En abril, llueve mil - y estamos goo goo para el Guggenheim

Last week my friend Paige turned 21! It was a Monday night, so not much was open on our go-to street, and famous area in Santander for bars - Rio de la Pila. We found a bar called Covers with the Rolling Stones symbol (red tongue sticking out of a mouth) and decided 'what the heck?'. We made a fabulous choice, it turns out! There were 16 of us, and it was happy hour, and the bartender was a great guy who gave us 16 free shots on the house of melon y limon, in honor of Paige :) all 16 people in our group came out to celebrate, and we enjoyed some happy hour drinks and food specials together, and it was fab :) Happy Birthday Princess Paige!

Last weekend I went to Bilbao, Spain (about an hour bus ride from my city) to see the Guggenheim, or as I like to call it - the Googenschmoogle - museum of modern art. It was GORGEOUS, and we found some great scenery along the way. Altogether a wonderful day with my friends enjoying some beautiful art and a really cool city.

Me, Michelle, and Paige

The Guggenheim!

Hector/Mauricio and I in front of the Guggenheim, and the MASSIVE puppy schrubbery outside of it

Hector/Mauricio and I found some rolling grass

I spotted more Australian things in Santander to add to the list of photos I've already snapped previously. I even found an Australian pub I'm gonna have to try out while I'm here!

So I can look back on this stuff one day, and hopefully for your reading pleasure as well, I'm going to list some interesting cultural norms here in Spain that I've observed - one norms is hilarious and/or disgusting depending on your sense of humor, but it definitely makes the list:

--It's not legal to buy or sell marijuana in Europe, but if you just so happen to possess some it's perfectly okay to smoke it. Technically it's supposed to be in your house, but people smoke it on the streets all the time. I smell it regularly when I'm out on the town at night, and sometimes even in the afternoon. I even smelt it at the 'Pasión Vivente' play where Jesus was getting killed, crucified, and resurrected - one would think a little restraint would be warranted in such a setting...at a 14th century cathedral!

--The large (huge) spoons that we use to serve salad or pasta, etc with in the US are used for that here, but also for eating soup. Every soup I've eaten so far has been with a massive serving spoon.

--People smoke. A lot. Thank goodness I have my inhaler here! I'm told people smoke all over Europe, but I can only speak for the northern part of Spain so far...people look so healthy though! 

--I have yet to see a single obese person in Spain. Not a SINGLE one! Most people are at least somewhat fit, and the standard of "overweight" here would only be considered a little chubby in the US. It's very interesting.

--You have to pay to use any kind of bathroom in Europe. You either need to be a customer at a restaurant or store to use their facilities, or on the off chance you find a public restroom, that costs about .20 euros to use too!

--With that said - peeing and pooping in public is apparently not frowned upon. My friend Alex and I are scarred for life after an experience we had one of our first days here in which a mother was holding her little girl - the little girl's pants were pulled down around her ankles and her mom had her torso and her legs folded up together and was holding the little girl between her legs with her butt dangling between. The mom was loudly exclaiming to the little girl, and we just could not figure out what in the world was happening. We walked past them, and then I snuck one more look over my shoulder to see if I could figure out the very strange scene...that was a biiiiiig mistake.

....I turned around just in time to see a massive turd dangling out of the little girls butt...and watched it break off and hit the ground. 

I very nearly lost all the contents of my stomach on the spot and didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or gouge my eyes out. I apologize to anyone reading this, as I'm sure it's appalling, but I am cracking up as I'm writing this. I hope you're not eating while reading this hahaha. Ahhh it was shocking!

I asked one of my Spanish friends if that was normal, and he told me that it is not normal for someone to do in the house, but outside it's okay. I died laughing hahaha. I sincerely hope nobody folds their toddler up and let's them poop on the floor of their home when they have a perfectly good toilet to use in the bathroom! It's bad enough that is acceptable outdoors. That is a freaking bio-hazard! At least urine is sterile, and that is still disgusting!

