First, have a little patience with my English skills, I have found that I am losing my ability to properly communicate in English as I continue to spend more and more time surrounded by Spanish and I have said some interesting sentences in English. I am 100% fluent in Spanglish.
Anyways, I think I find a new reason to love Spain each and every day. Each day has something new to offer me whether it be a new phrase, a new word, a new friend, a new food, or a new setting. This weekend we celebrated Carnaval, the Spanish fiesta before the start of Lent. On Saturday, my friend Shannon and I took a bus to the neighboring city of Aviles for a huge Carnval celebration (the exist all over Spain but some are well known and Aviles is the most well known one of the Asturias). The city has foam machines that completely cover the streets in foam, it looks like a Minnesotan winter day. Also for Carnavl everyone dresses up- Shannon's host aunt let us borrow a few of her costumes from years past and I was Snow White (Blancanieves). While we were getting dressed to go to Aviles, Alejandra, Shannon's three year old host sister, said to me "You have to eat the apple" and I responded "Well I don't want to sleep yet" and she said "Well you won't die" but I explained to her "I don't have a prince though" and she goes "Why not?" (this conversation was actually in Spanish). She is super cute... except of course when we're trying to study and she likes to turn the lights on and off repeatedly. Anyways, we had a really great time in Aviles, I think just about everyone in the Asturias went there to celebrate.
Monday and Tuesday of this week we didn't have school because of the holiday so Shannon, Lily, and I decided to venture over to Basque country (also in Northern Spain but a different state). We took a bus at 1AM between Sunday and Monday and arrived in San Sebastian a little before 7AM on Monday. Since no one believes in early mornings in Spain, we spent the first couple of hours sitting on the beach watching the sun rise over the Cantabric Sea. The rest of the day we spent wandering around the streets of San Sebastian, we visited a Basilica and walked to the Cathedral, ate pinchos (a little sandwich essentially- they are particularly famous in Basque country), and ended the day back on the beach. It was a very relaxing day that really didn't need any structure. At around 7PM we took a bus to Bilbao, another city in Basque country, where we spent today going to the Guggenheim Art Museum, eating more traditional Basque food, and wandering the streets of another new city. Both cities are beautiful and I think we took the right approach to visiting them by disregarding the more structured plans we made and taking in the city by wandering the streets and going where the wind took us.
I got back to Oviedo about an hour ago and enjoyed the intense sandwich my host mama, Silvia, had waiting for me. The time I spent in Oviedo this weekend was also wonderful. I took two long walks, one on Saturday and one of Sunday, in a park called el Parque de Invierno (Winter Park) that my tandem partner took me too earlier in the week. It's kind of on the edge of the town but it's HUGE and absolutely wonderful. It has great paths and a wonderful view of the mountain ranges as you're walking through it.
So all in all, I really don't have anything to complain about, I'm continuing to enjoy my love affair with Spain. When people here try and say Spain in English they say "eesspain" because they just figure out how to drop the 'e' from the front of Espana.
Besos,
Ana
PS I will post pictures to facebook of my recent adventures within a few days.
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