Well…I’m 22. Weird. It was fun to have a birthday in Spain, but I missed my family and especially Joey who always makes me feel so special on my birthdays, but it was fun. I want to apologize for taking so long to update, but I have been preoccupied since the seventh and last Harry Potter book came out. Those of you who know about my sad little obsession understand why I have been out of touch. But alas, it was the final story and so has brought my obsession so an emotional end. Those of you have read it will understand what I mean.

Now that that is out of the way, I wanted to talk a bit about what else I have been doing in the past week or so. This last weekend I visited my most favorite place by far. San Sebastian! A small little beach town at the very top of Spain, ridiculously close to France. It is an amazing place. beautiful, fun, relaxing. I had a really good time. There were about 9 of us who went. But before San Sebastian 3 of us skipped school on Friday (we can miss one day) and went to Bilbao and saw the Guggenheim Bilbao. AMAZING!! It is by far the coolest piece of architecture I have ever seen and it is amazing. The artist that they were featuring was really cool too - Anselm Kiefer. Really amazing stuff. Obviously we couldn’t take pictures inside the museum so I don’t have any examples, but I am sure if you googled him you could see what I mean. Plus, my camera ran out of battery while taking pictures of the outside of the Guggenheim so it wouldn’t have mattered much : ( Below are pictures of the one pic I got of the Guggenheim, my first hostel, churros and coffee for breakfast, and the giant flower scottie dog in front of the Guggenheim. Basically Bilbao in 4 photos!

We took a bus from Bilbao to San Sebastian and met the rest of the crew. We spent two nights there in this hostel that had just recently become a hostel so it was really clean and nice. But the people at the hostel actually lived there and tried to sleep there which is a big mistake. Because all 15 people in the hostel weren’t going to come home at a decent sleeping hour, so we would get this man coming out of his bedroom at all hours of the night telling us to be quiet. But it was fun! Pictures provided below.

Now, normally I don’t like scenery pictures, but isn’t it beautiful?!?! This is me on Shell Beach (Playa de la concha…or something like that, the little bit of fat on my tummy is what happens when all you can eat are pinchos : )) and a picture of the other beach in San Sebastian. We named it Playa de los jovenes…kind of reminds you of San Diego, huh Joey? (La Jolla on a Saturday in July perhaps…) But it was fun! There is also a pic of our new/clean hostel and as I promised, another statue. This one however is alive (we discovered that they are big on live statues in San Sebastian.) Also provided is a man riding a unicycle and blowing a whistle in sharp short spurts. Very amusing : )

Once we returned from our weekend it was my birthday and our last week of school for the July session. It went by pretty fast. (I kind of wish I was able to just travel over the next month instead of being in Oviedo, but it will be fine.) For my birthday some of us went out to the only sushi restaurant in the city. It was fun. I also bought myself Harry Potter and just finished it yesterday. All in all it was a good birthday and it has been a good week in Spain.

This weekend I am off to Barcelona for our short break between sessions. School starts again next Thursday… I will be sure to give a thorough update upon my return. I love you all! Hope all your summer’s are good. I hear its hot back in Eugene! A far cry from Oviedo! I miss everyone. Let me know how y’all are doing!

So I have been here for almost two and a half weeks now and it feels like home. Its weird to think that the first day I was here I got so lost in this city for about 2 hours, while now I know this place as well as Eugene. Its kind of nice and kind of eerie. Sometimes I forget that I am even in Europe.

Except when I see statues like this and realize that America would never have this cool of a statue. Oviedo and Asturias in general is pretty big on statues and sculptures and art around the city. Hopefully I can feature one a week. Oviedo also features huge pigeons.

This ones stomach was basically dragging on the ground and it had some major trouble getting lift off…but they are well fed here so that is good.

Some other sites I wanted to show y’all were my school, the building I go into, and the marble stairs I walk up everyday. I get a pretty wicked leg work out each day because we walk everywhere. Which I don’t mind much because I love to walk.

School is good and I am learning a lot, but you know, its school and I would rather be doing more traveling. So I decided to make the most of my time. Last Tuesday a bunch of us went to Gijón which is like 20 minutes from Oviedo. It was beautiful.

This past week in Gijón was Semana Negra (the ferris wheel). It is some big celebration over some saint (still am not fluent in Spanish). Some of us went back Saturday night for the last of of the celebration and it was basically the worst time I have had yet. Those of you who know me know that I hate fairs…it was basically a huge dirty, smelly fair with tons of people and it was like 3:00 am because that is when things get started here in Spain so I ended up going home earlier than some, but that is okay…it was an experience.

