Vieje Grande

Este fin de semana incluye una gran vieja de dos ciudades diferentes. Or in English, this weekend included a huge trip to two different cities. When I finished last weeks blog I had said there were plans for adventures of enormous proportions but who would´ve ever thought they could´ve turned out to be so big...

Once the tests were over and done with a sense of relief and fear filled me. Relief that both were over but fear that because of having had two back to back tests I´d not studied enough to make the grades I desired. There is truth to the saying, you can´t always get what you want, as I have well learned many a times. This time was no different, I wanted more time to study, but the amount of time in a day didn´t allow for it. Friday came round and almost all of the USAC students studying in San Sebastian laoded onto a bus and headed off to the city of Bilbao for the day. It was raining... pouring would even be an understatement of the weather we experienced, but we made the trek to the Bizcaou (I´m sure my spelling is horrinle) province where we witnessed a very important building and an enormous oak tree with an even bigger history. The Spanish aren´t keen to talk about this since it´s a wound not yet healed but we did learn that during the time of World War 2 when Franco was dictator the basques (the people living in the basque country, where I currently reside, Bilbao being one of the bigger cities of course) were a hated people. Franco wanted uniformity, he also wanted to demolish everything that stood in his way which was the principles, and everything that the basque people stood for. Thus there was a very important date in history of which I have forgotten in which Franco decided to receive aid from Germany in order to comit a genicide of different proportions. Franco bombed the city we were visiting that morning killing thousands of basque people but the tree which was the symbol of these people, the one thing he had set out to destroy was the one thing he missed. This oak tree was where in historical times the rulers of the different provinces of Spain would come to swear their allegiance to the basque country before becoming ruler. That´s a short version of the history to say the least. So we got to see this symbol of hope (or what was left of it anyways) and the many other oak trees that had grown to replace the old oak.

After our oak exhibition we moved on to the city of Bilbao and ate lunch at this adorable place called the Iruña cafe. Which is funny because Iruña is a city in France, but anyways, we ate lunch and then it was off to the Guggenheim Museum for the afternoon. The most exciting part of the Guggenheim is what you can see from the outside in complete honesty, but I did not pay for this trip so I can not complain. We were not allowed to take photographs inside the museum but I was able to swipe a few anyways, I´m not one for rules in museums as we well know. The Guggenheim ended our day long trip and a good majority of our Friday as the rest was spent on buses. We arrived back in around 7 in the evening in which I made a quick dinner, packed and then went to Gloria´s where we waited until the time finally arrived for us to catch the midnight bus to BARCELONA!!!

Saturday morning we arrived in Barcelona bus lagged but excited none the less. We bought two day special metro passes and made our way to the hostel I´d booked at the edge of town in seemingly the middle of no where... oh well what do you expect for 12 euros. The place was very pretty though (scenery wise) and very clean, and the staff was extremely nice and helpful and when asked actually spoke to me in Spanish. (The one´s in Madrid just spoke English) So I got to practice more Spanish, just what I needed. After dropping off our stuff we headed out to get some food. Luckily one of the three other girls I´d traveled with had gone to Barcelona once before and remembered this awsome little (not little) farmers market fresh everything market in the middle of town near all the shopping. And this is where we ate breakfast. We grabbed some fresh fruits, stared at the wonderous foods surrounding us, and took our fruits over to the Dunkin Coffee next door to have a café and some breakfast. (Dunkin Coffee is a Spanish version of Dunkin Donuts in case you were wondering.) It was here I tried several new fruits for the first time. Papaya, fig, and something called Aragon. All were delicious but my favorite was the Aragon. It tasted like a cross between a strawberry and a kiwi. After food the afternoon was spent sight seeing and shopping for souveniers and what not. I bought several presents for several different people who will just have to wait and see what they got. And we all purchased T-shirts for the event that was to take place that night and the sole reason we´d gone to Barcelona in the first place. After wearing ourselves out looking at pretty cathedrals, and famous buildings, and every sort of souvenier known to man we went back to the hostel to take a much needed nap before dinner.

