Venturing out of Bilbao

This weekend was filled with lots of traveling!

On Friday, my host family took a little daytime excursion to their casita (small home) in Escalera de los Montones - a small town in Burgos, which is the province over from Vizkaya (where Bilbao is). It was only an hour drive, so we left after breakfast and arrived around 11. Their house is essentially at the base of a bunch of mountains, and the view is breathtaking. Upon arriving, we stopped along the winding, narrow road on the mountain's edge (eek!) and hiked up some stairs to a fantastic lookout point. I took way too many pictures to be socially acceptable, but I couldn't help it. What is it about the mountains that captivate us without failure, whether its the first time we've seen them or the thousandth?

After returning back to the house, we continued to walk all around the village of Espinosas. It's very small and quaint - I think we walked the entire perimeter during our hour-long stroll. It's an incredibly rural area, but there are ancient buildings scattered all throughout the town (again, too many pictures). Some are crumbling, some are quite lavish - most were from the 15th century but some dated back to the 11th!! I thought it was pretty neat, but didn't really stop to consider just how ancient these buildings were until much later. It wasn't until the car ride home when it suddenly dawned on me that the buildings of which I casually snapped pictures are literally some of the oldest standing structures I've ever seen in my life - there simply isn't ANYthing that old in our teen-aged country. Weird to think about. The US is so young!

The nicest part about the entire trip, aside from the beauty of the mountains, was the little things about small towns that I haven't encountered in a while. Without the hint of a sound from a single car, plane, or television in the house next door, I experienced silence like I haven't been able to for quite some time. It was a nice refreshment from the traffic and bustling in Bilbao (though clearly I love Bilbao) and in some ways was like a little taste of home, though the terrain certainly beats the flat redundancy of Illinois! :)

Next up...San Sebastian.

On Saturday, some classmates and I took the bus to San Sebastian, another Basque capital (different province) about an hour and a half away. Every bit of sunshine that we had on Friday was sucked from the sky, and all day it was nothing but clouds and spitting drizzle. Didn't matter a bit - San Sebastian is absolutely gorgeous, rain or shine. We spent all day wandering around, enjoying the antique, charming city (and its food!) just as much as the beautiful natural landscape. I had my first Spanish tapa, which is a small, appetizer-sized meal portion. Here, every bar is full of tapas platters. People just grab a plate, take what they want, and pay when they're done enjoying their samplings with a glass of wine or coffee. Yum!

The fixture of San Sebastian is La Concha, a concave beach nestled between Mount Ulia to the east and Mount Andarra to the west. There is a switchback trail up Mt. Ulia, and from the top, we had an amazing view of the entire city and beaches. There's also an old castle up there that we had some fun exploring! Although the weather was terrible, it was kind of nice to enjoy the city with few tourists around. That being said, I'm definitely returning in the spring when the sky is blue and the water is warm!


Still waiting for my camera cord to arrive, but here's what google image search had to say about San Sebastian...

Words of Wisdom from Various Sources

1. "Luxembourg is an amazement to me. It's so small, if you decide to go jogging there, you've got to bring your passport along in case you wind up in another country."
-My Europe & the World professor, José Ramón

2. "Prometa, prometa, hasta la meta." (He promises and promises, until he scores. Aka, men will do anything to 'fook.')
-My host mother

3. "One of the small marvels of Europe is the dicovery that the world could be so full of variety, that there were so many different ways of doing essentially identical things, like eating and drinking and buying movie tickets. It fascinated me that Europeans could at once be so alike - that they could be so universally bookish and cerebral, and drive small cars, and live in little houses in ancient towns, and love soccer, and be relatively unmaterialistic and law-abiding, and have chilly hotel rooms and cozy and inviting places to eat and drink - and yet be so endlessly, unpredictably different from each other as well. I loved the idea that you could never be sure of anything in Europe."
-Bill Bryson in Neither Here Nor There. HIGHLY recommended (and it is HILARIOUS).

Also worth mentioning:

Thus far, my host family has demonstrated to me the use of (a) the umbrella and (b) the seatbelt. Every day is a new adventure, clearly.

And lastly: As much as this blog is full of warm travel fuzzies, don't be completely fooled: learning a language is HARD. And you feel dumb a lot. It hit me like a wall that all the sudden, I'm the outsider international student. It's a very frustrating feeling to WANT to contribute to a conversation in some way, but you simply don't have the means to do it. I constantly fear that I am not going to learn as much Spanish as I'd hoped I would.

Surely, though, I am optimistic - if not from the encouragement of every single person that's ever studied abroad, then for my tendency to be optimistic in nearly every situation (well maybe he stored your number wrong, and really did want to call you, and that beautiful woman he was at the movies with is actually his sister..).

Don't you folks worry, I am quite enjoying myself! BUT - that doesn't mean it's a piece of cake...wherever you go, there you are. Challenges will await you in whatever corner of the globe you tuck yourself into. But, alas, such is the beauty of life. Time to go learn some Spanish and show that challenge who's the jefe (boss).

The real football.

"In Spain, people don't talk about politics with each other. We don't talk about religion. And, if we root for different teams, we DON'T talk about football."
-Ana, my Spanish Culture professor (who is awesome, by the way.)

HA. How true it is. This country looooves football...and that was certainly evident on Saturday night, when Bilbao's professional team, Athletic Club Bilbao (Atlétic) beat Madrid! Let me fill you in: Madrid is known to pay lots of money for premier players from all over, like Cristiano Ronaldo (who Madrid just paid 94 million euros for). Bilbao, on the other hand, pays a modest amount for players, all of which are from the area. Basically, we (yes, we...I pledge my loyalty to Bilbao soccer. It grows on you) were the underdog. Hardcore.

I watched the game from the bar underneath my apartment with my host parents. The bar was full of neighborhood regulars, and Conchi ordered me a trina - apple juice (really). I sat among the neighbors in the warm, crowded bar while we ate pumpkin seeds and I learned what words to shout in Spanish - like FALTA (foul) or TARJETA (card him)! If all else failed, I learned to just get really mad when the people in red and white stripes got mad. Great backup, works like a charm.

Afterwards, Irati and I went downtown for a while - the streets were FULL of people! One street, Posas, was completely shut down to traffic, and people would just meander with their drinks from one bar to the other. Everyone was celebrating. We didn't get there until about midnight, so some had been celebrating a little TOO long - a lot of guys were peeing in the corner of the street, and when the garbage truck came to empty the dumpster full of bottles, the entire street people took a 30-second-hiatus from their festivities to cheer on the truck as it carried away their used plastics. Huh-larious.

Needless to say, I have now seen the passion for football firsthand, and I absolutely love it. It's nice to be in a country that actually appreciates soccer. The USA needs to get on that, along with the wine and coke thing. Put it on the to-do list, Uncle Sam.

Learning not to smile

I think I found something that may be just as difficult as learning Spanish: learning not to smile. The last few days, I have accumulated a record-breaking number of strange - and sometimes downright mean - glances from the people here. After exhausting every option (Is there something in my teeth? Do I smell like America?) I was just about ready to diagnose all of Bilbao with incurable unfriendliness.

And then yesterday happened. My host sister, Irati, and I were making a trip in the funicular, a sort of train that takes you all the way up to the top of one of the mountains that surround Bilbao (the view was AMAZING...when I can upload photos I will. You could see the entire city and surrounding area! There's a picture of the funicular at the bottom of this post).

Aaanyway, Irati and I were sharing our compartment with another man a few seats down. As she and I were chatting, she suddenly froze and whispered something to me in frantic Spanish. After asking her to repeat it about 27 times (I do poorly enough understanding her Spanish, let alone when it is extra rapid and hushed) - which completely defeated the purpose of her whispering anything. She said, "That old man next to us just SMILED at us." By the look on her face, I thought I was mis-translating and she really said, "The man next to us bathed in a bucket of snot and now he's reading a porn magazine."

The moral of the story? Here, unless you know somebody, you don't smile when you make eye contact. You look away. If you smile at a stranger, it means one of two things:
1. You're nuts.
2. You're flirting.
Well, I guess, 3 also: You're a clueless American. Guilty as charged.

So from now on, no smiling when I'm going on runs - because I'm not crazy, I'm not clueless (anymore) and I'm CERTAINLY not interested in the 70-year-old man with a cane that I flashed a friendly smile at on Thursday.

If any of you know me, this new rule is going to be a tough habit to break!


La funicular :)

Shunning the Shuffle...for now.

I'm a big fan of walks. Two days ago, I disembarked to explore the city just before sunset. A lot of times, I grab my ipod to accompany me, and allow myself to let my mind wander as my feet do, too. But on this occasion, I forgot it at the apartment, so I walked in silence instead - and what a wonderful mistake it was. I came across a park tucked into the center of the city called Doña Castilde.

This was a weekend night just after sunset, and it seemed like everyone who lived on the surrounding blocks was in that park. Dozens of kids ran and played and screamed in Spanish (which leads me, for some reason, to think of these kids as tiny little grownups. I don't know why, but when I hear children speaking in foreign languages, I automatically think they are little geniuses. I think that I fail to recognize that it is the only language they know.) Old women sat on benches and talked, while parents gathered near the playground and chatted as they supervised. Clusters of middle-aged women sipped coffee at the neighboring patio cafe, and a lot of families took laps around the pond. Two kids flew by on their scooters as I stopped to watch an older man take on four 8-year-olds in soccer.

