More of what I see!

The post office near our house. Theory has it, you can send packages from here and they'll get to their destination (cough, Lincoln) but this is not always the case...




















Yes, dressing up dogs is very popular here. Almost every small dog I've seen has had some type of jacket on it at night. Admittedly, it is cold, but dogs have FUR!





















A cool sculpture that I always think is a jungle gym that I pass on my way to the Metro every day.



























A portion of the path to the Metro that I take every day. A TON of people like to play with their dogs here which is always cute, but it makes me miss my Huey :(

























My apartment building! It's very new and very nice.




















La Plaza Elorrieta where I live. Our living/dining room window overlooks this little square where old couples like to stroll every day which is really cute.

Intercambios Maravillosos

After Skyping with my parents in a bar last night, I took the Metro to la Plaza Moyua to meet with Alex (a friend from my ISA group) and our two new intercambios. This is a program where English-speaking students and Spanish-speaking students meet together periodically to practice both languages. Curiously, I was on the same train as my intercambios, but of course we didn't know it because we'd never met each other. In fact, they thought that they were supposed to meet guys because Alex is just a boy name here and they've never met a Bailey (and everyone always looks confused when I tell them my name until I explain that it's just like the drink, then they laugh at me).
Our intercambios' names are Naiara (Nie-RAY-a) and Irata (Ay-ROT-ah). Naiara is 26 and a pharmacist, and Irata is almost 22 and attending la Universidad del Pais Vasco in Sarriko which is really close to where I live. They're sisters, really pretty, and very nice girls.
I'm SOOOO excited that they're our intercambios! They took us to a quiet bar and bought Alex and I cafes con leche to enjoy while talking. We talked in English and then in Spanish both for half an hour (more or less). They both speak English really well, which makes me feel even more inferior that I've been studying the language but still can't speak it that well. But I guess that's why I've got my intercambios, yeah?
Anyway, I'm really excited to hang out and get to know the two of them more and I can't wait to see how much they can help me improve my speaking!

Wining & Dining...

Beautiful stained glass window at the Ontañón Vineyard.






















Cingular commercial, anyone?
























These glasses are NOT blurry, it's a bunch of reflections!























Jesus, our guide cleaning the glasses with a glass of wine. I think that's a pretty good system...




















PINTXOS (tapas) in Spain! My Prácticum class took us on a field trip to a restaurant during class where we sampled pintxos and wines. Spanish university classes are seriously THE best classes ever!
This one (above) is Bacalao (fish) with a pil pil sauce, potatoes, and tomato.























The white wine we had that was incredible!




















A pastry cone filled with a chicken salad-type food. Just substitute crab for chicken and you've got yourself a tasty pintxo!





















Calamari!!! 'nuff said...


















"Rape" (rap-ay) fish (a flat icky looking fish) with cucumber and carrot.

Mischief and Mayhem in Pamplona

Me trying the local sweet wine that is traditionally eaten with desserts (like the churros and chocolate we just inhaled). Notice the bib. I didn't want to spill because it takes some talent to pour from that lamp-like bottle. The trick is to see how far you can get the bottle away from your mouth without spilling.




















Corey fighting a fake bull in the Pamplona bull ring. He never saw it coming...




















Me on the gazebo in la Plaza de los Castillos. It was a perfectly sunny day and Tim and I decided that it would be a good idea to take our senior photos here.





















Probably the most entertaining thing we found all day! Seriously, we suddenly became school children the second we found this see-saw. It was SO much fun though!
























A guard tower along the old wall of Pamplona.




















An ALBINO peacock!! Who knew?!




















On top of the most dangerous jungle gym we have ever climbed. (Corey (front), me, Tim) One wrong move and you're tangled in ropes with a snapped leg or arm. We decided that they have them in Spain to weed out the stupid kids, sort of like survival of the fittest.
























The crazy jungle gym that we climbed. Not only was it really tall, but also really dangerous.





This weekend we went to Pamplona for a day (and then off to la Rioja, the wine country). We had so much fun exploring the city! It's the capital of the region Navarra in Spain so it's a fairly large city, but it has its old charm as well. We stayed in the hotel that the royal family stayed in when their father was sick because it's the closest nice hotel to the hospital there.

