To all my avid readers: I am very sorry for taking so long to post again, it really does take a lot of time (and sass) to produce a great post, and I have been very busy having awesome European adventures! I also promise to post more often so I don't have to make freakishly long posts here again. haha.
Well first thing first, and (supposedly) the thing I am here to experience: school. I have now begun week 5 of classes in France and they are going just fine. I think I really lucked out on the amount of work I have for my classes because for the most part, I don't have to do anything. The reading for my classes is optional and not really necessary as long as you go to class (except for my French novel class - Proust now, awesome), and since we are foreign, and I guess they assume we don't understand anything, all my finals will be separate from the French students; for my Renaissance class I have to type out an presentation that I just turn in, I won't actually be presenting it. Basically, everything is easy. It's nice because it makes it easier for me to travel and not have a lot of studying to worry about, but it's also weird having school be kind of a joke. Whatever, I'd rather travel anyways, hahahaha.
So now the more important info: where I have been in the last 20 days! The weekend of the 12th and 13th I went to Carcassonne and Toulouse. The trip to Carcassonne ended up not being as eventful as I thought it would, as I had my visite medicale for my visa that morning (8h30, nice and early!) and it took longer than I thought it would, so I had to take the later train. The old part of city is one of the biggest medieval cities in France that has been fully renovated, except since I got there so late my friends had already gone there (a 30-minute walk), so I didn't get to see that part of the city. It was also around 5pm and had snowed earlier so we wanted to get to our hotel, also a 45-minute walk away. We ended up getting lost on the way there so it's a good thing we left when we did. We did go to dinner at a small restaurant near our hotel and stayed there for around 3 hours talking; it was really great. The next day we took the train to Toulouse, another cool city that is pretty old. It was nice walking around in the morning, and we went to this really old church with all these relics. It was really cold though later in the afternoon so I decided to take the train back to Bordeaux that night. It sucks that the weather is actually a factor when you go traveling outside of California, hahaha; it was nice to get out of Bordeaux for awhile nonetheless.
Now the real adventure was going to San Sebastian in SPAIN the weekend of the 20th. It was absolutely beautiful! And Spain just had such an amazing energy. It also helped that it was about 10 degrees warmer than Bordeaux the whole weekend. It was an amazing experience, and definitely made me feel a lot better about my French skillz. I mean I was able to bust out a little bit of ANCIENT Spanish, but mostly I would just default to French and sound retarded. Also, since we didn’t know the language it was really intense getting around, and mostly involved pointing and wild hand gestures; pretty much everyone we encountered only spoke Spanish, even at the train station! Which made no sense, considering it was right on the border with France. But we did make it there and Candy, Collin, and I were insanely excited. It was a little cloudy and as we started walking to our hostel began to sprinkle... then there were some really big drops.. then it was POURING. It was actually really comical, and even though we all got wet we were still stoaked to be in Spain! I did have to buy some boots though because the weather in Bordeaux was so sunny and nice, I got thrown off and wore flats, which were the only shoes I brought. Luckily they were on sale; ironically they are the same kind of cowboy-esque boots that all the french girls wear.
Our hostel was really nice, clean, and warm, so we waited there for the owner, Miguel (coolest guy ever), who only spoke Spanish. We think this other guy worked in the hostel, but he was from Scotland so he translated for us a bit. It was funny that Miguel could speak Spanish to us though and we could pretty much understand him. We got a map and walked around the city a little bit more, then met up with some other friends who were in the city as well to celebrate her 21st birthday! We walked around the old part of town for quite some time before finding the tapas restaurant we wanted, then proceeded to wait for an hour for our table (there were 8 of us). At this point it was around 10pm, the Spanish eat so late, but it was kind of awesome how many people were out walking around and eating dinner; such a difference from Bordeaux! The food was awesome! I didn't actually know what a lot of the things I was eating were, but it was still all really good. After dinner and 3 pitchers of Sangria, we went to a small bar and basically started the dancing there. We finally headed home around 2 am I think, which was a nice walk by the ocean! I didn't realize I would miss the ocean so much! Definitely take that for granted.
The next day we woke up around 10am, got out of the hostel around 11, and started walking around the city. After lunch we hiked up the mountain behind the old part of town where there used to be a castillo and where there is now a huge Jesus statue. We then met up with our friends again at a pastry shop/ café, as our friend Kaylee decided to stay the second night with us. Walked around a big more, attempted to find some dream shoes, failed, then went back to the hostel to drop stuff off, went back to the bay to take pictures at night. I got splashed and soaked by a huge wave in this little view point, we went back to the hostel to get me dry clothes and a dinner recommendation. Miguel suggested this place owned by one of his friends and it was DELICIOUS. Paella is freaking so good. I had no idea! Miguel was also nice enough to call ahead for us so we didn't have to embarrass ourselves with bad Spanish and so the paella was ready by the time we got there. The owner welcomed us in immediately, I guess it was pretty obvious that we were American. hahaha. So after eating a TON, we walked back to the hostel, taking a detour to loiter in a playground and be obnoxious. It was a great night. SO WARM.
