It is foggy

I'm in the study room right now, looking out the window at the construction outside our school, and catching a glimpse of the tree covered hills in the background through the fog. The university I am studying at (University of the Basque Country) has beautiful surroundings, but the campus itself is pretty run down and dirty. There are cigarette butts all over the hallways and the stairs. People are smoking everywhere, which is not something that I am used to. I was just heading up the stairs a few minutes ago inside the building, and I could see my breath. That's kind of a crazy thing to see in the middle of the day when you are inside. Last night we got confirmation from the hostel we are going to stay at in Barcelona this upcoming weekend. We already booked the flights and now we've got to figure out what we want to do once we get there. We arrive Friday morning and leave Tuesday afternoon (we have Monday and Tuesday off school for Carnaval), so we have plenty of time. I hear great things about Barcelona so I'm pretty excited to have the chance to spend a pretty good amount of time there.

 

As for now, I have Operations Management in a half hour, then Fabrice, Evan and I are going to take the bus to downtown Bilbao and walk around the city for a while. Then we have Basque Folkdance tonight from 6-8. This all makes for a long day, but thats what this trip is about. I'm definitely being pushed and tested in ways that I never have before. Its not the classes this time that are the challenge, it is everything associated with being in a new place, surrounded by new people and with a totally different schedule. Recently, God has been making himself very present to me during all of this, letting me know that He follows me anywhere I could possibly go. When most of the things in your life that you have grown accustomed to get stripped away, you are left to deal with feeling isolated and sometimes pretty alone. But God has shown up here with such a passion to draw me near to Him that it more than makes up for any sense of uncertainty that I have.

 

That's it for now. My next post will tell many tales of Barcelona and hopefully will include some pretty sweet pictures. These pictures here I took this last weekend along the water in Getxo. Adios amigos!

Almost the weekend

So its pretty sweet that the weekends start on Thursdays for me over here. No school on Friday is something I could really get used to. The school days are definitely long. Right now I have a 3 hour break between classes. Mondays and Wednesdays I have 3 classes, with about an hour and a half break and a two hour break in between them. I wake up a little after 7 and don't get home until around 4 or later. This Tuesday I had Basque Folkdance (which was actually a pretty sweet class, and I get PE credit for it), which meant I was gone from 7:30 in the morning until about 9 at night.It is pretty draining mentally and physically having to either walk or take public transportation everywhere and struggle with the language to get through the day. I love both of these things, but they do take their toll and after 4 days in a row of it I'm ready to take a break, especially from the whole waking up at 7:30 part.

One observation that I have had since I have been here: there are plenty of attractive girls, which is cool, but almost every one is with some goofy looking guy with a nasty mullet or something. The girls here do not look like what I would typically picture a Spaniard to look like, mainly because they aren't Spaniards in a way. They are Basque, which I have come to learn and realize is nearly a country in and of itself, and, in fact, the Basque Country is trying to split off and form its own country apart from Spain. Girls here have pretty fair skin, dark hair, and love their bangs. Its really funny to walk by and see a beautiful girl all cuddly with some funky looking guy with a hideous mullet or rat-tail. Also, the people here have no qualms about kissing in public. Everywhere you look there are couples kissing.

Thats it for now, have a good weekend everyone. 

The first week

Sorry it has taken a while to get a post up. We were supposed to get internet in our apartment but it turns out its going to be ridiculously expensive, so never mind that. I just got my computer connected to the internet at school today so here we are. So far Spain has been incredible. My apartment is not huge, but it is nice. It has a great layout and it already feels like home to me. There are a lot of really cool people on the program who have been great to get to know. The people here in the Basque Country are interesting. Most are not very warm and welcoming the first time you meet them, but they get used to you after a few times and become more friendly. We definitely get a lot of stares from the locals, largely because we are all incredibly good looking. I'm getting more and more used to feeling eyes on me a lot of the time when I'm sitting on the metro or in a cafe or something. Public transportation is very efficient and inexpensive and a nice way to get around. After a couple classes, it seems that the educational aspect of this trip will not been extremely demanding. In my operations management class, 60% of our grade is based on attendance/participation, the other 40% on a 5-7 page handwritten essay. We're not in Westmont anymore.

This past weekend Fabrice, Evan and I took an hour and a half bus ride to San Sebastian to visit Stephanie and for the Fiesta de Tambores. Basically, they drum from midnight until sometime in the afternoon the next day. They were still going when we left Sunday at 3:30pm. There were so many people in the streets the night of the fiesta you could barely move sometimes. There were little kids, old ladies, plenty of wasted people, and a crazy fight just a few feet away from us outside this bar. It was nuts.

It has definitely been weird to feel so isolated from the rest of the world. Without much access to the internet so far its been hard not to stay connected with world news, sports, presidential race back home). It sucks not being able to talk to friends and family much, but thats all part of it. When you feel so isolated you have to find a way to be able to get by relying on yourself. Right now I'm really missing watching Laker games, UCLA basketball games, and eating big meals. Here the portions are tiny. But we have managed to cook up a couple great meals so far. Last night we had pasta with mushrooms, tomatoes, bell peppers, sausage, and tomato sauce. I was impressed with our culinary prowess.

Well I'm off to eat lunch, talk to all of you later. Hope everyone is doing well.

En España

¡Hola amigos! I am writing this from the computer lab at the University in Bilbao. We´ve got a small break from a tour of the city and the campus and I thought I would let you all know that I got here safely and I´m having a great time. The apartment is really nice, I´ll put some pictures up at some point soon. We´ve each got our own bedroom and a nice living room and kitchen. It was an adventure getting here. Fabrice almost missed two of our three flights over here and our taxi got lost forever trying to find our apartment, and then our landlord wasn´t there to let us in. Finally we went to this bar where the bartender named John spoke English and he let us use his phone. We finally got into the apartment and its great. John is one of the coolest guys I have ever met, we hung out at his bar yesterday for a couple of hours, working on our Spanish, he is a very patient teacher and a really funny and genuine guy. Oh and Vlade Divac (former Laker and Sacramento Queen) was on our flight form LA to Philly and from Philly to Madrid. We ate McDonalds at the airport in Philadelhia at a table right next to him. He is an extremely large individual. Well I´m off I´ve gotta go catch a bus. Talk to you guys later.

Excitement

First of all, I wanted you all to know that the pictures from my last post were taken by yours truly. Fabrice saw my blog and, due to their extremely high quality and unimaginable beauty, assumed that I found them somewhere on the internet. Nay...they were found in the eye of an artist. Secondly, I wanted to express my extraordinarily high level of excitement at the moment. I'm pretty sure I had a smile on my face the entire day today. This was due in large part to being at Westmont and seeing all my friends one last time, but it has also just really started to hit me that the trip is finally here, just a couple days away. We've been planning it for about 8 months or so, and its actually going to happen. Goodbye to everyone who I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to in person, and stay tuned...my next post will be from Spain!