One of the best things I did this last week was go see Harry Potter! Sure it was dubbed over in Spanish but those of you who have seen know what I am talking about when I say that it was an emotional experience. It was in 3-D imax and there was no way I was missing that.

So one is pre-Potter and the other is in the theater right before the movie started and hopefully you can tell that we are wearing our glasses. Because we don’t speak fluent Spanish we made the mistake of wearing the 3-D glasses for the duration of the film while the only 3-D part was at the very end of the movie. But we are all super cool people so it didn’t matter much. It was definitely amazing and I plan to go to London soon to see the English speaking version.

Well, this weekend I am headed to Bilbao and San Sebastian which I am so excited about I can hardly express. It will be a good pre-birthday weekend. (My birthday is on Monday the 23rd.)

Hope all is well back in the states and comment and let me know how y’all are doing. ¡Vale!

Besos

I have completed my first official week in Spain…frankly, I am surprised that I survived. It has been so much fun though. I have been getting really good at spanish its crazy. I can pretty much understand everyone. Its a little bit tough because the the spanish accent is hard to understand. But I have decided to adopt a spanish lisp. When I get home I will sound like a true Spaniard.

Pretty much I have just been going to school and going out to eat and then going out sometimes at night. But it gets expensive so sometimes we decide to stay in and play cards.

That is what we did this night. We got some pizza, which is nothing like the pizza back home due to the ingredients, but its good. Well, its okay.

We went on an excursion on Saturday to three different smaller towns in Asturias. We started at this ancient village that pre-dates Christ, so its pretty old.

It was pretty cool to see though. I would say more about it but my translating skills aren’t that great, and I even had a pretty hard time understanding a lot of the vocabulary she was saying. But its really old and really well constructed and is set in the beautiful Asturias, so all of that equals cool. As you can probably tell, the weather hasn’t been the greatest, and I am not well prepared for bad weather, so it has been interesting. But its fun all the same.

Our next stop was in a little fishing village called Luarca, and it was really cool to be by the ocean.

This picture is by the harbor in Luarca and its just a group of us from the program. The next city we stopped in was Cudillero, and this little village was really cool. The north of Spain is really mountainous, so it was cool because all of the villages are just like built into really steep hills.

That night we got back to Oviedo and went to the Espicha, which is a traditional Asturian fiesta. It was really fun to be able to hang out with all of our teachers and speak spanish with them. After the espicha everyone in our whole summer program (from all over the world) went out to the discotecas in Oviedo and it was really fun.

Here are a couple of pictures of other things that we have been doing and food I have been eating and cool people I’ve been meeting. Hope everyone is doing well! Besos.

Estoy en Oviedo a hora. After the longest flight ever I am here. Well, actually I can’t complain about my trip at all. Everything was on time for the most part and everything was safe. Compared to other peoples travel problems, mine was a breeze.

I have gotten all settled in my dorm now and it still hasn’t really sunk in yet that I am going to be living here for the next 2 months.

We went to our first day of school, well it was more like orientation and it was interesting. It was definately beneficial for me to see just how bad I am at Spanish. No one here speaks english and it is definately going to be challenging.

The schedule here is also going to be hard to get used too. We have school from 9-2 in the morning, then we get lunch, then hopefully take a siesta, then we hang out for the afternoon, then we eat dinner around like 10 pm and don’t go to bed until very late. It doesn’t even get dark here until like 10:30 pm. It is very different.

School is good. I don’t think it is going to be as difficult as I expected because I am taking intermediate classes, and I pretty much have learned most of it. But I am definately learning. Already I feel like I have gotten so much better at understanding people.

We took a walking tour of Oviedo and saw this amazing cathedral. It is so amazingly beautiful, the detail is breathtaking. It was a really cool experience. I learned that all of the center of Oviedo is in Gothic architecture from the 14th century. Its so old and so amazing.

The first night here we went out to dinner and got some good spanish palleya. (I’m not sure how to spell that.) We also had some sangria and it was a good time.

We also got some sidra, which is a traditional Austurian apple cider that is disgusting and tastes like green olive juice…but the guys pour it really cool so its fun.

Well, that’s all for now. I hope you all are doing well and I miss y’all a lot. Its fun here but it would definately be more fun with a familiar face or two. : ) Update me on your lives’. ¡Vale! Se quidados…Habláis pronto!