During the day, we took a tour of the city that was very intersting. We got to see the bar where Ernest Hemingway always hung out, and the hotel that he wrote about (La Perla), and the place where he always sat at the bull fighting arena.

It was really interesting to go to the bull arena because we learned the actual purpose behind bull fights. They're not just about blood and gore. It's more of a dance between life and death. The bullfighter's job is to honor the bull and hide its flaws from the audience. If you're a bullfighter and you don't do this, then you pretty much shouldn't show your face in Pamplona again because everyone will be really mad at you for dishonoring the bull. The bull's job is to show its worthiness to live by fighting back. If he shows that he has a strong will to live, then they clean him up and take really good care of him and let him live a long happy life with lots of vegetables and cows. But if the bull does not fight back enough, then they "lead it to death."

All in all it was a very fun trip and I had a great time learning about the bull celebrations they have here and seeing all of the beautiful buildings and eating the most amazing churros and chocolate!

So you can see what I see!

The most important market in Bilbao. It's huge! One floor is devoted to marine items (like the dinner that I saw gutted there once) and another is for meats and vegetables.


















Along la ría of Bilbao. Very old buildings that I find charming.


















Me at the Euskera Philharmonic Orchestra. The guitarists were absolutely INCREDIBLE! And they played "Bolera" which was really pretty.



















Us on the roof of the concert hall. (Lydia, me, Corey, Tim, Sarah (roomie!), and Kasey)


















My FAVORITE gallery in the Guggenheim! You can walk inside these sculptures and the cement floor echoes and they're beautiful.






















Inside the Guggenheim before I got in trouble for taking pictures of the architecture.






















A really neat piece that consists of reflective walls and moving LED lights that say words in English, Spanish, and Euskera. Very cool.


















The Bridge of Deusto and the lush green hillsides behind.






















The Guggenheim view from the bridge I cross every day! (Just picture the sky overcast and you have my view every day)



















Deusto! This is where I go to school (mostly in the right wing) You can also see the silver little bridge in front of it that I take every day (and where the Guggenheim picture was taken).


















La Plaza Moyúa fountain. Very pretty. Maybe when it gets warmer I'll play in it.

That's all for now! I'll try to take more pictures on a sunny day.

(Belated) Barcelona #2

A cool sculpture on the beach. I think that it lights up at night.


















Chilling on the beach!


















On the dock with Bobby Ray!














Cool cloud sculpture off of the dock.


















Awesome market that we stumbled upon. They had everything! We bought candy (that we missed OH so much) and gelato!! It was sooo good.


















She sells seashells down by the seashore... I have no idea why these were for sale. Could have something to do with the fact that pilgrims used to use them to drink water out of during their travels.


















Ooh! Barracuda!


















Candy! Candy! CANDY!














Apartment designed by Antonio Gaudi. Apparently it has amazing architecture inside, but I didn't want to pay to go in.

Cerebral Circuits

Last night I went running with my ROTC friend Christina (not to be confused with my host mama). We cooked during our Prácticum class and both ate SOO much and felt so guilty about it that we decided that circuits would be the best thing to cancel it out.
BIG mistake. They kicked our butts!
But it was totally worth it because we ran along the river right by the Guggenheim! A lot of people run along there because there's a wide promenade that runs the length of Bilbao's region of the river.
The river was so beautiful with all of the lights of the city reflecting off of it and the Guggenheim was all lit up and gorgeous. I think I'm going to enjoy running a lot more here than back home along the corn fields.

"Dieta mediterránea"

This past weekend proved to be a fairly interesting one.

On Friday, our entire ISA group met together to tour a "museum" close to both the Plaza Moyúa and the Guggenheim. It's not exactly a museum because nothing in there is bought, it's just two large rooms that feature incredibly contemporary (we're talking made this year) art. It was... interesting... Not exactly my thing, but this one room that we saw was full of garage-like items like blinds and lights and wires all over the ceiling. This was a particularly cool room because the artist (a Korean that lives in Berlin) also incorporated smells along with sounds (from a microphone setup in the corner) and images (moving lights creating really cool shadows on the walls) and even feeling (changes of temperature in different parts of the room). It was interesting but I couldn't quite figure out what the artist was going for.

