Chicken and Rice

This is my roommate Jaime and I. That nut you see there is from our first adventure to a town called Vitoria which I mentioned in my last message. I figured that I gave all of you a good background of why I came here and what I have been doing so far but I forgot to give information about my roommates! Jaime is 27 and hails from California. This is his 3rd time to Spain and his 2nd time here through this program teaching English. He is Mexican and is bilingual, so needless to say I point to him when strangers approach. Just joking, I am improving my Spanish a lot. Just yesterday I was hanging out with some local friends who don't speak English. After they said something to each other I realized that I understood almost everything they were talking about! Anyways, back to the Jaime and the chestnut. The reason we brought the chestnut back to our flat is because every time we go on a day trip somewhere, we are going to bring something back with us as a souvenir.

If I am going to be here for 8 months without a mother or a cafeteria, I am going to have to learn to cook, right? I was getting pretty tired of cereal and pb and j's every night, with the occasional exception of Annie cooking meals for Jaime and I. So i have decided to learn to cook! Since my skills are limited to oatmeal and the occasional cake(frequent phone calls included), I started off basic. My first meal was spaghetti, sounds easy, right? WRONG! Okay so I know how to cook the noodles, you fill the pan with water, put some oil in it and when it is boiling you add the noodles. Ready to eat when you throw a piece on the wall and it sticks, it works I swear! But the sauce, that is a different story. I had no idea how to cook it and was thinking of just adding some water to the 2 cans I bought from the store. But I had no idea therefore I waited for Annie to get home to show me. We diced and onion, a red pepper, added chicken stock, chicken bouillon, garlic powder, cream and cooking oil. Thank God I waited, I think her spaghetti tasted a little bit better than mine. I won't consider myself a spaghetti maker until I can accomplish it without her help.

         (Grandpa! I took this picture for you. It was the coolest car I could find at the Car Show in Vitoria.)

So I am sitting here in my living room writing the blog post, with my belly filled up with Special K Fruit cereal. It WAS supposed to be chicken and rice. The story behind that starts with my roommate Annie. She is a great cook from the Dominican Republic and is teaching me how to cook. Although it slipped her mind that we were cooking chicken and rice for dinner. I was enjoying the nice morning sun on my balcony when Annie tapped on the window, asking if I would like to eat some of her chicken and rice lunch. I blanched, saying that I had no idea she was cooking, but I would love some of it. I guess my cooking skills will have to wait for training until tomorrow night. If any of you readers have seen the movie Julie and Julia, you will know what I am talking about. She cooks 2-3 meals a day then publishes them in a blog. That is NOT what I am doing, I just happen to have a blog and am learning to cook at the same time. My meals will make their way in here of course, but not in too great of detail.

This is a picture that I took on a walk. As you can see Bilbao is BEAUTIFUL! I am so lucky to be here, although I am pretty sure the winter is going to suck. The kids tell me that it rains for 2 months straight and the river floods. I'm not sure whether to believe that it is that extreme here but if it is i'd better buy some rain boots. The gymnasiums around here rent out bikes for free for the day, so Jaime and I are going to go rent some for a day and explore our neighborhood of San Inazio and the surrounding landscape! Next time I update this blog i'll hopefully have pictures of my classes that I teach and maybe a picture of me without hair(???). Today I taught from 3-4:30, so a pretty relaxed day. And it only included 2 students, but they were both teachers that want to improve their English conversation skills. The reason that there are only 2 students in the class is because A) it is optional and B) because today was the first day, not too many teachers know about it yet. Hopefully more start coming, but i'd rather keep the amount of students down to about 15. Anymore that that and I won't be able to spend quality time with all them! With the two students today we talked about controversial subjects such as Barack Obama, Animal Experimentation and Household Guns. These topics were just designed to get them talking and use irregular vocabulary. After that we listened to songs on youtube that had lyrics. I chose "I can't wait to be king" from the Lion King and then we listened to Roxanne by The Police. After that it was time to call it a day, but a good day at that. They told my supervisor that I was "Dynamic" so she complimented me! Well I think I shall go and enjoy a chocolate croissant. Check back in a couple of days!!!

