Today I paid 37 céntimos for 3 kiwis. Somebody pinch me, I must be dreaming! I already concluded that food is less expensive here, but that price seems absurdly low. It's because THE DEALS ARE SO GOOD! It only costs 60 céntimos for a half a baguette of bread, which I buy every other day approximately. Spanish bread is so tasty!

Yesterday Real Sociedad won 5-1. And I attempted to ask how much a pintxo cost in Basque. He answered in Basque, but then I had him repeat in Spanish heh.

Aww yeah Euskara!

Today I made my first purchase in Basque, outside of class. It was for hot chocolate. The woman replied "bai" with a smile, and the older gentleman next to me at the counter looked pleased. Aww yeah! So orgullosa (proud). Feel like a Basque. We went to a bunch of stores but I only ended up with a little keychain. But I made sure to say aupa and agur to most of the store attendants. :D

The weather is pretty crummy, rainy so I don't know what's on the agenda for this evening.

Coming up roses

Mis clases andan muy bien. I only have class 3 days a week, so I'm looking in to doing a teaching assistant gig every Wednesday. My seminar to prepare for the DELE (Diploma de Español como Lengua Extranjera) is going to be a challenge, but that's good. It's just me and a friend in that class, so it's really personalized attention. The class is a challenge because we are preparing for an exam that will certify us as native-level Spanish speakers. :O Almost frightening! In my Translation class we are going over the movie script and can begin translating our part with our partner. Basque class is going well, it's fun to learn another language from scratch. Today we purchased our books using Euskera (Basque). We'll have to write a 20 page paper, and I think my topic will be Basque Carnival, since apparently I'll be doing interviews with Carnival people as part of my work with the Sumario (yearbook type thing). I've also decided to take Basque Dance class, since it's good exercise and just a few blocks from my piso. Hooray!

Mmmm qué más....today I cooked chicken for the first time! Ohhh yeahhhh. Now I'll have enough chicken to last me another week because I cooked both of the pechugas. My roommate is pleasant; I practice my minimal Basque with her, and soon we'll have chats in English. I had lunch with my host family the other day, and they gave me leftover lentejas and hamburguesas. That's what they do for their own kids, so I feel special. :D

Donostia Bat Bakarra Munduan

January 19th at midnight commenced the largest annual fiesta of Donostia/San Sebastián: La Tamborrada. When I say it's big, I'm not exaggerating. I was lucky to be here for it, especially when I already had some local friends. Looking forward to seeing it all again someday.

To begin, my roommate Ane had 11 of her friends over for dinner and invited me. Authentic eh! They were all very pleasant, and made food in the kitchen so that the tables were full of plates of pintxos: jamón, salmon, tortilla de patata, y más. There was also a delicious seafood soup mmm.

After dinner I met up with my friend Stephanie to check out the opening ceremonies. They had warned us that la Plaza de Constitución would be packed, and I guess they were correct, although from where we were it didn't seem to bad. Thousands of people were in the plaza to watch them raise the flag of Donostia at midnight to begin la Tamborrada. We stood in the second row at the right side of the stage. Up close and personal! At first relatives of Basque prisoners came out with long posters of their loved ones so we couldn't see. The crowd was less sympathetic than I expected, but after all they were there to see the show. When they moved en fin, we saw that the stage was one half drummers dressed as soldiers, and one half dressed as chefs. It's because of historical things, but I couldn't really explain. At midnight they drummed the Hymn of San Sebastián, with all of the crowd singing along enthusiastically. Such camaraderie! Even though we didn't know the words, we tapped along on my wooden drum. (And I sported a chef hat until it started raining)

The gathering in the plaza was only the beginning of the fiesta, as I said. Afterwards, we sort of followed the parade of drummers out into the streets of Parte Vieja. It felt like we were in the parade because people were watching from the sides as we followed the march and drummed along to the tunes. Then we headed to a few bars, and I met up with some other friends. I have never seen the streets so full. Digo, normally there are people on the streets in Parte Vieja at any hour of the weekend night, but not half as many. It was crazy!

When I was on my way home, I saw my intercambio Miriam from last semester, with some of her Spanish friends. They were standing beside a group of chefs getting ready to march. They told me to stay and drum with them so I did and we paraded around a bit. I think I went to bed around 9am, gracias San Sebastián!

