The past week has been a whirlwind of activities and moments of surrealism that I've had to take mental pictures of.
If I remember correctly, the end of last week simply consisted of more beach time whenever I could and continuing to build relationships with my host family. By this point, I feel as though I am one of the family and fit right in. I love everything about them. For myself, and the rest of my group, I think we reached "citizen" status because over the course of the past few weeks, I have run into my host sister out and then a lot of other host moms. It's just a really neat thing to be walking on the street in Spain, yet see familiar faces and can say hi to them. For example, Wednesday we went to watch the Spain game against Chile at a really cool tapas bar that had everything on the menu for one euro!! Anyways, my host sister Ana happened to be there and was sitting at the table next to us! Even though Spain lost, which stinks because we are here and they did horribly and we can't enjoy the infamous celebrations, it was still really cool to be able to chat with Ana outside of the house where we can both be ourselves I guess.
game watching hotspot
Friday we went to Bilbao as a whole group to see the Guggenheim Museum and wander around the city. The museum is amazing, but mainly just the architecture. The exhibits inside were strange i.e. the Yoko Ono exhibit... strange strange things. There was a really cool moving picture and music piece that we were all captivated by (another mental image I took). That all didn't really matter when it was just so intriguing to simply look all around you at the walls and ceilings and walkways and then at the outside of the building because Frank Gehry is a mastermind. The rest of our day in Bilbao was kind of boring because there wasn't much we knew to do se we just found a park and walked around and took a nap and then we were on our way back to Santander.
The Guggenheim and it's giant flower covered dog mascot named Puppy
Saturday was a beautiful day. I slept in (in total, I got 28 hours of sleep over the course of 3 nights here because my body simply could not keep functioning) and then met my friend Kaitlin to prepare for our family lunch. We bought the ingredients needed to make tacos and rice and then we bought our kind of queso and tortilla chips and went back to her homestay to make a giant Mexican food meal. Both our families ate together and it was just really cool to be able to give them a little taste of our life back home and to give back a little for how much they've provided to us this trip (another mental picture taken of us all sitting down together eating Mexican food in Spain). Then Kaitlin and I went to the beach and the weather was actually perfect. After catching some rays, I went back home to shower and eat dinner and then watch some soccer before going to bed early again. All in all I spent Saturday the way it's supposed to be spent.
Sunday was just all too surreal. I went with my host family out to a little Pueblo across the bay where Paco and Celi (my host mom's parents) have a summer home. In total, it was Ana, Ana, Javier, Paco, Celi, and then a great aunt, an uncle and aunt (Ana's brother and sister-in-law). They showed me around the town of Somo and then we basically spent the whole day sitting outside in the sun, having Spanish barbecue which was just hamburger patties, some kind of ribs, kebabs, membría (traditional food here, but you probably don't want to know what's in it-- I love it despite the ingredients) and sausage. It was all so good!! After eating we just sat around all day chatting about anything and everything. As I sat at the table, I had a moment when I forget where I was and I had to pinch myself to realize that I was integrated into another family in a backyard in Spain. I had so much fun simply observing and occasionally throwing in some words.
Cannot get over how lucky I am to have such a cool host family
Upon arriving back at home around 9pm, we ate a quick dinner then I got ready in my red white and blue to meet up with people to watch the USA-Portugal game. Once again we were close to the only people out watching the game due to it being a 12am start time here, but we had so much fun together. I still can't believe they didn't close that game out with a win to secure advancing. Nonetheless it was super exciting and now drama is heightened in the group of death.
there's more to share about the past couple of days, but it's way too late here to finish right now so keep your eyes open for a post coming soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment