Freezing in Bilbao

Last weekend Rachel and I embarked on a trip to Bilbao and San Sebastian in the Basque Country of Spain. We arrived in Bilbao late Friday night and headed straight to sleep. The next morning, we got up to catch a bus to San Sebastian. Unfortunately the bus we wanted to get on was sold out, so we had to wait for an hour for the next bus in the freezing outdoor bus terminal. From what I saw in between naps the ride through the countryside was green and beautiful. Of course, the second we pulled into San Sebastian it started raining. We had no map or the city and no real destination in mind, so we blindly followed signs to the center. After some more wandering and asking of questions, we found the Parte Vieja and a restaurant to eat lunch. After lunch, the sun was shining on the town, so we explored the waterfront and took some photos before heading to the aquarium. Although we were the only people there not accompanied by children, we still thoroughly enjoyed watching the fish (and the children enjoying the fish). The first level of the museum showed the history of San Sebastian, fishing and whaling. The next levels had 360 degree fish tanks filled with sharks, eels, stingrays, and huge fish.

After leaving the aquarium, we stumbled upon this weird parade of giant puppets and drums playing. We weren’t really sure what the purpose of this was, if there was even a purpose. After this we headed back to Bilbao. We had seen an interesting restaurant in the in-flight magazine that we wanted to try for dinner, so we started heading towards the street it was on, calle San Francisco. As we crossed the bridge, we both silently noticed the woman walking ahead of us, dressed rather provocatively, but we kept on walking. After crossing the bridge, and pulled out the map to consult where to go, when a man dressed in a waiter’s uniform stopped us and asked if we needed directions. We said, yes, we’re looking for calle San Francisco. His face immediately dropped in horror as he described that this street was the worst street in all of Bilbao. “Hay putas… drogadictos… drogas… no quieres ir”. I guess that explains who that woman was in front of us. We agreed that no, we probably did not want to head into Bilbao’s drug and prostitution capital at night, so we headed back, not knowing where to go from there. We decided to ask at our hostel for a restaurant recommendation, as that is probably something they get asked a lot. Apparently not. The odd woman behind the desk had no idea where to direct us and looked at us as if we were asking for the most obscure thing ever. Finally she pulled up the name of a street that may or may not have food. Let me pause here to explain that people in Bilbao apparently do not eat. Not only are there no restaurants, there are also no grocery stores. Everyone just hangs out in bars maybe eating a pincho with their beer. We, however, were tired, cold, and hungry, and just wanted to sit. Finally we found a bar with a restaurant above it, so we sat down and each ordered salads and soups. The salad tasted a bit off, and the soup was more of mashed vegetables on a plate than in water.

On Sunday we slept in, and then got breakfast at a nearby yogurt store. Since they didn’t have seating, we ate outside in the cold. Our mission for Sunday was to hit up the Guggenheim, which was amazing! The building itself is incredible, and way too much to take in all at once. On the first floor, there was a huge sculpture exhibit that you walk into and feel completely disoriented in, spiraling through huge walls of curved iron. It was pretty cool. The second floor ironically was the same exhibit that I saw at the Guggenheim in New York this summer! Luckily I really loved the exhibit the first time around, so it was cool seeing it again with different additions to it. The last floor didn’t really interest us as much as it was portraits from the Flemish renaissance.

After leaving the museum a few hours later, we were ready for a little snack. Normally, this wouldn’t be such an issue, but as I stated before, people in Bilbao apparently do not eat. Everywhere we went was closed. Finally, we stumbled upon a café that had a menu of paninis and sandwiches. After getting all excited about our selections, the waitress came over and informed us that they don’t serve food on Sundays. I’m sorry… when did this country start fasting on Sundays? And why didn’t anyone inform us? We had to settle with the croissants that they had at the bar, which only seemed to intensify my hunger. We left that café pretty dejected but determined to find some sort of available food. Finally, we found a bar that miraculously had tortilla sandwiches, which we devoured. Now, slightly less hungry, we headed back to our hostel to rest before dinner. The resting wasn’t really that restful, however, because our hostel had no heat. Let me remind you: Bilbao is in the north, meaning it is cold. Having a hostel with no heat makes for one unhappy camper. Rachel and I were both shivering under all of our covers and cursing the damn hostel that couldn’t even provide space heaters.

Monday we really didn’t have anything on the agenda, so after checking out of the hostel we did the only think we could think to do: shop. Our neighborhood had a lot of cool boutiques and stores that we wanted to check out, so we spent the morning wandering around and trying not to get too cold. For lunch, we found an awesome Asian restaurant where we got sashimi, pot stickers, and lo mein. Definitely a well needed change from the Basque cuisine. After lunch we walked around some more, taking in the sights of the beautiful city before it was time to head home to Sevilla. Next weekend, we are travelling to Liverpool and Edinburgh, and hoping against hope that our hostel selections there will at least have heat!

¡El agua está saliendo de la pared!

My friends and I decided that, despite being in a country where they don’t know the meaning of the word Thanksgiving, we were going to try our darndest to create a Thanksgiving dinner. After grappling with the idea of cooking a full turkey in a pressure cooker, and realizing what a disaster it would be considering we haven’t yet mastered a simple soup in a pressure cooker yet, we decided upon buying rotisserie chickens for the main event. We also made quite an ambitious list of food to buy at Corte Ingles, the big department store in Sevilla.

Armed with our shopping list, Rachel, Julia and I headed to el Corte and successfully found almost everything we were looking for. Sure, the celery looked a little wilted, the sweet potatoes looked a little past their expiration, and our marshmallows were multicolored and packaged in a Christmas stocking. But the trip was a success, minus gravy and apple cider.

Thursday I headed to Julia’s house at 4:00 to start our preparations. Unable to find anything resembling a pie in Spain, we went for the next best thing: chocolate cake mix, which was miraculously at el Corte. We started with the cake in the oven, and began to boil the sweet potatoes and toast and rip up a loaf of bread for stuffing. Of course, Julia’s house doesn’t have a toaster, so we began toasting the bread on a griddle, making it look like a high school cafeteria on grilled cheese day. Things went pretty smoothly, until water began shooting out of the wall. Whenever either of us tried to turn on the sink, a spiget on the nearby wall would start spraying. That’s handy! Soon, Julia and the floor were drenched and we were more than fed up. Luckily, Julia’s roommate’s brother David was at home, so Julia went racing into the living room sopping wet yelling, “David… el agua está saliendo de la pared! Que pasa?!” David merely laughed at us and informed us that there is no hot water in the kitchen so the faucet has to be pointed to the cold water only. Claro! After this minor setback, and the breaking of an egg on the floor, it was pretty much smooth sailing, and we were almost finished cooking by the time Rachel arrived at 6. Our guests filtered in around 8:30 with side dishes, wine and bread for the evening. We dined until we could not dine any more, and were thankful that this very Spanish thanksgiving meal came together.

The past few weeks at school a lot of the teachers I’m with have been out sick, so I have been taking over the classes myself. There is supposed to always be another teacher there with me, but sometimes the school doesn’t really think there should be substitutes. Most of the classes have been really great, until the kids come up to me with problems I can’t understand. I think these kids were born to be tattletales. So many times during class kids will come up to the front of the room saying “Adrian no está trabajando!”. Como se dice mind your own business en español? I think the funniest interaction I had was with one kid who was blasting the Black Eyed Peas from his laptop at the beginning of class. When I told him to turn off the music, he retorted, “pero seño, la música está en inglés! Es educacional!”. So I told him that if he could tell me what all of the lyrics meant it really is educational and he could keep listening. He quickly recognized defeat and turned it off.

What do you give a screaming baby to make him stop? Chapstick!

Last weekend was our trip to Milan, Italy – marking my first trip out of Spain since study abroad. Despite waking up nice and early at the crack of dawn for a 9am flight, and despite the fact that it was only a two and a half hour flight, it still took us about all day to get settled in our hostel. Why, you may ask? We got lost. A lot. First, it took us an hour to get from the airport to the center of Milan via bus. Then, we had to hop on the subway to get to the tram stop to get to our hostel. Sounds simple, no? Well we got on the tram and started riding. 25 minutes later, we realized we were going in the wrong direction. We verified this with a woman who spoke English next to us. She was very nice, until she found out that we didn’t have tickets for the tram ride. We just thought everyone unofficially rode for free. Her exclamation of “YOU DON’T HAVE TICKET?!” that resonated throughout the small, antique tram car told us that we were, once again, mistaken. Getting off the tram, and still having no idea how to buy a ticket, we hopped back on for free in the other direction, taking about an hour to finally get to our hostel. At this point, we were all drop dead hungry, and asked the hostel for a nearby restaurant. Turns out 4:30 pm is not lunch time in Milan. I have the feeling we are not in Spain anymore. Luckily we found an open café that had delicious sandwiches and entertainment in the form of a funny barman bringing us a plastic tray of stale goldfish before our meal. Thank you, strange sir. This man was Egyptian, but a “Christian Egyptian,” he for some reason reassured us multiple times throughout our meal. He also went into a rant that we couldn’t really follow in his Italglish, but we think it had something to do with Muslims. His friend then walked into the café, who he claimed was Peruvian and could speak to us in Spanish. I don’t know if this man has ever been to Peru, but his Spanish sure sounded a lot like Italian to me. I wasn’t buying it.

After this bizarro lunch, we headed into the center of Milan to walk around and do a little shopping before meeting up with Rachel’s Italian friend Anna. She was Rachel’s cousin’s au pair about 20 years ago but still keeps in touch with the family. She took us out to eat at this great restaurant, where once again the waitstaff caused some laughs. Although we couldn’t tell the difference, Anna kept getting annoyed at the waitress, saying she really didn’t know how to speak Italian. Despite this, the food was delicious. After stuffing ourselves with pasta, we were of course ready for gelato. Anna had a place in mind that she said was great, so we started walking there. Turns out, the place she was thinking of was Grom, one of my all time favorites from Florence! To our dismay, however, Grom was closed for the night, so we resolved to go back another time.

Saturday morning we got up to take a train to Lake Como, which we heard was known for its Saturday morning silk market. Well, we found a Saturday morning market, but there was no silk to be found. Although Como looks as though it would be a beautiful town, I think we missed its peak season, as it was cold and covered with a thick layer of fog. We still braved the weather to see the small town and the lake, and had a delicious pizza lunch in there as well. Even though it was foggy, we were determined to take the funicular up the mountain to get an aerial view of the lake. When we were landing, we saw the lake from the plane, surrounded by the Alps and only miles from Switzerland, so we wanted to get a more up close view of this scenery and take some photos. Turns out the funicular ride, however, was more exciting than the view itself.

On the way up the mountain, we met a little girl named Kayla who was there on vacation with her family. She told us about their travels, how they are from Washington, and ended her precocious speech with “Liam’s here!”. Excuse me, who? Turns out Liam is her one year old brother. Ok, cool. So we got off the funicular and explored for a bit, taking in the foggy scenery. We made sure to get back to the funicular early so that we could get a prime spot in the front to see the way down. Turns out Kayla and Liam’s mom had the same idea, and started cramming Liam’s stroller, Kayla, herself, the father, an old man, and their Italian tour guide into the small space that Rachel, Julia and I were already occupying. Kayla sadly didn’t remember us from 20 minutes ago, and pronounced to us “we’re not from here!”. Yeah, no shit. She then started telling us about Liam, pulling his eyelids apart to show us his blue eyes and pulling back his hat to show us his blond hair. Of course, at this point, Liam started wailing because he was being attacked by his sister. The entire funicular was soon filled with his screams. So what did his parents do? Logically his mom didn’t do anything because she was too busy setting up her iphone to take a video of the funicular going downhill. So finally, after about 5 minutes of continued wailing, his father came up with a brilliant idea. He pulled out some chapstick and applied it to Liam’s lips. I for one was shocked that this didn’t settle the screaming baby. After about another 10 minutes, he got his second brilliant idea. Orange slices. The uptight mom kept barking orders at the dad, telling him to grab Liam’s hands because he’s rubbing his eyes (duh he’s crying) and give him the pizza instead of the orange. The dad responded, I would rather he had the orange, and gave him some slices to pulverize. I can tell why the mom wanted this funicular ride on video – it’s definitely a fond memory that I would want to relive again and again.

After getting off the ride from hell, we took the next train back to Milan, tired and in need of some quiet. For dinner, we were invited over to Anna’s cool apartment, where she cooked us a ton of food and told us about her travels. She has lived all over the world and travelled to almost every country it seems like.

On Sunday, it was raining, so we had little motivation to do anything. However, we forced ourselves out to see a castle, where almost every door was weirdly locked and random exits were blocked. Next, we decided to grab lunch, which proved to be quite a fiasco because we couldn’t agree on which way to walk to get to a place to eat. Cold, wet, and cranky, we finally stumbled upon a really cool place that had some amazing and different food. We started with a pesto salad that was probably the greatest thing I’ve ever eaten and finished with amazing pasta, yet again. After lunch, we saw the duomo and wandered around the seven floor famous department store. We then went home to nap for the afternoon, and headed back out to a restaurant that Anna had recommended for dinner. It definitely looked like a local establishment, and had equally good food to prove it. After dinner, we finally hit up Grom for a last minute gelato. Happy with our gelato in hand, we found our way back to tram number one. First, the tram stopped in the middle of the street. And then the driver got up, left, and disappeared. Being the only three people in this tram, we did the most logical thing possible: take weird photos. Finally the driver retured: turns out the tram in front of us was stuck. They solved this problem by our tram playing bumper cars with the one in front of us. Luckily we bumped the tram into life… and then we got stuck. Leading the tram behind us to have to do the same thing. I wonder if this is an everyday occurrence.

Overall, despite the speed bumps, screaming babies and getting lost, it was a great trip, marked mostly by the constant eating of great food.

Reason #27 why the Spanish education system needs some help

There is a new boy in school who just moved to Spain from China. He came here not knowing a word of Spanish or English, and the teachers have not really been very welcoming. This week, when I was in his fourth grade class, the teacher asked if I would go downstairs with him to teach him English. “Luis does not know any English, so just teach him the colors and numbers 1-10” she tells me. What are the chances his name is even Luis? I’m guessing pretty slim.

When I got to the empty classroom with “Luis,” he immediately pulled out his activity book and started doing math problems. I quickly got his attention and decided to test how much he knew in English. Turns out he knows way more than the teacher thinks. I would point to a picture and say “color this green,” he would repeat the word green, and then select the correct colored pencil and start coloring. So clearly, he knows his colors. When quizzing him by pointing to every colored pencil, he could say the name of the color in near-perfect pronunciation. So next, I moved on to numbers. Not only did he know numbers 1-10, he could go all the way up 100, writing down any number that I said and being able to recite numbers when I pointed to them. So finally, realizing that the teacher must be badly misinformed, I started going through the English activity book with him. Within a half an hour, he had completed pages of English work with just a little bit of my help, making his way through what the Spanish kids have been working on all year.

I didn’t really know at this point what to report back to the teacher. It is obviously not my place to tell her how to do her job, but clearly, when it comes to Luis, she is not doing it well at all. Luis sits in the back of the room, receives no extra help, and is often shrugged off in conversation as “oh, he doesn’t speak Spanish or English, he can’t do this.” Clearly something is wrong here. So when we got back to the classroom, he smiled, waved and cheerily said “goodbye” as he ran back to his seat. Yeah right this kid doesn’t know any English. I showed his teacher the activity book he had worked through and she was floored. I think she thought that I did it all for him. After assuring her that no, he did it with just the smallest amount of help, she could not believe it, and actually gave him the worksheet the other kids were working on. Obviously, the school can’t hire a new assistant for every student who needs help, but I can’t help thinking that something could change to help this boy. Instead of taking 10 minutes out of the class to yell at the misbehaved Sanchez, who will continue to misbehave despite her yelling, couldn’t she take a moment to show Luis what to do? Could she ask an advanced student to quickly show him what to do? Could she at least give him a chance instead of refusing to give him the worksheets and refusing to explain to him the activity that the rest of the class is doing?

Tortoises are Awesome!

