I am thankful for...

My amazing family. My beautiful friends. My life in Spain. And in the UK.

I celebrated my first ever Thanksgiving this year by going to an American friends' flat and eating a feast that lots of people had contributed to. Apparently Thanksgiving's even bigger than Christmas in America and it was so nice to be surrounded by friends from all over the world who could come together to enjoy this tradition. It made me think how lucky I am to have relocated my whole life to Spain, and yet still be able to enjoy myself just as much as if I were at home.

Strikes and Something Cultural

There’s no two ways about it, the Spanish economy is in crisis. The majority of Spain has over 25% unemployment, but yet the government still insists on making cuts to every sector, meaning more people lose their jobs so have less money to spend to replenish the economy. This also means that almost every week there is some sort of strike happening. Last week it was a general strike so all bases were covered. While in Britain people might find other ways to protest, the Spanish are insistent that striking is always the answer. This is a tiny bit inconvenient for the average person who isn´t striking when their commute is hard enough without buses suddenly stopping in the afternoon, leaving said person stranded in a tiny Basque town. Cheers Spain. However, the strangest strike I’ve come across so far is when the students go on strike. The students protest against the poor education they’re receiving by missing a day of school (pretty illogical, no?), so they make a decision two days before planned strike, give in some paperwork, and then get a day off school. It's really that simple.

Despite some inconveniences my friends and I are still embracing Spain and we’re trying activities that maybe we wouldn’t normally do anywhere else. We’ve had some successes with the trip to Ermua for the festival and on Friday we went to the ‘Guggenheim after dark’ - a party in the museum which takes place once a month. I found that it was just the right balance between being cultured and getting drunk. However, we have encountered some failures in our desire to be Spanish. It has led to us unknowingly participating in feminism week at the cinema and watching a film about a woman who loses her dog, and then finds it again, only to leave it where she found it (literally the whole plot of the film). Accidently watching a silent movie at a quirky little cinema by our flat based on Snow White, who in this film is a bull fighter that falls in love with one of the dwarves. While planning my year abroad I never imagined I’d be sat in a cinema watching an interesting interpretation of a much loved classic while eating sweets in the shape of fingers. Very surreal. And finally, on Saturday night, we found out about a free concert taking place. We were pretty excited until it turned out the woman would just be screaming whale-like sounds into a microphone to the same tune for an hour.

I guess you can’t fault our efforts!

Parents, Pigs, and Peculiar Pintxos

I was lucky enough to have my parents come to visit me for a few days last week, directly followed by a spontaneous visit from a friend who’s spending the year in Asturias, so it’s been very busy here. My parents brought with them lots of English goodies and even more clothes. So many clothes in fact that my drawers now won’t shut properly - It looks like I will struggle with packing to go home in May even more than I did to come out here. And with Rosie I became a tourist again and went up the funicular in Bilbao where you have an amazing view of the city.

It was good to see familiar faces and catch up, but this weekend it was nice to once again embrace the culture of the Basque country with a trip to Ermua on Saturday for the annual Feria de San Martin - a traditional festival in the town. I get on really well with the students I teach (possibly a bit too well as I don’t think it’s usual protocol to ask a teacher if they want to smoke weed with you after lesson, but I'll take this as a sign that I'm a cool teacher), and they were selling at the market to fund their school trip so I promised I’d come along and buy lots of things. However, I didn’t really anticipate being peer pressured into spending 5 euros on a lottery ticket. Never before has winning the lottery felt so important. Despite spending too much it was so lovely to see all of the traditional clothing, hear the traditional music and eat tola, a Basque pancake with chorizo. 

But one tradition in particular seemed pretty strange to me and my friend Laura; keeping a very overweight pig in a pen in the centre of the plaza that people had the opportunity to win (and consequently take to the slaughter house themselves) in a raffle. Poor piggy.

The Basque love of all things meaty was once again confirmed later on in the day when some friends and I went to a pintxo fair at the Exhibition Centre. Pintxos are the Basque version of tapas but instead of coming free with a drink you have to pay for them. People here argue that the quality of the Basque tapas are worth paying for, but when you're a student who lives off of supermarket own brand food that argument seems pretty invalid. Different bars and restaurants had set up their own stalls with a selection of 3 of their best pintxos for people to try. I opted for what I believed to be a small passion fruit cake with a creamy topping. It wasn’t until I took a bite that I realised the creamy topping actually contained ham and bacon. I would argue that meaty passion fruit cake is definitely not worth paying for. Luckily I learnt from my mistake and when my friend offered me another small cake I was careful to dissect it properly and saw that underneath all the meringue it contained crab. Who invents these things?!