I'll be in Rome for Christmas. You can count on me.

The beginning of December brought Christmas to Bilbao, or at least Christmas lights. This is Plaza Indautxu again, which I pass almost every day. Beautiful lights are up all over the city, which is making up for the cold weather. Though, when I say "cold," I'm sure it's worse in Oklahoma. The difference is that in OK, we just stay inside when it's cold, but here you can't do that very easily.

They didn't have a Thanksgiving break at the end of November, but we did get a 5-day weekend (called a puente) at the beginning of December. I spent a lot of quality time with Bryan, Ben, and Pinky. After hanging out in the Casco Viejo one night, we decided to take day trips to the coast. Our first stop? Lekeitio.

Lekeitio is a small coastal town with a nice beach. Of course it was too cold to really swim, but we walked through the frigid water with bare feet, except Ben, that is. At first I was dying to get to that island. It was more difficult than it looks. By the time we got to the point where you could cross, the tide had risen so much that you had to get completely soaked, and we hadn't brought clothes to change into.

Meanwhile there was a beautiful rainbow, and we took a few friendship photos. We also had a nice, long, tranquilo lunch. I had paella and bacalao. After lunch we strolled all the way down the coast to a lighthouse. The next day, we returned to Lekeitio prepared to explore the mysterious island.

Then we took a bus to Ondarroa, which is the city where Ben works, located on the border of Vizcaya and Guipuzcoa (if that means anything to you). It's another coastal city, but less beach-y and more port-y. Nevertheless we had another great day of exploration. After a lunch of stuffed peppers and cream cake, we walked down the coast, and I stepped foot into Guipuzcoa for the first time. Now I can say that I've been to all 3 provinces of the Basque Country.

After all the excitement, I came down with a low fever and a sinus infection on Tuesday night. So I stayed in bed and took it easy until I had to work the following week. Hot liquids are amazing.

This final week was my last week of teaching this semester, so I decided to teach Christmas vocabulary. In my lower-level classes, I taught my students to sing "The 12 Days of Christmas." You might be thinking, "That's the longest song ever." But in reality it went really fast. I put the kids in 12 groups, and they had to stand when it was their day and do a motion. Needless to say, the geese a-laying and the maids a-milking were my instant favorites. In at least two classes, the goose a-laying was a boy who would stand on his turn and triumphantly raise his hand palm-up to display the egg he'd laid. The maids would simply giggle as they mimed squeezing udders.

In the upper-level classes, we played a game that I played with friends back home called "Naked." I think it's called that just to get you interested. The class was divided into two teams and they took turns. One person from the group had 30 seconds to get their team to say as many Christmas words as they could that they drew from my hat. But they could only describe the words, and if they spoke Spanish, their turn ended, even if it were words like "A ver..." "'Spera..." or "joder." Other auxiliares will know how difficult that was for them. They got really competitive and seemed to enjoy it.

Wednesday night Jessica, Kelly, Bryan, and I went ice skating in an outdoors skating rink in Deusto. After getting the right size of skate, I was surprised at how well I could ice skate since this was only the fourth time in my life. I even got backwards skating down pretty well.

The next evening Jessica, Pinky, Ben, and I went to Bryan's and we made egg nog, something foreign the the Europeans. I had never made it fresh, and I loved it! We enjoyed it with the bourbon balls that Val send me.

That night, I must have stepped on my foot wrong somehow because it started to hurt when I walked. For the next several days I've had a limp and tried not to put too much pressure on it, and I believe it's healing.

Yesterday after our church's Bible study, Bryan, Saraí, and I made egg nog again and then went to my house where they helped me open presents from home. I didn't want to open them alone, but I can't take them to Italy. My uncle Mike had sent me a blanket, an Oklahoma mug, and a battery-powered game of Catchphrase. Of course, we played the game long into the night. Thanks for the gifts, Uncle Mike!

Tomorrow, I leave for Italy where I'll be for fifteen days. I can't wait.

I do miss everybody back home though, and I wish you all a merry Christmas!

Noviembre nuboso (Cloudy November)

It's been nearly a month since my last update! I've been focusing more on working and things like that. Plus, I haven't been on any big exciting trips. The beauty of Laguardia is hard to follow. Also, nearly the entire month it has been raining here, hence the alliterative title. So, I'll do my best to mention the highlights of the last month. I'll depend on my pics to jog my memory. One Friday, I was tired of sitting around my piso. And it occurred to me that I hadn't been to the ocean yet even though I live really close. So, I took the metro (I almost called it the subte just now, what it's called in Buenos Aires) to Plentzia. I was planning on a relaxing morning in which I could chill in a café, but it took much longer to get to the ocean than I expected, so I rushed around quickly to make it back to Bilbao in time for my private English lessons with the two girls from my church, Anne and Andrea.

