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!