Finals, Fiestas, and Family Parties

Gah! It's been a week! Lo siento todos, but things are starting to get a bit more hectic yet comfortable here so I am finding myself busier and away from my computer more often, which is great for me but leaves you all in the dust! My apologies. That said, I probs won't have too many more posts (at least from Bilbao) because I only have 3.5 weeks left in the whole program! Can you believe that? I remember when I had 3.5 MONTHS, and now here I am, fluent (well, practically) and thinking about packing to leave. Oh. Em. Gee.

This past week went by pretty quickly, I had lots o' homework after my huge break and I didn't even really have classes until Tuesday so that helped the week fly by. This weekend was pretty packed, too, but with more exciting adventures than reading "El Sur" for my Cine class, blah. On Friday I went to the beach with some friends and although it took about 4 hours, the sun finally did come out fully and I got myself a nice little tan (tan here means pink tinge more than anything, I'm Irish, remember?). It was still nice to just fall asleep on the hot sand or read without having to take notes or do anything more- I hope all the weekends coming are like this so I can at least spend one day every weekend just soaking up some vitamin D and maybe getting some color before I return to colder spring weather again. After the beach we grabbed a glass of vino blanco in the Irish pub in Algorta, where Linden lives, and I met new new peeps who I had yet to talk to from the program, so that was nice. That night was uber exciting with my Cola-Cao (think Nesquik) and Seinfeld episodes all curled up in bed, but I was still a little tired from country-hopping so staying in and sleeping in was great. On Saturday I did some homework and not much else, as I've said before, weekends here can be pretty dull during the day because of the 48 hour siesta everyone seems to take on Sat./Sun. But Saturday night was great because I went to a birthday party for one of the girls in the program and most of the CIDE kids ended up going, so everyone who I never see on weekends because they live in the dorms was there and we got to catch up! It was pretty nutso though, with so many Americans in one little bar plus alcohol- let's just say there were many a hungover status updates on Facebook on Sunday.

Speaking of Sunday, after going for a run and accidentally running into a real race (oops), my family surprised me when they had about 13 people over for a linner event (lunch and dinner, it was at 4:30 when we finally ate "lunch", which lasted for 4 hours), with the g-parents, aunts/uncles, cousins, nephews- you name it, someone was probs there to fill the role. I was pretty happy because usually at these events, I can just sit and people watch/listen most of the time while the Spaniards go crazy and argue/yell/laugh/etc., so it's a pretty entertaining day to say the least. We had a 5-course meal, not including the sorbet-champagne drink we had between the fish and meat (yeah we had fish AND meat), and went through about 6 bottles of wine, so needless to say at around 8:30 I went to my room and passed out. Most of the family had left so it was fine, but Marta's cousin and his partner and son stayed forever and chatted loudly in the kitchen about who knows what. I would have stayed to listen but I had to get some tarea done and I also was just plain pooped from translating that much Spanish for so long. I finally feel pretty competent in my Spanish skillz but at times I just get really burnt out and the last thing I want to do is try and listen, translate, comprehend, translate, and speak Spanish with a native who obvs doesn't quite understand what I'm saying (stupid Pittsburgh accent strikes again). But, I do still enjoy being able to talk in Spanish at all, and my listening/reading skillz have increased incredibly since coming to Bilbao, so I can't complain.

Some fun facts about the linner party though: Telmo got his mouth rinsed out with soap for telling his uncle to eff off when he wouldn't let him play soccer the way he wanted to, first time I've even seen that outside of A Christmas Story; the entire Areizaga family now knows how to say several curse words in English, probs my fault; I now know how to completely tell someone off using only slang, an issue for me in Spanish and English. If you still can't imagine this family look to the show "Modern Family," which has all of the same characters, but Spanish (including the two dads, wayyy older spouse, and "cool" parent who knows all the words and dances to High School Musical (which was actually on during the party in Spanish, go figure). It's really a great family and I'll miss them all a ton, luckily I exchanged addresses with one of the aunts who has two boys learning English, so I can at least stay in touch with a few of them (they also offered me a place to stay whenever I visit again!). Otherwise I'm going to do my best to come back eventually to Bilbao (although hopefully much sooner), just so I can go to another linner party and watch how tipsy Spaniards really have family parties.