Hello family and friends.

I realize that I haven't updated in approximately two months.  I also realize that I am going to come home in just a few weeks* to see all of your faces in person and it's a little late to be trying to salvage things now.  But I told you--I told you--this would happen. I said I was going to forget to update in the very first post.  So don't say I didn't warn you.  Anyway.

March was a busy month.  The second weekend the CIDE program took us on a three-day field trip to Segovia and Madrid.  We saw a castle and an aqueduct in Segovia, had churros and chocolate in Madrid, tried to go out at night in Madrid but discovered that it's actually super lame at night.

The Royal Palace in Madrid with assorted teachers and classmates

A large demonstration we had to walk through, protesting...something?

Terrifying human statue; only the one on the right is a real person

The weekend after that my parents and brother came to visit during their spring break.  They brought me peanut butter, which was glorious, and I gave them a halfhearted tour of the city and used up all two of my good restaurant recommendations.  Then I translated everything very poorly into English for them. I didn't take any pictures while they were here because I know what they looked like.

The next weekend I traveled to Málaga, Córdoba and Sevilla in the south of Spain.  We saw a bunch of castles and Moorish architecture, and some gypsies tried to sell us rosemary and then maybe put a curse on our families when we didn't want it.  So, sorry, family. 

The inside of a Moorish palace turned into a cathedral in Córdoba

Giant koi fighting over bread in the Alcázar gardens

The largest Gothic building in the world;  it's okay I guess

Then, the last weekend, I went to Dublin, which was amazing for several reasons: 1. People in Ireland speak English, which was a nice change of pace. 2. Dublin is really pretty, and it didn't even rain while we were there, except for a little bit while we were inside anyway. 3. We stayed at a really swank hostel where they made us pancakes for breakfast and gave us free tea. 4. Leprechauns.

Statue of Justice, not being blind, at Dublin Castle I think

Campanile at Trinity College

Statue about starving people; something about the Potato Famine

April was equally crazy, in that I was not in Bilbao for a single weekend.  The first weekend I went to visit my friend and future roommate Adrienne who is studying in southern France this semester.  I found my way to her from the airport all by myself and we went on a series of exciting and educational field trips all around Provence.  While I was there, I had two different crepes and brioche, so now I'm pretty sure that means that I never have to go back to France again. 

Bakery.  Obviously

Marquis de Sade

City on a mountain

After that we had one week of classes and then our two week spring break started.  I went with two other people on a whirlwind adventure through Europe which merits a separate blog post, I think.  Long story short we saw a lot of ducks and one dead pope.

Ducks

Pope

That pretty much catches us up to the present, so that is where I will leave it.  I have a super extra bonus album of pictures that I may or may not post on Facebook in the near future, so be on the lookout for that.

*The new official date of my return is May 23rd, in case anyone was keeping track.

Mount Artxanda

So on a day which according to my camera was February 20th, I made a journey up to Mount Artxanda, one of the two mountain ranges that surround Bilbao.  It's close enough to the city that you can walk all the way up to the top in about half an hour, but there's also a tram that will take you up in two minutes.  Once you're at the top, you can basically see the whole city:

Here it is

And here

 The mountain isn't particularly tall or steep, so there are actually houses and roads all the way up.  The top of the mountain is technically part of the city, but it's more like a separate little village with its own shops and restaurants.  We went there on a Sunday, so everything was closed, but we just walked around the park/scenic view area that's by the tram stop and took pictures.

Like this one

 I tried to get a picture of my dorm from up there, but the lighting was a horrible sort of mixture of fog and bright sun shining in the wrong direction, so I got this:

My dorm is across the river from the skyscraper, maybe

 Also, there were some odd sculptures up there, because there are sculptures everywhere in Bilbao.

A giant fingerprint

A gear or something, I guess

So there's that.

Things About France

So since the last time I updated (a month ago--whoops), we took a trip with CIDE to Bayonne, a city in the Basque country of France*, and saw the following things:

A building that was used as Nazi headquarters during WWII

Some kind of Gothic cathedral

Statue of an angry wizard (cleverly disguised as a cardinal)

A warning: Do Not Sit.  Do Not Sit.  Do Not Dance.

The fancy door of a dental clinic

Generic view of the city across what I think is a river

A street on a hill; also: a tiny French person

DRAGON GUTTER

I have done many things since this trip, but I will save them for other posts so as not to overwhelm your brains with awesome.  Stay tuned for more adventures/picture dumps without context or background information in the days to come!

*Fun Fact:  Aside from being the home of wizards and dragons made of metal, Bayonne is also the birthplace of bayonets and possibly mayonnaise, everyone's two favorite things!

