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

Things About This Blog

This is my blog.  Here is where I will post words and/or pictures about what I'm doing so that you can read them while I'm gone and pretend like I'm still right there saying them at your face.  Let's be real, though; I probably won't update this regularly because that's not how I roll.  So you get what you get.  In the meantime, please enjoy this picture of a peach named Greg: