Adventures in Spain…Otra Vez

So, I know I already wrote today, but then I took a walk on the most gorgeous day ever and thought I’d post some of the fall scenes that are only a 5-10 minute walk from my house. I get to LIVE here – how cool is that??

Arches on the Paseo de la Isla

Paseo de la Isla

Plaza on the Paseo

Espanoles Paseando

This last one is my personal favorite, just because I love the old people paseando as they so frequently do here in Spain.

Can you see why I’m in love with fall? Now if we could only figure out how to keep the cold winter weather off for a few more weeks…!

Somewhere in the middle of a cozy siesta moment last week, I decided that since I didn’t have plans for a longer weekend trip this weekend, a day trip to someplace nearby would be a great idea. And, I thought, I’ll choose a place that is relatively close to both Logrono and Burgos so that I could invite Jennis and Lucy and make a lovely weekend of it. So, i suggested Bilbao and we were on our way. Now, Bilbao is also conveniently close to San Sebastian, so I suggested to The Boy that he come, too. (P.S. I promise I didn’t choose Bilbao for this reason, it just happened to be a nice added side benefit! Haha)

Jennis, Lucy and I all arrived around 10:30 in the morning and started walking through the center of town, following Gran Via to the Casco Viejo (= old town) of Bilbao for a coffee. And despite the fact that we were all pretty darn cold when we arrived, the day was sunny and shortly became glorious. We were all dressed for the winter that it’s become here, and we were all shedding layers by about noon. But we ended up in a cafe near to a pretty church in a plaza (haha, I feel like that phrase could pretty much describe Anywhere, Spain) where a wedding was about to happen, so we gawked like tourists and admired the novia (= bride).

Side note: weddings here seem SO much fancier than they are at home! Like, obviously the bride and groom are dressed up and gorgeous, but everyone else is practically in ball gowns and perfectly coiffed. Intense.

From there we wandered some more, finding a new plaza and climbing this huge long set of stairs that ended in a cute park where some guys were playing pick-up soccer. Oh, not to mention that it had a fabulous view of the city! At this point, The Boy called, having driven and parked someplace in the city, so we found another plaza to have coffee in and wait.

I’d like to say that while I wasn’t nearly as nervous about seeing him this time as I was the first time, I WAS kind of nervous about him meeting my friends and how the two worlds would come together. But if there are any people here that I’d want him to meet, it’d be Lucy and Jennis. And of course, I had absolutely no reason to worry, as usual. There was mutual liking of the other by everyone involved, and we passed the rest of the

Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao

day nicely wandering around the Casco Viejo, tapeando in the Plaza Nueva for lunch and then heading over to the Guggenheim Museum to admire its strange beauty. We ended up in a park by the Guggenheim for a mid-afternoon drink before going to the bus station to go our separate ways.

Oh, and did I mention that the day was kinda perfect?

Given that I’ve just been ridiculously happy and in love with life these past few weeks, I am going to write about the things I love, in no particular order:

1. Fall. It has smelled like fall for a few weeks now, and it never fails to make me smile. The smell is really hard to describe, but it’s some combination of crisp air, fireplaces burning, and fallen leaves. It just instantly transports me back to childhood and that sweet, expectant time before Halloween and Thanksgiving. I am fully capable of walking around town in the evenings, smiling like a crazy and breathing deeply. It just makes me so, so happy.

2. Crunching leaves. I learned how to say this in Spanish last weekend (hacer crujir las hojas = to make the leaves crunch), and now I think my life is complete. I spent all this past weekend running into the piles of leaves that are more frequently appearing along the sidewalks, looking for the especially crunchy leaves to squish under my feet. Yes, I am 5 years old. I’ve accepted this.

3. Friends coming to visit. I had a lovely visit this past weekend from Lucy and Abby, two friends from Logrono, and we just generally wandered around being tourists in town. It makes me feel so much more connected to life here when I have friends come visit.

4. My teacher, Bea. She is one of the teachers I work with in the bilingual program at school, and she teaches art. She’s young (late-20s), friendly, helpful and just a lot of fun to be with. When she heard that my friends were going to be in town this weekend, she immediately offered to take us all to see the three monasteries around Burgos in her car, and we spent all afternoon/evening on Saturday with her, her boyfriend, and their friend. She is WONDERFUL, and I love her. She is always inviting me to things, suggesting fun things for me to do around town, and just generally being a friend, and I appreciate that so much being a stranger here.