Barcelona and Other Sundries

Last weekend a few other people in my program and I went to Barcelona.  We flew with RyanAir, because it is cheap, although you get what you pay for.  Also, I guess some of the people in our group had a problem comprehending that RyanAir's rule YOU ONLY GET TO BRING ONE BAG means YOU ONLY GET TO BRING ONE BAG, so there was some last-minute shuffling of possessions into other people's bags.  But it all worked out all right.

When we got to Barcelona (after an hour and a half bus ride, an hour flight and another half an hour on the metro) we all split up because we were all staying in different places.  I ended up at a hostel with four other people right in the middle of the city, about a block away from one of the buildings designed by Gaudí.  That afternoon we just wandered around the city and had dinner.  The next day we took a bus tour around the city.  There are a couple of companies that do the tours; you buy a ticket, and the bus goes in a giant loop around Barcelona and you can get on and off whenever you want to see the different things.

Then that night I was coerced into going to a soccer game, because FC Barcelona was playing Atlético Madrid (not Real Madrid, but Madrid's crappy backup team).  Since we had bought our tickets earlier the same day, our seats were about ten rows from the very back of the stadium, so we were so far away that we couldn't even read the numbers on the jerseys.  It was fun anyway, though.  Barcelona won (I think).

Anyway, next Friday our whole program is taking a trip to the Basque country in southern France.  So I'll probably be posting pictures or whatever.  Maybe.

Some kind of radio tower, I believe

Bottom of a monument to Christopher Columbus

Top of the same monument

Metal sculpturey-thing

Festive Chinese New Year decorations

Friendly lobster sculpture

Roy Lichtenstein sculpture

Don't worry, guys:  McDonald's is that way

The beach

Our view at the soccer match

Week Two

Classes started this week.  None of them seem like they will be too hard, but on Thursdays I'm in class from 9 a.m. to 6:45 p.m., which is not going to be fun.  At least I don't have class Fridays. 

Anyway, so some of the other people from the program and I went out for pintxos on Wednesday.  Pintxos are essentially the Basque version of tapas, but generally bigger and you pay for them separately from your drinks.  Also, they usually have bacon in them, because Spanish people love bacon more than they love their own families.  So we got to the cafe at like 9:00, but here everything actually closes at like 10.  We were still sitting around eating and talking or whatever when the cafe closed, so the waiter gave us all of his leftover pintxos for free.  Which was nice.  Bacony, but nice.

Other than that, nothing of note happened.  Here are some pictures I took just walking around Bilbao:

The view from the front of my dorm

The main building at Deusto and some palm trees

The estuary; Deusto is on the left, Guggenheim on the right

The Guggenheim being shiny

Overly ambitious graffiti?

Economy and Business building at Deusto

Things About the First Week

So I've been in Bilbao for almost a week and lots of THINGS have been HAPPENING. I offer some of them to you in the form of a bulleted list:

• I flew out of O'Hare. I almost lost my passport going through security. But whatever. It happens.

• I flew for at least a million hours to Brussels, where everything is confusing and Dutch. I spent €6 to buy WiFi to send a single e-mail about 10 words long (you're welcome, mom).

• I took a shorter flight into Bilbao, where I and a bunch of the other people from the program were met by representatives from CIDE who sent us off on buses to our various housing situations.

• One other girl and I got to Colegio Mayor Deusto, the dorm right on campus. I went to my room, unpacked my few possessions, and was immediately greeted by 5 or 6 of the Spanish kids who live on my floor. They are apparently very excitable and usually talk at least 3 or 4 at a time, so I generally have no idea what they're talking about. But they showed me where the dining hall was, so that was nice.

• Sidebar: the food here is ridiculous. So first of all, in Spain everyone eats like two hours later than people in the US, so lunch doesn't start until 1:30 and dinner is at 8:30. Also, they like ham here. We had ham pizza two nights in a row, and the other day there was, like, breaded and deep-fried ham, which I politely declined. Also, they have the craziest flavors of yogurt. They have regular flavors like strawberry, lemon, banana, but also really weird ones like coconut, hazelnut, galleta (which means cookie), and "Macedonia" (I don't even know). So that's fun.

• CIDE did a bunch of introduction stuff, we went on a tour of Deusto and Bilbao so that theoretically we won't get lost (yeah, right), and we took the placement test to find out our level of Spanish. We find out what classes we qualify for on Monday, when classes start.

• We went on a trip to Balmaseda and Portugalete, which are two towns near Bilbao, and toured them and saw all their fancy buildings and suspension bridges and stuff like that.

Here are some pictures I guess.

My desk.  Note the ashtray that came with the room

A church in Balmaseda.  I think

Medieval bridge

A different church in Balmaseda

Suspension bridge in Portugalete

They have these creepy skeleton trees all over

The cable-car thing that carries people and cars across the suspension bridge