I guess I should mention that La Tamborrada is 24 hours of this drumming. Groups of sociedades parade around different parts of Donostia between midnight Thursday and midnight Friday. Therefore, Friday is a holiday, so people in the streets would chant "Mañana en Bilbao, día laboral" meaning "jaja in Bilbao they have to work tomorrow xP"

The closing ceremony was Friday night at midnight. All good things must come to an end. :( This time I went with my friend from last semester Meghan, but I got there late so we were waaaay in the back. The good thing about such a crowd is that when it rains, you are covered by somebody  else's umbrella mwahaha. Jo, it's really sunny I ought to go outside soon. After they lowered the flag and sang the songs, we went home. As I was walking home, I was behind two women who were humming the tune of a Donosti song. I quitely tapped my drum at the appropriate part. They turned around and we shared a smile. Aupi!


Usually the children have a parade on Friday, but due to rain they rescheduled it for today (menos mal because I was sleeping anyways). The route was directly outside of my apartment, and I watched it for maybe 40 minutes and didn't even see all of the kiddies. They were cute  though in their soldier outfits.

Novedades/ Novelties

I only had 2 days of classes this week, but I can tell it's going to be a glorious semester.

Thursday: Translation. In general I was looking forward to this class because I think I want to do some type of translating when I graduate, and because my main profe from last semester teaches it. Then I found out a large part of the grade is working on subtitling a movie into English, which is amazing because being a subtitler is my dream job. Well, we'll see how this experience goes, perhaps I'll loathe it. ;)

Basque Language and Culture. This is also taught by my original profe, and the topic interests me too. I hope we learn a lot of Euskara this semester. I already knew a few key phrases, but now I can add Ni Donostian bizi naiz to my vocab (I live in Donostia). And we talked about La Tamborrada/ Día de San Sebastián (next blog's theme).

European Cinema: Yeaaah cinema! Another of my professors from last semester teaches this, so that's comforting. I've seen a few of the films on our syllabus list, but look forward to talking about them in Spanish this time around.

That's all the classes I've had. Another novedad is my roommate, Ane. She's a Basque woman in her late 20s. I think we're going to get along great because she seems very chill, very Basque jeje. And she can help me practice when I get further into the Euskara class. Hooray!

Back to the Good Life

Well yesterday was a complete waste, which therefore put me in a bad mood. My flight got in around 7A.M. Luckily I slept most of the time so wasn't too groggy. Then I paid nearly 30 euros to take a cab to the train station, because I didn't want to ride the metro with my luggage when a lot of people would be going to work. I got to the train station by 8, and my train left at 3:30. That is a lot of time to kill alone. They kind of have a security checkpoint to get to the waiting area for trains, and I went in that at 10:30. The woman questioned me because it was so early, but I told her I had nothing better to do haha. After much sitting around waiting, I sat around for 5 more hours on the train. Thrilling! It just put me in a foul mood to be back in España, but inactive.

At night we went to the discopub that we always went to last semester. Siiiigh! The place is only fully of us Americans, and thus agitates me. Anyways, the second girl I introduced myself to, I asked if she lives with a family. Yes. Who are they!? MY HOST PARENTS! Oh man, I was so glad to meet her and told her we'll be friends because they are just so nice and I intend to visit.

Today was definitely a better day-- I moved into my piso and had lunch with my former host parents which absolutely delighted me. When padre opened the door he said "Just like it was yesterday," which is really how it felt! Especially since their new student wasn't home, so it was just me and the padres having lunch like the good old days. Además, madre made lentejas, one of my favorite dishes. It's something you have to prepare the night before, and she told me how she thought to herself "I'll add some more in case Kerry stops by" hehehe. They also said other pleasantries, including that my speaking is quite fast. And here I was concerned that I had lost my touch. :P I think they liked their regalitos, hooray! Well, madre said she didn't know if she should thank me or get angry because I gave her a jar of fudge haha. And then Francis came home, thanked me for the present, and gave one to me. Pero, qué?! Then I realized it was a concert DVD of Extremoduro (my fav Spanish band) and FREAKED OUT. I couldn't think in Spanish immediately so instead blurted out "oh my gosh this is awesome!" and then clarified in Spanish, although I'm sure he got the message. But seriously, it was unexpected  and perfect. I don't think Basques hug very much, but I made an exception I was so overjoyed. :D Such great people.

Well after that charming lunch I feel ready to take it on. Everything! Classes start tomorrow. A ver.