 

This was only our second class, and I was substantially late. Lessons with the two girls are much more enjoyable than my classes at the school. However, I am starting at the beginning with them, and I still find myself stopping a lot to explain British/American English differences.

The next day I went shopping to Portugalete and and Barakaldo (suburbs of Bilbao) with Bryan, Saraí, and several friends of Saraí.

One of several misspelled shirts at a discount clothing store. Why don't Spaniards wear their own language?

The next week, I decided that I needed more things to fill up my work week, so I contacted some people who were interested in hiring me for private lessons. I agreed to meet them every Tuesday at their workplace. The time and location, right after my classes and less than 5 minutes away from my school, is perfect. There are 3 and sometimes 4 of them, and they work at the País Vasco headquarters of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). The only thing I knew about Jesuits, of course, is that they killed a lot of protestants in the counter-reformation. However, I've met them twice so far, and to my knowledge they don't have any intentions of murder just yet. In fact, they are excellent students with a high level of English. They also want to learn idioms and phrasal verbs.

The next day, I called the uncle of one of my students. The student had given me a slip of paper with his phone number on it and said he was interested in doing intercambio. I met up with him, not knowing what to expect, and it turned out that he is a priest. We spoke in Spanish for a while and then arranged to meet for 2 hours every Wednesday before my Spanish lessons with Adrian, 1 hour of Spanish and 1 hour of English. Iñigo (the priest) is fun to converse with, and he's impressed by my interest in theology, seeing as how very few in Spain are. We got to talking about C. S. Lewis, and he has since lent me The Screwtape Letters in Spanish, and we're going to use it as a point of future conversation.

This next picture took place on a dreary wet Sunday. I got invited to go to the Sunday flower market and met up with Ally, Claire, Jessica C., and Pinky. On the way, we got caught up watching a Brazilian drum line at a fair trade fair. We made it to the market later, then perused a chino where I found some coveted brown sugar, then went for coffee at one of the most Americanized coffee shops in Bilbao, located in Plaza Nueva.

The following week was the week of Thanksgiving, so in all of my classes, I told the story of Thanksgiving, explaining in every class that these pilgrims aren't the ones on the camino de Santiago and that these arándanos aren't blue but red (Spanish has one word for both blueberries and cranberries). There was plenty of confusion, but some classes were into it. In my 3rd cycle classes, I had them put on a skit, which resulted in some good laughs. One class made a turkey out of paper wads and markers, while in another class, the tallest student decided to become the turkey. I wished I'd had my camera.

On the day of, I didn't do much, but I did go to Dubliners for a little intercambio. I also had a hamburger from a place near my house. It was pretty good for being so cheap. 

On Saturday morning, I woke up around nine and started cooking around ten. I didn't finish until around 3:30. I started with the chocolate chip cookies, for which I had to cut up a few bars of semi-sweet chocolate. I also only had one baking sheet, so it took quite a while to bake all the dough. Then, I worked on the broccoli rice casserole, which had more steps than I expected. I boiled the rice, chopped up all the vegetables, grated all the cheese, and made my own cream of mushroom soup from scratch. The turkey was low maintenance. I just glazed butter over it and popped it in the oven. Then, Erika came over and I helped her make sweet potato casserole. Luckily I knew how to mash potatoes.

Not bad for nearly 5 hours of work, I'd say. It all tasted really good, too. And I just finished off the last of 4 kilos of turkey breast today. Everyone else brought something for the feast, and we had a great time. I was thankful to celebrate the holiday with them. Many were auxiliares I don't see very often, so it was nice to get to hear from them, too.

Here we are, minus Amanda, who arrived late. Later on, some of the other girls and Bryce came over with dessert and we enjoyed company with full stomachs.

On this most recent weekend, I went up the Artxanda again with Kata, Jessica C., and Pinky. It was cold but not raining, and it was a peaceful walk. It was cool to see snow on the mountain tops, and we discovered that we could see the ocean from Artxanda, too, rendering my Plentzia journey even more pointless.

Unfortunately, on the day we celebrated Thanksgiving, Bryan came down with a crazy virus. He had a high fever and is only now recovering. While he was MIA, I made myself useful and worked on changing things in my room that I'd been thinking about. I rearranged it and fixed all the squeaky doors.

I'm happy that I can make better use of my lamp because Kata lent me The Count of Monte Cristo, and I've begun reading that as well. With this arrangement, I can also make better use of my numerous cubby holes. And, I bought more winter clothing and a heater for my room to supplement the puny one I already have. I also have spent a lot of time looking for accommodation in Italy. No easy task since we're going during Christmas. I made a budget, too, and discovered that I've been spending less than I expected I would.

Right now, I'm off to my lessons with the girls and looking forward to taking advantage of my 6-day weekend!