Around 6 in the evening we woke up and started getting ready for the night life. We took the metro from the hostel to a very nice part of town where lots of action was to take place. We ate dinner at an authentic chinese retaurant because earlier that day we´d seen some people eating chinese food and all began to crave it. I ate Chinese meat buns and a sort of stir fry and we all shared pretty much everything so I also ate a little bit of curry, chicken, sweat and sour chicken, wonton soup, and much more. Needless to say we were all stuffed! And after dinner it was GAME TIME!! We´d bought tickets to what had been hailed for weeks as the game of the year FC Barcelona versus Madrid Atletico. Two of the best teams in the league and not only did we buy tickets we bought great seats and a memory that will last for a life time. Even now as I sit here typing this I can´t help but smile and hum the tunes to the many cheers that I learned that night. What was hailed to be the game of the year two of the best teams in the league pitted against one another in a winner takes all battle to the finish did not disappoint. Of course we were routing for the home team with our Red and Blue shirts and me singing and dancing along with the guys seated next to me who (on a side note) actually thought I was from Spain. So we sang, we cheered, we yelled, we jumped and had an awsome time as Barcelona scored one goal after the other. There were times that the score told us there wasn´t even a team on the other side of the field but anyone who´d been there could tell that Atletico was putting up a brilliant fight Barcelona just laid out all the skills. The final score was 6-1 Atletico having had several more shots on goal then Barcelona but FC´s goal keeper was an amazing flexible little man that let almost nothing by. And the refs were amazing... yes amazing. It was almost a no holds bar until someone pulled a move very similar to the Kish of death on one of atletico´s players. The man was flattened and bleeding and removed from the game and a yellow card was pulled. But no one could dispute it all we could do was cringe and think about how the other player was going to be feeling that in the morning. The crowd was amazing, the seats were amazing (especially for their price) and the whole night in general was just simply amazing. And after the game we hung around the stadium and watched a band of sorts and danced with the crowd in celebration of the amazing win that had just taken place before turning in for the night back at the hostel.

The next day was a slow ease back into regular life as nothing can live up to such excitement that we´d experienced at the game. We woke up, checked out of the hostel, went and changed our bus tickets to an earlier time (long story short the game was supposed to be Sunday night not Saturday so we´d planned for that and had lots of extra time in Barcelona) Locked away all our stuff in the airport/train station and headed out to see the things we´d missed the day before. Our first sight consisted of a very famous church called Sangrada Familia. Known for it´s association with the knights templar as I had been urged by my art teacher here to go see it. Unfortunately it´s not as beautiful as it once was with the ongoing construction and restoration but amazing to see none the less. Afterwards we went to go to the Picasso Museum as it was free that day but once we saw the line we skipped out and headed to grab lunch at a Place called Pleasure. Strange name but really good food. We split this towering thing of nachos between the four of us and then I had a salad on the side. With real dressing for once. The spaniards love their greens but as much as they love their greens they love to drench them in olive oil and sea salt or just salt as their dressing. Delicious to begin with but after a while you just start to crave some ranch or italian. The dressing on mine was a lemon vinagerette not great but better then olive oil. After lunch there wasn´t much time left as we were scheduled to leave at 3 in the afternoon so we eased our way casually back to the bus station to get on the bus and head back to San Sebastian ending a grand weekend. And Monday started with full swing, my tired body lagging from the weekends expositions. It was just another manic Monday as I received my test scores from the previous week only to find the grade I´d expected but didn´t allow that to disappoint as news of a job caught my attention. And as of tonight I will be teaching an eight year old boy english and getting paid ten euros an hour to do so. For now it´s only one night a week and two to three hours that night but it can change and I´m very excited to begin the tutoring as I´d enjoyed it last semester and just know I will thoroughly enjoy it this semester.

On a side topic, the other day as I was riding my bike back to the apartment I ran into my old host family¨"mom" on the street. She´d called out my name and I´d stopped as per instinct dragging myself into one of the most awkward moments of my life. Why she´d called out and still wanted anything to do with me was beyond me, but the look on her face was not that of anger, or happiness or any emotions I can place at this point in time. It was almost a sad and lonely look as she mentioned that she was glad I was doing better and sorry things didn´t work out... and of course being the person I am, it hit me. Guilt. I´d actually felt guilty. No I´ve done nothing wrong, and things didn´t work out health wise and the apartment has been the greatest move ever but why then, why is there a sudden sinking feeling of guilt that welled for that short moment in the pit of my stomach... an answer unknown. But shaking it off and moving on with life I focused my attention on school and more important matters like taking care of my sick roomate and getting ready for my tutoring tonight. I´ve already planned out a game with these ery inexpensive lollipops that I bought for myself as a test distraction for the whole bad test taker/anxiety thing. Here they´re called chupachups, and kids love their sweets so it should be an overall fun night.

Plans for the weekend are scarce as they usually are a last minute detail, but I doubt anything we do could live up to the excitement and utter ecstacy of this past weekend. But we shall see because we never know what the tides on the beach of concha will bring us, the future is as well, unknown...