5. My roommates, Manuel and Cristian. They are ADORABLE. They are 18 year old university students, and I am in love with them. They remind me of my brothers in many ways, being away from home for the first time in their lives, and figuring out how to be their own people. It’s like living freshman year all over again, but without any of the stupid stressful drama that goes along with it: the partying until all hours, the not going to class, the stupid stuff that occurs when you drink too much alcohol. You know, basically exactly how MY freshman year went. Haha.

6. Speaking in Spanish. This may seem like a stupid bullet point, but it’s really not. And even if it were, it’s my blog to be stupid in. I am everyday amazed at the fact that I can totally communicate with people in Spanish and actually get my point across. This is not to say that I don’t make mistakes (I totally do!) or don’t have moments/days when I suck at speaking and nothing comes out quite right (omg, this totally happens!), but by and large I can communicate with people in a meaningful way. As in, I can have conversations as opposed to just answering questions with simple “si” or “no” answers. I think of this every time I am chattering away in Spanish with someone. This makes me very happy.

7. New friends. I met a new girl on Thursday night whose name is Elin, and she’s from Sweden. We met through the Couch Surfing group that’s here in Burgos, and we went out for drinks on Thursday night, and then met up again while we were out on Saturday night. She is SUPER nice, and we’re actually going to go to see a movie together tomorrow night. But aside from having more people that I know here, which is cool, I love that I am able to make new friends and be comfortable with new people so easily now. It wasn’t so long ago that I felt really awkward and uncomfortable in new situations, and I’m pretty sure I’m never going to take this ability to make new friends for granted ever. It’s just a really great, fun skill to have.

8. Boys who say cute things. Can I bring up the fact that I’ve met a boy? I met him a few weeks ago in Logrono, and he’s from San Sebastian, about 3 hours to the north of Burgos, on the coast, close to the border with France. His name is Imanol, which is apparently a very Basque name (he’s Basque), and he’s just about the nicest person I know. So, we’ve been talking on the phone quite a bit since we’ve met, and I actually went to visit him last week in San Sebastian for a day, which was lovely. But the part that makes me really happy is that he just sends me cute little messages all the time, saying nothing but just establishing contact, telling me I’m guapa (which means pretty) and just generally making me feel pretty. Those little things can really never been underestimated.

I think that might exhaust my list of things that I love. I just thought I’d share.

So, I know I officially suck at keeping more or less up to date on this blog thing. I kind of feel like there’s more pressure to write more often with a blog, just because it’s less intrusive on people’s lives or something. So I can and should write more often because it’s not sending itself into people’s inboxes all the time and annoying them with its consistency. Does that even make sense? But whatever. I have an excuse for not writing – my internet has been down for about a week in the apartment, so it’s made my electronic communication much more sparing than usual. And actually that in and of itself is another fun story about how Spain works, but I don’t even want to get into it. It’s boring and it frustrates me. Haha.

Instead, I’ll talk about my fun weekend of trips this past weekend! It was a long weekend for everyone in Castilla y Leon (we had Monday off), the province that I work in, which meant that I had an extra long weekend, always having Fridays off. So I took advantage of it to do some serious travelling.

Friday and Saturday I went with a few friends that I’d met in Logroño last year to Zaragoza. These friends, by the way, are Ben, Abby and Marcos, and undoubtedly you’ve heard of them before. If you haven’t, then I know for sure you haven’t read anything I’ve written in the last 12 months! Haha. The bus from Burgos goes through Logroño, so I left here early on Friday morning (8:30am), picked the others up in Logroño on the way, and arrived in Zaragoza around midday. October 12th was the Día de Hispanidad and also the celebration of the Virgen de Pilar. La Pilar is the patron saint of Zaragoza, so its celebrations are reknowned for being bigger than in other parts of the country. Hence why we went there.

Me and Abby by the Cathedral de Pilar

We basically spent the afternoon on Friday and most of the day on Saturday wandering around Zaragoza, admiring its main plaza and gorgeous cathedral (I’ll try to post pictures when I can!), as well as enjoying the nightlife that the festival brought with it. However, the main day of the festival was actually the 12th, which was Sunday, and so we missed a lot of the big celebrations. The most important thing that they do there on the 12th is create a pyramid of flowers in the Plaza de Pilar. They spent all day on Saturday setting up the framework for it, and then Sunday many people brought flowers for the Virgen de Pilar, creating a really impressive looking structure. So, unfortunately, we missed seeing that, but that’s okay. The people were all still in a very festive mood and we enjoyed going out and being part of the nightlife.

