How time flies! At the time of typing this... its already the middle of week 3 of the 4 week Language and Culture program. Luckily, I wrote down some notes and journal entries. Lets get to it, here is how things went down for week 1.
Logrono is the capital city of La Rioja province. Its located southwest of Navarra; where I lived and studied for a month the year before. The climate is similar except we are in the middle of a heat wave. It still reaches high 35+ during the afternoon into the evening. Week 1 was brutal... 40+ during the day and 34+ at night. The only saving grace was it was very windy. So we were able to sleep with the windows fully open.
The Spanish language and culture classes this time around are more focused on teaching the A1 level students day to day phrases and conversational skills. I found them to be very useful and easy to pick up; perhaps because I was taught the basic verb and grammar the year before. Even after one week, we noted clear improvements in verbal communication. We were able to order food and pay for day to day items such as groceries and clothing without much trouble.
The local people are kind and are willing to help as soon as I apologize for my poor Spanish and I am studying it at the University of La Rioja. Many times, I find myself having simple conversations with shop keepers or people walking their dogs at night. It is a friendly city, although quite different than Pamplona as it is not officially in the Basque country. For instance... during tapas in the old town, I was about to walk away with a glass of wine... like I was accustomed to in Pamplona but was told by my professora that's not accepted here. If you buy a drink from a bar, you must finish it in the vicinity before moving onto the next bar. Other than that, lifestyle is very similar to Pamplona.
For class, we have Ricardo for the professor. He is very energetic and passionate about his job as a Spanish language teacher. He often uses outlandish body language and hand gestures to explain an word or phrase. Reminds me of the CALC English teacher I had back in 2012: Jack. But that is another story. To keep things shortish... Ricardo is awesome, he will spent extra time after class to answer any questions I have about the lesion or question about where to find things. I am very happy to have him as our teacher.
At the end of the week, 5 of us made shotgun plans to visit San Sebastian and Bilbao. Our first hic up was at the bus station buying tickets. When we bought the wrong set of tickets and needed to refund them, the girl at the ticket counter threw a tantrum and accused us of playing a joke on her. In reality... we made a mistake and required her help for a refund. She was not only rude, but took the opportunity to rip us off when one of us returned the wrong ticket and was not able to get a full refund... that was the first bad experience I ever had in Spain.
However, we did not let that spoil our weekend to the beach and Guggenheim! San Sebastian was just as lovely as I remember from a year ago. I saw two local women picking up garbage from the beach as they walked. Very inspiring to see citizens taking care and pride in their city and helping to keep it clean. At the beach, we rented two stand up paddle boards and tried to stay balance. We had little success at first, but eventually I figured it out... its very similar to surfing... the board must be perpendicular to the waves... otherwise you will get knocked over with every inbound wave.
After the beach, we explored old town and browsed the shops and visited the churches before settling down at an restaurant for dinner. Team NYC came to join us and we all shared our daily adventures of paellas and wine. A great day spent with great people in a great city. At 8, team Canada bid farewell to team NYC for we had a bus to Bilbao to catch. We planned to spend the night in Bilbao to save some $$ on overnight lodging.
We arrived in Bilbao approximately 2230. Jamie's contacts were hurting her so we hopped a taxi and gave them the address to the hotel (University Residence). However, the max # of people per taxi cab was 4 and we were a party of 5. So I proposed that they go ahead and I will walk it. It was not a far walk, I just made sure to make myself a map.
On my walk through Bilbao at night, it reminded me of Barcelona. There were areas of vast opulence on the main streets while there are run down, gritty neightbourhoods hidden a block or two behind the major attractions and tourist areas. I stumbled upon a Fruteria operated by an Indian family. As I inquired the prices in my broken Spanish on grapes and mango juice, the little girl at the cash register commanded me to place the grapes on the scale. It was so cute and reminded me of kids in China that worked in their family shops.
As I bid good buy to the shop keeper and his family, I noted the neighbourhood our hotel was located in was very diverse. There were Chinese, Brown, Black, and Arabic people with their family and kids all hanging out and chatting. It had a lively community atmosphere. When I walked into the hotel, our group was still in the process of checking in. I lucked out to be able to explore the city at night while they were busy on their cellphones uploading selfies and pictures.
We spent the night and were ready to roll out to explore Bilbao for the day. Kema decide to do a late check out and sleep in and offered to keep our bags in her room while we went out. We started the day hungry and were desperate for food! After walking around for 20 minutes, we came across a kebob place opposite the main train terminal and decided that BBQ chicken was going to be brunch. After ordering with our collective broken Spanglish, we were sitting down and having a great meal and conversation about the previous day in San Seb and how awesome the chicken was!
After lunch, we naturally gravitated towards the Guggenheim. Many pictures were taking collectively between the party of four. Went entered using our student cards for 7.5euros... way cheaper than the ROM! There were three floors of galleries. The two artists that I spent most of my time with was Jeff Koon and Jean Michael Basquet. Koon excels at using metal and turning into day to day items like children's toys and challenging the culture of consumerism with his displays of ordinary discarded items.
JMB was something else... I know of him from the documentary on YouTube that chronical his quick rise to fame and untimely death. The galleries contained his earlier work and his collaboration with Andy Warhol. They were full of subliminal message of inequity and inequality of American society in the 1980s. It was interesting to see the art from the documentary in person and hear JMB's lyrics and raps. There were a few short films present at the gallery displays that were not on the documentary. That alone revealed another layer in JMB's story. My favorite part was a portrait gallery of all of his party guests taken by JMB and his polaroid camera. A day well spent.
At 6, we returned to the hotel to pick up Kema and headed out for dinner. We browsed through a few streets in own town Bilbao and picked one with paella on the menu. We all wanted to try and compare it to the one we had in San Seb. The waitress recommended we get the gambas (shrimp) platter to share and boy... was it AMAZING! The shrimp were so fresh and sweet, I regret not ordering a second plate. The paellas were made with a tomato sauce and were well liked by all those who ordered it. A great end to our first weekend. We caught the bus home at 2100 the same way we arrived. The party of 4 grabbed a taxi cab while I, now armed with an actual map from the hotel, found my way to the bus station. I arrived 10 minutes ahead of the scheduled departure time and thought about checking out the Plaza de Toros in Bilbao... but my gut said... better be safe than sorry. And sure enough, we spent a good 8 minute searching for the correct bus to take us home to Logrono.
Week one was awesome, looking forward to week two... and weekend #2... La Fiesta de San Fermin in Pamplona!