En la Cuadra Negra

Hello family, friends, and strangers reading this! As most of you know I am currently in Spain, experiencing a once in a lifetime opportunity. It has only been 20 days, but my life has been absolutely crazy for the last 20 days. So much has changed in my life, I don't even know where to begin. First of all I shall start off with tell you readers why I decided to embark on the 8 month long journey in a city, country and continent where I know absolutely no-one. Why would somebody want to do that? It's sounds so uncomfortable and scary. Well let me tell you guys, it is uncomfortable, and scary. But that's the reason I came on this trip! In Omaha, Nebraska I was extremely content and while I was attending college in Lincoln, NE my days were filled with learning and fun. But was I growing as a person? Yes. But here I am growing so much more! I am getting to experience another culture where they don't speak the same language, eat different food and most people don't have cars! It is considered a luxury to have one, most people take the metro (including me). I came here to learn another language, I came here to see if teaching is really for me, I came here to learn how to play piano, I came here to grow more independent, I came here to change. It has been difficult, as many of my friends and family members can vouch. E-mails and scattered phone calls are amazing, and Skype is a blessing on this earth. I am fitting in better here, am making friends and exploring Spain one street at a time.

For the first 3 days I stayed in a hostel called Akelarre. It was nice but small and I shared a room with 6 other people. This is also where I met Jaime, who is now 1 of my 2 roommates. Jaime and I walked around the city for a couple days and discovered how the metro works, where our schools are, the Guggenheim Museum, and looked for a place to live. After our first outing we found a great place. It was a little pricy but we soon learned that housing here costs more. We wanted to say yes but we didn't have a 3rd roommate. We met Annie back at the Hostel a day later, offered to show her the flat and she liked it. Now im sitting on our sofa in the living room writing this. San Inazio is the name of the neighborhood I live in, and it is beautiful. I walk out onto my balcony and look at a HUGE hill, or a small mountain, depending on how you look at it. My view is filled with grassy hills, trees, bushes, old run-down houses, and TONS of feral cats.

I like them. Also everybody here has a dog. Like, everyone. Most of the time they don't keep them on a leash, they just run around which is great. My first great experience begins this friday. Jaime and I had just gotten back from an afternoon shopping at an outlet mall. He bought some stuff for his room and we were carrying it back to the flat. While passing the "Fronton" courts I noticed there was a game going on. Even though I already had learned how to play from some other locals, I asked this group of 6 people how to play, hoping they would invite me to join them. Success! After a minute of questions they quickly invited me to play with them. I joined and to their surprise I was very good. I still lost every game but it was only my 2nd time of playing. Afterwards they invited me to go to a bar and have a beer. I told them I was going to get my friend Jaime to come along as well. Since I live only 4 blocks from the "Fronton" courts it was a quick journey to get him. When we arrived at the bar they had a sandwich and beer waiting for me. The sandwich was great but I passed on the beer and instead ordered a glass of Pink Wine. I know, manly. But it tastes way better than beer. I had another glass of wine and another sandwich, and I didn't pay a dime! They were excited to make some foreign friends and invited me to play with them again this Friday. This time I will offer to buy on of them  drinks.

Oh I almost forgot to mention my landlord Dona Maruja. She is super nice and is always giving me stuff. She calls me grandson and I call her grandma. Today she bought me gloves for the cold! I was just looking at them but I didnt have my wallet with me, and she bought them for me! They were only 2.50 Euros, but still she's awesome. With her, my awesome roommates, my beautiful backyard, the close location of the metro and a gym not 2 blocks from my front door, I kinda think I got the jackpot with my flat.

My next great experience takes place in a town called Vitoria. Jaime and I decided to take a day trip there since we never work on fridays, saturdays or sundays. Buying our tickets was the first step, so we took the metro to a bus station at San Mames and then rode the bus from Bilbao to Vitoria. There I saw a lot of cool things. We went to La Plaza de la Blanca Virgin, which had a cool statue and a huge church hidden behind apartment buildings. Next we went through these 6 small parks that were right next to each other, and we saw the huge house of the president of Basque country. We also tried out some of the local food there. I tried fried  fish balls, haha. They were fish mixed with a cream, rolled into a ball and then fried. We spent the day walking around and eating back the calories burned off from walking by stopping at bakeries along the way and gelato shops. The bus ride back was a little crazier with a group of Romanian teenagers playing American music on their speakers and a group of older people in the back singing group songs in another language. So all in all it was a great day and I returned very tired. I spent the night watching the Pianist, and now Berlin is on my list to visit.

Well thats it for now, I will try to re-post within the next 2-3 days, if anything post worthy happens. Until then I hope you all liked it and are excited for the next one!