Cathedral from across the river

Sunday found me back in Burgos for the day, relaxing after two days away. And the Monday morning I got up really early to spend the day in San Sebastian. San Sebastian is a coastal city in the Pais Vasco, about 3 hours away by bus, and it is absolutely stunning. I think some day I’ll have to go there and spend a significant amount of time. As in, live there or something. Spend my summer there. Whatever. I went there to visit a friend that I’d met a few weeks before in Logroño, and he and I spent the whole day just wandering around the city and eating. Nice, huh? It was a beautiful day, which for the Pais Vasco in this time of year is pretty unusual as it tends to rain there a lot. But we had some really yummy pintxos (the Basque word for tapas), for which the region is famous, and sat on the beach, enjoying the sun and watching the surfers. Interesting fact: they hold world-famous surfing competitions in San Sebastian. I had no idea. But it was a really lovely day, very relaxing and good practice for my Spanish!

Needless to say, I arrived home on Monday night absolutely muerta de cansancio (dead tired), but happy. Not such a bad way to spend the weekend!

So, just as the emails slowly became less and less frequent and consistent, so, too, are my posts on the blog slowing down already, as well! However, I would argue that that isn’t my fault – I was gone for most of last week! But that’s alright…I’ll fill y’all in on what’s happened in the past week now.

Last Sunday – a week ago – my new friend John (from Liverpool) and I went to a CF Burgos football match, which the burgaleses won, 2-0. The stadium itself is pretty unimpressive and small, and it only was about 1/4 of the way filled, but everyone there was clearly very devoted to the team and it was a good afternoon out for everyone, seeing as Sundays are always pretty slow in Spain. And to top it all off, it was a gorgeous day, sunny and warm, so we basked in the sun while chatting and cheering the team to victory. They even had an anthem for the team, which John is now convinced he must learn.

Monday was a normal day at school, but Tuesday through Thursday were the annual Orientation Days in Madrid for our program. I wasn’t required to go this year, since I’d heard it all before last year, but I figured that a) I didn’t really have anything else to do and b) I’d like to meet other people who were going to be in Burgos this coming year, so I went. The orientation was pretty uneventful and boring, as I’d expected, but being in Madrid is always a good time. I spent one afternoon having coffee with my friend Raquel (who worked with our program in La Rioja last year and has moved to Madrid this year), which was lovely, and then another night out with my friends Chris and Annalise, friends from my study abroad time in Granada who are now living in Madrid full time. I’ve met a number of their friends over the course of the past year, and so it was just fun to see them all again.

We also went out one night with a collection of people from Burgos and La Rioja this coming year, and I’m starting to develop some really good friendships with people from all over the place now. Luckily, Logrono and Burgos are really close to each other, so I think there can be a good amount of back and forth between the two places over the course of the year!

On Thursday, I had planned to go back to Burgos after the orientation ended midday, but John and I were convinced to head to Logrono instead to spend a few days there. So off we went on Thursday afternoon to Logrono, where we played the tourist (for John’s sake) and went out and enjoyed the tapas and familar bars of the city. We ended up in our favorite, La Musa, for almost all of Friday night, and that was just a great time. Lots of good friends and awesome music!

On Saturday morning, I actually went and visited with one of my tutees from last year for an hour and a half. He – Diego – is just the cutest 9 year old kid EVER, and his little brother Carlos, who’s three, is adorable, as well. And they were just so stoked to see me, which is always a confidence boost! Haha. But we sat and chatted for awhile that morning, and Carlos drew me a picture of him and me and signed our names to it, which was sweet. Something to put on my wall in Burgos!!

John and I also dragged Jennis back with us to Burgos for the day/night, and she fell in love with the city. It’s really gorgeous, I do have to say that, although COLD. Here’s a link to some pictures of the city:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2386688&l=a86a0&id=2501475 (The first seven photos are Burgos, and then the rest are from San Mateo)

We didn’t end up doing anything too exciting in Burgos for the night – actually, just delivery pizza and a movie! – but we had a good time nonetheless. And people are supposedly visiting me in a couple of weekends, so we have plenty of time to enjoy the nightlife that Burgos has to offer in the future!

I suppose that’s it for the past week or so. We are talking about heading to Zaragoza this weekend for the Dia de Pilar, the patron saint of the city and a national holiday in Spain (well, actually, the holiday is technically the Dia de Hispanidad on October 12th, but it also happens to be Dia de Pilar), and then possibly a quick trip up to San Sebastian to enjoy some coastal living! I’ll be sure to keep you all posted on what happens!

Besos a todos!