Family, Friends, and Lots of Fun!

I’m lucky enough to be enjoying a 2 week Easter break. I’m currently in the middle of the holiday after spending the last week back home in Somerset. I envisaged myself relaxing a lot and being pampered, but it didn’t quite turn out like that and it was actually a very busy time, however I loved every minute of it. Some of my university friends came to visit which meant that I got to celebrate my birthday for a second time with both my friends from Somerset and Southampton. I also got to be a tour guide for Somerset and the surrounding areas which definitely made me appreciate where I live. One of the funniest moments of the weekend was getting a phone call from a lost Allana who tried to describe where she was by saying, “there’s a field on my left and a field on my right… I’ve now just gone through a village that looks like it was built 400 years ago, and I feel like I should be in a tractor”. It turns out she was only about 2 minutes away from my house. Bless those city dwellers.

I had the best weekend, and my family were absolutely amazing, and very accommodating given the circumstances. After all the festivities I was finally allowed to open all my presents. While I appreciated everything I received, the sentimental presents were the ones that made the biggest impact, and I definitely didn’t think my brother would be the one to make me cry with his gift of 21 cards filled with his 21 favourite memories of us. He is a sweetie after all!

I was well and truly spoilt, and it was a very welcome break from my daily routine in Bilbao. However, it’s now Easter weekend and instead of eating so much chocolate that I’m almost sick, as is the usual tradition, I’m spending the weekend back in Spain because I’ve got 6000 words to write for my year abroad project which, despite having had all year to do it, has now become a bit of an issue with 1 month left before the deadline. I’ve set myself a personal 3 day deadline to write 2000 more words because on Wednesday I’m jetting off again, but this time to the warmer climes of Mallorca. I, therefore, have 3 very boring days to come… Happy Easter! 

Happy Birthday To Me...

Anyone who knows me will know that I take my birthday very seriously – I once fell out with two of my friends because they’d booked a holiday to France on the weekend of my birthday party (sorry Maddy and Beckie but at the time I thought you were being very selfish, I can now see that I was wrong) - so when I first realised that I’d be spending my 21^st birthday in Spain I was pretty upset to not be with my best friends and family. However, I started coming round to the idea of celebrating this monumental birthday (although I’m not even sure myself why it’s such a big deal) in Spain because this whole year has been unforgettable, and how many other people get to spend their birthday in a foreign country?

Luckily, I have amazing friends here who surprised me with some amazing presents, a personal favourite being the One Direction card, and a delicious cake. I also got some lovely cards from my friends and family back home, so I didn't feel too forgotten. After dinner, we made some really nice cocktails and headed out to a club with some other friends. Although my memory of the night is quite vague, I do remember having a great time. The same can't be said for the next day.

My birthday fell on a Thursday this year, so on the Saturday one of the English teachers, Silvana, kindly took me on a mini tour of the Basque country, along with her husband, her son, and her son’s girlfriend. The first stop was Gernika, famous for the Nazi bombings which destroyed the whole town and inspired the Picasso painting. The only thing that remained from the bombings was a tree, and my reliable tour guide informed me that people come and pay their respects to this symbol of peace by posing like so…

While in Gernika we also visited the parliament of the province of Biscay, and the peace museum. We then went on a road trip to see some more sights. I’m not exactly sure where we went but we visited lots of nice castles and scenery.

After the trip, we went back to Silvana’s flat to pick up her two daughters and their partners, and her sister before we went to eat lunch at a sidrería. A sidrería is a typical Basque cider house where you can expect to find huge cider barrels, wooden tables and chairs, and food cooked in a big chimney. Silvana’s son described the experience to me as being in the ‘Flinstones’, if that helps conjure up a better image. During the road trip we’d built up quite an appetite and we’d definitely come to the right place. We ate so much just for starters – bread, ham croquettes, cod tortilla, tuna and asparagus salad, chorizo – and then the waiters brought out the main course of chuleta, a grilled rib eye steak. The steak comes out very rare but you can leave it to cook on a hot plate for as long as you want. After all the savoury food I couldn’t face dessert (weird) but there were lots of creamy goodies on offer as well.

I had an absolutely amazing Basque birthday, with some amazing people, but I’m now ridiculously excited to go back to England tomorrow and celebrate with my family and friends there. If anything, being in Spain has just given me a good excuse to drag the celebrations out for as long as possible.

I Love Teaching

Ok maybe the title's a slight exaggeration – I complain every single day about waking up early to go to school, and I dread Sunday nights more than I ever did when I was at school. Before I came to Spain I had absolutely no desire to be a teacher, I chose to spend my year abroad as a language assistant because the salary and lack of university work seemed like a very attractive option, and I definitely don't want to be a teacher now. I'm not even very good at teaching. When left alone with the students for half an hour on two occasions this week, instead of doing the set work I preferred to talk to them about their school trip to Lanzarote (of course I made them take their books out so it looked like they were working). I can't discipline them at all because I've definitely crossed the line between friend and teacher, which I'm fine with. I’m so young that I can relate to some of the kids more than I can to most of the teachers. I can even sympathise with the really naughty ones, as I wasn't exactly an angel myself at school. The discipline in Spanish schools is so much worse than the UK anyway; teachers aren't respected in the slightest and if a student doesn't want to do something there's no way of forcing them to do it. I regularly leave lessons with a headache because the students have been shouting for an hour.

However, when the students give me a round of applause and cheers after every presentation I do, write me stories in English with titles such as 'The Girl Who Married With a Bear', randomly make me a C.D filled with songs that they think I'll like, or walk past the staff room twice just because I didn't see them and say hello the first time, it makes me realise that this ‘teaching’ thing isn’t so bad after all.

Madrid

You can’t spend your year abroad in Spain without visiting the capital city, so last weekend some friends from university and I took a trip to Madrid. Unfortunately, one bad incident kind of tainted my opinion of the city so instead of boring you all with my depressing experience I’ll instead upload some pictures so you can make up your own minds.