Well on that very Natalie, and very disgusting note, it's time for me to go to bed :) I hope you are all having a wonderful Spring, and that you were able to hold back your vomit during the last part of my blog. I welcomed you all to my stream of consciousness in my first post, and this post is very true to that statement :-P 

Lots of love! Hasta la proxima vez :) xoxo

San Sebastián y "sangre de vaca"

Here is a picture of my French friend, Justine, that I met last week and talked about in my last post - and my friend Oresta from my program too :) me-Justine-Oresta


On Saturday morning I caught the 7am bus with 4 friends, Michael, Nikko, Maura, and Marisol, to San Sebastián, which is another northern coastal town about 3 hours away, but is in país vasco, where catalan is spoken, instead of castellano Spanish - which is what I speak here is Santander :) it's still fairly easy to understand each other though. Our trip to San Sebastián was a quick overnighter, but I got to stay in my first hostel, so that was exciting! Especially because it wasn't at all like the movie "Hostel"...

the name of the hostel!

Hector/Mauricio and I in the common room

Maura y Miguelito in the common room 

We went out into the city all day Saturday, and proceeded to eat the best food I've had while on this trip, over the period of 48 hours...it was delightful. It started of with these:

Pancakes with berry and dark chocolate syrup and whipped cream!

And it was followed up by this:

Sushiiii

And then for dinner we embraced the authentic Basque culture of "pintxos", or "tapas" as we call them in Santander...which really both just mean phenomenal, bite sized appetizers. There are pintxo bars around the city where all the pintxos are set along the entire bar, and you just walk up and grab what you like with a napkin, eat it, then throw the napkin on the ground! The throwing the napkin on the ground part is very exciting haha. You can also order "raciones"(an order) of things like patatas fritas (french fries), calamari, etc. And there's drinks - wine, beer, spirits...whatever you please. And it's all delicious! And kind of expensive if you don't know what you're getting yourself into, as my 4 friends and I quickly found out haha. Yikes! But nonetheless, it was so much fun to eat them, and I'm glad I did it :) 

 Maura and Nikko 

 Kobe beef mini burgers (yes I ate one..."when in Rome" and all that jazz)

 Hector/Mauricio was not forgotten in all of this. He had a good time bar hopping for pintxos.

 Merluza (amazing!)

 red pepper stuffed with tuna on a crispy piece of bread, and seasoned onions on top...enough said

 Marisol and Nikko at our last stop for the night!

Us girls did some shopping in San Sebastián during the day on Saturday in between all of the eating we did, and we also went and visited the cathedral there too. It was gorgeous, and they had an exhibit cataloguing the life of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, which was fun for me to read facts in Spanish and then cheat and look at the English translation when I had to.

On Sunday we spent the morning and afternoon walking around town and seeing the beach/ocean. It was FREEZING, but still really fun to see it all. It hailed at least twice while we were in San Sebastián...as in torrential downpour of hail. I was lucky enough to be outside on both occasions, with no umbrella, and one of the times with only a cardigan on! In any case, I still had a great time exploring a gorgeous city :)

In other news: I need to write about my week in my next blog post, as it was somewhat eventful with one of my good friends, Paige, turning 21!!! Back to the other news - in class today two of my classmates were giving a presentation on Burgos, Spain and part of that was the food culture there. They were showing a powerpoint complete with photos of each item, and then describing what is was. One of those items was brown, looked similar to a sausage, but was not sausage, and contained rice and a dark brownish gloppy substance holding it together. I immediately recognized it because my host mom had me try it a couple of weeks ago. I asked her repeatedly what it was and in turn told me each time, "rice, and I don't know what else, but it's good for people who need more iron in their diet". I was hesitant, but never wanting to be rude, sawed off a piece and gave it a go. It was very strange tasting and not particularly pleasant. I explained to them that the flavor reminded me of when I was a kid and would find coins and put them in my mouth (gross, but all kids do it) and it would taste coppery. I also mentioned that I didn't really care for it, but thanks for letting me try it.

Today I found out just what it was that I ate....

The gloppy brownish substance holding the rice is "sangre de vaca", or for those of you English speakers, cows blood....

I don't even know what to say. 

I was horrified, enough so to call out in class during the presentation, so my class could share in my pain of knowing I accidently ate rice with cow's blood. Yummmmmy. 

I'm trying very hard to see the humor in it at this point, because it is just so disgusting! It makes me ill just thinking about it. Haha on that note, ya es hora de que me vaya a la cama. ¡Volveré a escribir pronto! Besos :) xo