It really was a scene straight out of a movie. People don't gather like that at home. And I was happy to take it all in - including the sounds of grandmothers gossiping, kids laughing, mothers calling after their children (or scolding them) - collectively, the jumbled sound of Spanish murmurs and conversation in a tiny little community where I have been convinced that everyone is best friends.

As much as I love Brad Paisley and Jimmy Buffet, I was grateful to be walking solo that night.

Week one: check.

Sorry, guys. I've been a bad blogger. I promise I'll try and get the hang of this! For now, all you need to know is that this last week has been quite the adventure: frustrating at times, a little scary, but mostly, absolutely amazing. After hours of delays, a 9 hour plane ride (sitting next to the coolest woman ever- she was a professional cyclist), and lost luggage for FOUR DAYS (don't even get me started), I am settled in Bilbao and loving it.

If I recapped the last five days in complete detail, I'd put you all to sleep...so all you need to know is that we've been doing a lot of orientation sessions with the university, exploring the city and surrounding areas, and getting to know our (wonderful) host families. To make it much more manageable, here's a top 12:

1. In Spain, it is completely acceptable to eat dinner at 11pm. I do every night and it's killing me. And yes, it's supposedly bad to eat right before you go to sleep, but no worries...everyone (my retired host parents included) goes to bed super late, like 2 in the morning. Crazy! No wonder they all take siestas! Which brings me to...

2. Siestas. Everything closes down around 2 o'clock for lunch. Restaurants, shops, everything...closed. Everyone goes home to eat and nap. I thought people were exaggerating the siesta when they talked about Spain. They're not.

3. My host family = awesome. I can't tell you how WONDERFUL it was to arrive from the airport in the middle of the night - disgruntled, terrified, and worried - and have Conchi (my mom) waiting in the street for my taxi, hug me before I could even get out of the taxi, and walk with her arm linked in mine the whole way home. They all talk slowly with me and are patient with everything I say (I think the dad thinks I'm really dumb) and have been a tremendous help.

4. Today I walked past a marijuana store on the street. Whaaaat?

5. The Spanish, as much as their eating schedule is messed up, can EAT. And they eat well. I've tried a few new things like tortilla española (tortilla de patatas), which is kind of like an omelette-pie thing with potatoes. Muy bueno! But man, does Conchi get upset if I don't finish my food, which I often don't because there's so much! She brags to me that the last three girls that have stayed with her family "se engordaron" (got fatter) before they left. Ha. The culture surrounding food and body image certainly is different!

6. A common drink here is "calimocho," which is is a mix of red wine and coca-cola. Kam's needs to get on that.

7. Bilbao is beautiful. It's a fascinating mix of new and old, culture and industry, tradition and modern custom - it's such a rich atmosphere and I absolutely love it. Seeing the steel Guggenheim museum - a piece of art in itself - against the backdrop of tidy, colorful, mismatched apartments is a perfect example of how Bilbao can't seem to decide what century it's in. I love it. My favorite place is "Casco Viejo" - the historic neighborhood that forms the old city center. No cars really drive here...the tangled web of cobblestone streets are full of pedestrians wandering from shop to shop. Trendy clothing stores are mixed in with tapas bars, panaderías (bakeries), souvenir shops, and more. My descriptions won't do it justice.

8. Bilbao is more loyal to "Basque country" than it is to Spain. The Basque region is made up of 3 provinces, and it considers itself quite separate from Spain. For example, you see the Basque flag (ikuriña) a lot more frequently than the Spanish one. Bilbao is the capital of the province Biscaya. In Basque country, many people speak the Basque language of Euskera. It's all over the street signs, packaging, etc - Bilbao is essentially a bilingual city of Euskera and Spanish.

9. I live in an area of Bilbao called Arangoiti. I'm quite certain it means BIG-ASS HILL in Euskera. Ok, maybe not...but it certainly is. When I go running, I dread returning home every time. It's more reminiscent of mountain climbing than going for a jog. On the way home from town today, I joked with Megan (a U of I student who lives in the building next to me) that even if our host moms nos engordan, our butts are going to be great by the end of the semester. Haha.

10. 'Vale' means OK. For the first few days, I had NO IDEA why EVERYONE kept saying 'vale' alllll the time. I thought it was a command form of "ir," so every time my host mom said it I thought she was telling me to go somewhere! Hahaha...it's basically a filler word and they say it a ton. Wow, did I feel dumb when I found that out!

