Week 20: Light at the End

Welp, folks, the title says it all. My first three finals are done and I don't have to start thinking about my last one for the next few days.

This week was rather bittersweet for many reasons. First, the family has left me to go home for the summer. Its quite sad because I've gotten used to having them on the same time zone as me and I really enjoyed being able to show them around my city :) Second, the end of Reunidas. While I'm really quite happy that my exams are over and I no longer have any more class, that also means that I only have ONE MONTH left in Madrid, which is a very sad and depressing thought--so I'm studiously ignoring that fact.

To celebrate being done with (most) of our classes, my friends and I decided to go to San Sebastian, which is up in Basque country. I think this is one of the trips that I was most excited about. One of my Spanish profs was from Basque country [oh, Ager...], and ever since I took his class, I've wanted to go!

Speaking of Basque country, they speak Euskara there. Its kind of fascinating because Euskara is, like, a phantom language--meaning no one knows where it comes from because it is not latin or germanic based. Its an odd looking language, but most everyone spoke Spanish, so we were fine.

The food was delish! They do pintxos (tapas) there, and when you go into a bar its just covered in different plates with different pintxos on them. Most of them were bacalao (cod) based because San Seabass is right on the ocean. They were really yummy!

San Sebastian is pretty much a cove--it has a huge beach (which is in the top 3 best beaches of Europe). Unfortunately it has been freezing here in Spain (seriously, Wheaton and West Lala have been at least 10 degrees warmer than Madrid/Spain has been for the past few weeks), so we didn't get to lay on the beach and swim. But we walked in the sand a lot.

We went to the aquarium while we were there. It was kind of awesome--they had a huge underwater tunnel with sharks and stingrays and green turtles swimming around. We saw some jellies, starfish, and these really awesome cuttlefish that we had an epic staring contest with. We also may or may not have sat in front of one of the giant tanks staring at the fish for 40 minutes.

We also went to the top of one of the mountains via the funicular (tramway). It was really fun. At the top there was a little amusement park, but a lot of the stuff was closed because it was empty.

All in all, I really liked San Sebastian and I would love to go back when its a bit warmer out!

XOXO,
Kelsey