Encounters with Spaniards

So far during my stay in Bilbao, I haven't had too many chances to interact with locals except through my host mom Christina or some random encounters. These are my stories:

Old lady:
One day I was walking to the Metro station to catch a train to Deusto. It was a chilly day and rather windy, and this old woman was inching along the sidewalk. As I passed her she just randomly struck up a conversation with me about the weather! She was a very cute, sweet lady, and we had a nice 3 minute conversation about how unseasonably cold it was that day.

Poor old man:
Yesterday I was walking to the University for my afternoon class. As I crossed an intersection, and old man was crossing as well, but walking towards me. All of a sudden, he started leaning forward and speeding up, like he was trying to cross before the signal changed. But he wasn't just trying to speed up. It turns out that he had actually lost his balance and was trying to catch his balance again. Sadly, he fell flat on his face in the middle of the intersection. I was terrified that he had hurt himself so I ran up to him and another man behind him ran up to help as well. We asked him if he was alright and he kept clutching his chest. I was worried that he'd had a heart attack or something, but he was just rubbing it because he'd landed flat on it. We tried to get him to stop for a second to make sure he was alright or to know if we needed to call someone, but he just kept walking along and insisted that he was fine. The cool thing is that the entire street of pedestrians stopped to make sure that he was alright and that he didn't need any help. I thought that was very neighborly of everyone.

Card shop owner:
Yesterday I went to the only card shop that I have ever found to buy a few postcards. I'd been there before a few times and the owner is very nice and always talks to me. One time he even told me that he has a daughter studying abroad in New York City at a prestigious acting school. And he has fun correcting my Spanish sometimes. On this day, he remembered that I was the Kansan (not the Texan, aka Sarah my roommate) and decided to announce to the entire store that if anyone would like to meet a Kansan that today was their day! I thought that was very funny of him. And one man in the store even knew that the capitol is Topeka! I was very impressed with this random fact.

Random professor (?):
Today, while I was sitting on my computer in the cafeteria of Duesto catching up on my emails, this man asked me if he could sit with me at my table. I awkwardly said yes and he asked me where I was from. I told him Kansas and he told me that, no, he didn't really know where that was in the US but that he'd seen movies of the Border War before. No surprise there. No one ever really knows where Kansas is. He asked me what I was studying here and back home and I answered. I asked him if he was a professor here, but it turns out that he's not but was on his way to Bilbao to talk to "predelinquitos" (young children) about the author Unamuno. I told him that I'd read a book by Unamuno and we discussed it (very) briefly before he had to leave to go to his conference. It took me about a minute to tell him my name (Bailey just seems to be so confusing here unless you associate it with the drink Bailey's) and he told me that his name was José Antonio. I thought he was a very nice man and I appreciated that he spoke so clearly and was happy to explain words to me that I didn't know.

All in all, I've found that the Basque people can be rather reserved, but if you can strike up a conversation with you they're really very nice and hospitable people!