I have cards!

Last Friday was the first meeting of a conversation group arranged through the university where Spanish students who want to learn English get together with American students (who, obviously, want to learn Spanish) and practice conversing together. I joined a group with 2 American boys and 3 Spanish girls. They (the Spanish students) are having exams this week, so we are going to do more stuff after the exams are over with. We got dinner on Saturday night at a Turkish place and then went to their apartment (the Spanish girls are roommates so it worked out nicely).

Some of us had beer, while I and a couple others had my favorite drink: kalimotxo (kah-lee-moh-cho), which is literally coke and cheap wine. It is best with cheap wine because it makes it sweeter...and that way you are not ruining a perfectly delicious wine by mixing it with coke!

We talked for a while and ended up exchanging phrases and stuff, and one of the girls referred to something (I forget what) as being "puta madre" and I took the opportunity to teach them the phrase "fucking awesome" (because they mean the same thing. teehee)

Sunday was amazing. I didn´t do anything really, just walked around Bilbao with my host mom (HM) and 2 of her friends. We had lunch at 2:30ish at some restaurant that charged 13€ for 2 dishes, wine, and dessert. I have never been so amazingly full in my life. ULTIMATE MMMM (in case you are curious, paella was my 1st dish and cow´s tail in some kind of sauce was my 2nd, of course wine, and then rice and milke..with cinnamon on top was my dessert)
We walked around more, they showed me a ton of stuff and told me a million places I had to go, and then we got coffee somewhere else and sat and talked more.

Then we came back and I went to mass. Mass over here is pretty much always bilingual - Spanish and some Basque.

Today I went on a Barajadventure.
After I went to class, I came back for lunch, and decided that today was the day I was going to buy a deck of cards (they are called barajas in Spanish) which consists of 40 cards, all numbers. 1-12, excluding 8&9s of each suit..4 suits. I don´t know why, but I can´t wait to play with them! hahaha.
It was an adventure because it was raining, but I had the store in mind that I knew would sell cards. However because I couldn´t remember exactly where I had seen it, I got off at the wrong metro stop. On top of that it was rainy and FREEZING. I wandered around downtown for a while, found a book store, and a pretty awesome church, both of which will be visited again sometime in the near future, preferably on a less rainy day. I got back on the metro, and got off on my stop for the uni (uni = university. now and forevermore) because I had class in 1 hour, went to a store that looked like it might sell cards, but they didn´t so the guy directed me to a bookstore (una libreria :D) that would sell them. I went there, looked around and found language guides I thought would be useful (Russian..mainly so I can still practice but with Spanish as a reference point (!!!), German -for Austria :D (and Germany); Italian -for Italy, duh. haha, and in case I can´t remember something after what, a year of not taking Italian, and Portuguese. :D)

I really hope I get to travel as much as I want to. I would prefer not to do it alone, but as of this moment, I am fully prepared to and not really afraid at all!! Now I know NOT to smile at people ever under any circumstances! Unless I know them! lol

I think I am meeting people now who I wouldn´t mind travelling with, because they seem like they are interested in the same type of travel as I am. :D Hopefully they will feel the same. Although 2 of them are already pretty good friends, and were here last semester. We´ll see. I also want to travel all over Spain. One trip will have to be for after classes. I am now determined to save enough money in my account to pay for a re-booking of my flight for about 2 or 3 weeks after classes (because the genius that I am booked my return flight for the day after finals. ...no. way. not if I can help it.)

Tomorrow I am going to do something else with a friend of my HM´s something about a Saint that guards against throat sicknesses (like sore throats etc.) with some chord and then you burn it...I´m not exactly sure. But I will find out!

Wednesday is my dance class! :D I hope I can go, because it is also the day of the festival of Sant Agatha where we walk around in one giant hoard of people singing some song in Basque (I´m not sure exactly what it says, haha).

Oh well, I´m off to eat dinner!

¡hasta luegooo!