Sup mis queridos!
I couldn’t finish talking about our trip last week because
it cut into my showering/sleeping/living time, so here’s what we did.
Bilbao, España: one of the funniest cities in Spain I’ve
seen just yet. It’s like a little Spanish New York, I loved it. Except for the
longest time I had my computer password set as “bacalao” because I thought it
was fun to say, but it means cod. And so I had a few moments where I just could
not remember where we were at. But I
was pretty sure it was not the city of Cod.
What's cool about Bilbao, "es que es una parte del pais basco". It's a part of the Basque country. I don't entirely understand how the country/providence thing works here since there isn't a DIRECT correlation to the states, but essentially this: Spain is great. Also, very funny. So Spain is about twice the size of Oregon (I've read this somewhere, I'm not just making up my own facts) and the whole country speaks Spanish. Almost. Well they do, obviously. Castellano (Castilian) is the one of the languages spoken in Spain, but so is Basco (Basque). The tour guide basically says "yeah so nobody really gets where Basque came from, it's origin is unknown since it's unlike any other language. French, Spanish, Italian... these are all romantic languages. Basque is neither romantic nor germanic. Try reading some of the signs, you won't understand them." thanks lady haha. But any who..
So I don’t know how I just float around not knowing the
plans for the day, but it basically happened again. And we went to the
Guggenheim!! Such a spanish-sounding museum, euh? I was so excited to go to an
art museum… and then it was a modern art
museum haha. So… well it’s hard to
explain exactly how one should feel at a modern art museum. The best I can do
is post these pictures and hope you vicariously understand.
I think I’ve mentioned this before, but the hardest part
about traveling is finding reliable food. I like going out to eat as much as
the next person but I hate doing it for every meal-plus in Spain, eating is not
something you rush through. Every time we go out to eat it’s at least an hour.
Which isn’t the worst thing, you just have to plan ahead for that. Or be
willing to eat pastries. BREAD IS EVERYWHERE IN THIS COUNTRY.
Also don’t buy food from the hotel.
Later in the week, Kristen and I ventured on our own to find
the hospital in Madrid. To be short, Kristen’s leg is broken and they wouldn’t
give us the insurance we needed so we wouldn’t have to pay out of pocket except
for this specific hospital in Madrid. Okay that’s a lie. Her leg isn’t broken.
But the insurance thing is real. We left Alcalá right after lunch around 3:00,
and a few cities, missed trains, wrong trains, and blocks of walking later we
arrived at the ripe hour of 7:00. Not bad?
Anyhow the reason we were trying to hurry in-and-out was
because we were going a REAL MADRID GAME!! Frick yeah! Also I would like to point
this out to my parents: this is Madrid’s soccer team. They’re one of the best
in the world. The team is called “Real Madrid” (Ray-ahl Madrid). I’m only
adding this for clarification because I don’t want you thinking that it’s
possible to go to a “fake Madrid game” haha.
Basically when I woke up on Tuesday I went to pour corn
flakes into my Disney princess coffee mug and spilled a good 60% of them on the
table and laughed… but then I thought to myself “oh shoot well, today has some
kind of potential... I think.” And it all turned out fine!! Hallelujah. When I showed my
host mom my photos of the players from the game the day after she laughed at
how far away we were, but it was really so fun. It's definitely SPAIN's sport, everyone is so into it. I thought we were going to have a half-full stadium but by the time we were 10 minutes in every section was nearly full. I guess this is the Hispanic/Latino way haha. Also they have this crazy song they sing at the beginning of the game called "Hala Madrid y nada más" and you need to watch this video. If for nothing more than beautiful spanish men singing:
I wish I knew what else to say about the game, but it's pretty much a soccer game! A really really big soccer game where they make a lot a lot of money to run and kick a ball and we pay a lot a lot of money to sit as semi-confused americans who don't understand what is being shouted. It was great. Totally worth having to sprint out of the stadium at 10:30 with our director, his wife, and the other half of Spain who are all trying to fit on the metro to get home before the last train at 11:40.
That's all I have for today! Peace, love, and chirimiri!
JD
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