a filming of some video for an orchestra going on which was actually really cool, because there was basically a full out concert going on and echoing throughout the museum. If anyone wants to do some googling, I would highly recommend searching "Anish Kapoor Yellow". I think it looks cool in the pictures, but that might just be because I know how amazing it looks in the museum. Definitely my favorite. After the museum we walked into Bilbao's old city and went into one of the most gorgeous churches. They had some music playing, and it was really peaceful to just sit there and contemplate these last 2 weeks.
So yeah! That was my week in a very large nutshell! I hope everything's going well at home, and I better receive updates of interesting things in people's lives! Love and miss you all!
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