I kept putting off this blog post, because I feel like each one before it has had a major theme or topic, but I really don’t have anything of that sort for this post, so deal with it. It has been a beautiful week in Sevilla: 80 degrees, sunshine, Halloween, Michael Jackson tributes, and transvestites ordering chorizo. Vamos a empezar.

Rachel’s cousin Jess and her friend Amanda were here visiting this week, so Rachel and I got to play tour guide and show them around the city. Man, I forgot how much I love it here. We started off their visit on Thursday by hitting up the Plaza del Salvador botellón before a late dinner at Antonia’s. Friday, I headed to school, where it was Halloween central. After spending the week explaining to the kids what Halloween is, I was proud to see that the majority of them elaborately dressed up. Elaborate Halloween costumes? I think this is my country. What they lacked in creativity (I basically only saw witches, vampires, skeletons, monsters and devils) they made up for in attention to detail, and then some. Kids even took to running up to me in the hallways with their hands open, shouting TRICK OR TREAT! I guess I should have brought some candy with me to school.

A few funny things have been reoccurring this week, which are definitely worth noting. All week the majority of the boys have been singing and dancing to Michael Jackson’s Thriller (including some surprisingly good moonwalking, spinning, and slightly inappropriate crotch grabbing). I just took this at face value, cause let’s face it, Spain can be weird. However, Friday, after the class burst into a badly-pronounced round of “Thriller! Thriller night!” the teacher turned to me and said “we really shouldn’t have shown them the Thriller video for Halloween last week.” Mystery solved.

Another funny occurrence this week took place in science class (or, as they strangely call it, conocimiento del medio). I was asking the class about living things in ecosystems, and one boy raised his hand to give an example of a living thing. “Tor-toise,” he said, rhyming with turquoise. I responded “good! and a tortoise is…” looking for the answer “animal.” A better fitting word, he decided, was “AWESOME!” with two thumbs up and a look on his face like Christmas had come early this year.

My favorite occurrence from this week took place at Rachel’s school. So basically, the patio/play area to her school is outside, and there is a wall separating it from the outside world. So, a drug dealer was outside the school and for some reason got spooked, maybe the cops were coming or something, so he threw a bag of drugs over the wall into the school yard. Said bag o' drugs landed on a little boy's HEAD, and then tumbled to the ground. The boy then picked it up and threw it back over the wall again. I don’t know why, but I am still laughing about this story. When all the teachers and the principal found out they all started cracking up. I just love thinking about the repercussions that would have happened in the US. First of all, the kid NEVER would have thought to throw it back over the wall where it came from (i LOVE that that was his reaction). Second, school would be closed for the day. Third, pta meetings galore, fourth, parents would be hysterical. The list goes on. But in Spain... there was just laughter. Love it.

After school on Friday, I reunited with touristy Sevilla by visiting the Alcazar with Rachel and co. Friday evening we met up with Julia at Carboneria for some flamenco. To say that the dancer took herself too seriously is an understatement. I do believe that this robust woman thought that we should all bow before her and her weird taekwondo movements. Maybe had she actually been dancing flamenco I would have felt differently. We then headed to a late dinner, and over to calle Betis for some caipirinhas at Tertulia. We capped the evening off at Buddha (always a fun time). After getting to bed around 5:30 am, we were heartbroken to remember to set our alarms for 8:30 that morning (3 hours later). As suicidal as I was waking up after 3 hours, it was well worth it, because we had an appointment at the baños arabes (arab baths).

Sunday night we celebrated Halloween by going to a new friend’s house. Rachel and I, hours before the party, decided to dress up as cocacola light (our new addiction). So wearing all black, with labels wrapped around our waists and tinfoil hats on our heads, we entered the party… where nobody knew what we were supposed to be. I guess we forgot that Spaniards only understand traditional scary costumes like zombies and Dracula. Oops!

Some of my favorite occurrences this week, however, have just been random acts that I have fallen witness to. One such event was a little boy dancing flamenco in an alley in his Sunday best. Or, a transvestite cutting the line at the meat market to crack jokes and order chorizo. Or a mother holding her three year old daughter over a tree so that the daughter could pee… in broad daylight… on a crowded street. Gotta love these random sights!