On Saturday, I holed myself up in a bar for about 4 hours to talk to my parents and to Bryan. There's free WiFi there so I just bought a glass of wine and a bocadillo (a small baguette sandwich) and I was good to go! Later that night we all got together and went out to the bars and to a couple of discotheques. It turned out to be a VERY late night (rather, morning) and we didn't get back home until about 5:30 am (after the discotheque that we were at close). It was certainly a long day, but totally worth it because it's so much fun to dance here!

On Sunday we slept in until about 2 pm and Cristina was nice enough to have lunch ready for us! We had a delicious pasta doused in olive oil and meatballs. It was perfect. Then Sarah and I went to our friend Tim's house which happens to be right on the beach! It's a fairly inconvenient trip out there (at least 25 minutes on the Metro) but the view was amazing even though it was a very overcast day. We just relaxed for the afternoon eating cheese and french fries. Mmm mmm... :)

Afterwards Sarah and I went to see a movie called "Dieta mediterránea" with two of our girlfriends. It's an actual Spanish movie (most of the movies shown here are American and dubbed) so that's why we picked it. It turned out to be quite an interesting movie to say the least. If you've ever seen "Bandits" think love triangle, just substitute the robbing out and replace it with the woman's desire to be the best chef in the world. It was definitely funny, but fairly graphic. Sarah and I agree that it would be incredibly difficult to find two leading actors in America who would be willing to make out with each other, and it would probably be front page news, but here it was no big deal. I did enjoy the movie though, and I was especially happy to find that I could understand almost all of it and and I knew what was going on the entire time!

Now I'm just back to the old grind of school. But I really enjoy my classes here because they're all in Spanish and all applied so I'm actually learning a lot.

¡Hasta luego!

Things to get used to...

~ Not having wireless in our apartment - it KILLS me sometimes!

~ Hearing American songs (that're sometimes really racy and I wonder if they know what the lyrics mean) in major shopping stores.

~ Weekend fun begins at about 11 pm and doesn't end until about 4 am (if you can handle it).

~ Beer vending machines in Deusto

~ el Menú del día - most amazing thing ever! (but OH so much food...)

~ Milk jugs stored in cabinets under the sink or elsewhere in the kitchen OTHER than the fridge! (and it tastes A LOT creamier which is something to get used to - let's hope I don't become lactose intolerant here!)

~ The brilliant fashion sense of the Spaniards (¡Qué guapos!)

~ All of the signs here are in Euskera (local language) first, and Spanish second. Seriously, it's hard enough for me to read them, why do you have to confuse me with two languages??

~ A strong national pride here for a heritage other than Spanish: loyalty goes to the Basque culture first (I've only seen about 4 Spain flags here and a million País Vasco flags).

~ The most amazing pastries ever!!

~ Shops closing for the siesta from 2-4, which inconveniently is during my long breaks between classes... What to do??

~ Spanish, Spanish, SPANISH everywhere!!

~ ALL of the bars and restaurants reaking of smoke because about 80% of the legal population does it. Ew.

~ Incredibly odd dishes for dinner (pig stomach, anyone?) Yeah...

~ Having a grand total of TWO public outlets for computers in the cafeteria (SERIOUSLY??)

I'll keep you guys updated on other difficulties (or amazing wonders) that I have to get used to!

Greetings from Lucy II!!!

YAY!!! My computer is back!!! It was surprisingly inexpensive to replace the hard drive (hence the "Lucy II") and I have a 3 month warranty on it which is how long I will be here which is just perfect!

I'll write back more about what I've been up to during my hiatus; but for now just know that I'M BAAAAACK!!!

Blog Hiatus

Sorry that I haven´t been able to update guys... My computer has decided to no longer work so it is currently being repaired. Unfortunately, this seriously dimishes my already meager internet time, so blogs will be few and far between until my computer decides to cooperate again.

Until then!