11. "Britt" in Spanish sounds more like a strange noise than a nickname. It sounds a little bit like BLEEET when people try to say it. Spanish people are about as fond of trying to say it as I am fond of responding to a sound that reminds me of a smoke alarm. En España, me llaman "Tani" (in Spain, they call me 'Tani'). Not gonna lie...it's growing on me.

12. I have a long way to go with my Spanish. Sometimes, it's frustrating...but I am learning so much every day - not just the language, but the culture, customs, and a whole way of life that I am discovering the beauty of little by little.

Alright. That's all for now! I'll try to write a little more frequently so these aren't so long!

¡Hasta luego!

I Love You, Man

Leaving all the people you love for a semester is a scary/bittersweet thing to do...but let me tell you something. This week, I have gotten to spend some quality one-on-one time with some of my favorite people in the world. Going to Spain has been a wonderful excuse to surround myself with the people I love these past few days.

I am so happy - happy to have wonderful people in my life, happy that those people are happy, happy that reconnecting with people who really matter is effortless, regardless of the time spent away from them.

My only question: why is it that we so often need a pressing reason to connect? Why do we wait for upcoming prolonged absences (me), illness, birthdays, crises, or other rare occasions to come together with one another? Beats me - I'm guilty of it too.

Maybe my new year's resolution will be to make my new reason a simple one: I am making time for you because I like having you in my life, period. If we all did that a little more, I think we'd all be better people for it.

T-minus one week. WHAAT?

Do you ever have one of those instances where you don't really realize what you've said until AFTER you've said it? That absolutely happened to me today when somebody asked me how long I have until I leave for Bilbao. I said "one week" out loud and then all the sudden had a mini panic attack inside as I processed my own words in my head. Stuff like this always sneaks up on you! Needless to say, I'm a little nervous about finishing all the packing, seeing everyone I want to see before I leave the country, and the seemingly endless list of things I want to finish up before I leave. Can I really cram it all in to 7 short days? Probably not, but I'm going to try!

Now that the holidays are over, preparing for Spain will take up a little more of the limelight. Here are some bits of preparatory adventures thus far:

-I've been put in contact with my host family! The University contacted me about a week and a half ago with their information. My host mom, Conchi Monge, lives with her husband and 21-year-old daughter, Irati, in an apartment about a 15-minute walk from the university. Irati, and I have been in contact a few times via email. I'm so excited to meet them!

-The fam has been all about the Spain-friendly Christmas presents. I got some sweet luggage from Mike & Amber (bro/sister-in-law) and a super sweet MONEY BELT in my stocking. Thaaaanks to mom and dad for that one. I'll be the coolest girl in Spain. Ok, ok...maybe not. BUT...my passport will be safe (in theory). My favorite part about it is the picture on the box, which has a very chic-looking illustration of a woman with her AWESOME money belt. Sorry, anonymous money belt company...a lot of things can be marketed as stylish and trendy - wallets strapped to a waistband simply don't fall into that category:




Sorry kids...nothing fashionable here.

-Michelle, who will be making her own adventures this semester in Rio de Janiero, has bestowed upon me (and Katie) the book "Dirty Spanish: Everyday Slang from 'Whats Up' to F*%# Off'." Now I know how to say things like "This place is bumpin, let's get our groove on" and "My cheating excuse of a husband is a real piece of trash." Score. Besides, what's the point of knowing a romance language if you can't hit on anyone properly in it? (Joke!)

-I'm beginning to master Celsius to Fahrenheit conversions. I just googled a handy trick that gives a good ballpark estimate instead of using the whole complicated 5/9 equation: To convert Celsius to Fahrenheit, you double the temperature then add 30. For example, if it's 15C in Bilbao, I would take 15x2 = 30, plus 30 is 60 Fahrenheit. In actuality, it's 59F. Not too shabby!

-Speaking of temperature, it'll be nice to leave this frigid weather for a much more mild winter. Today, for example, it is currently a wind chill of -4. In Bilbao, it is 50. NICE.

-I am officially signed up for the Madrid Marathon on April 25th! I cycle between days of total excitement and total panic that I won't be able to do it. I'm already putting in good mileage, but I'll start following an official training plan just about as soon as I arrive in Spain. I've heard that running isn't as common in Europe as it is here, so I hope I don't look like a total weirdo. I'm sure I'll be mixing in my training adventures with the rest of my tales from abroad.

Other than that, I'm just trying to spend some quality time with family and friends these next few days. It will be a bittersweet goodbye, but I am excited to find a home in a different corner of the world, at least for a little while. :)

Please check in often and keep in touch!