Hi everyone,
So I´m little later than planned with this latest blog post but the back end of this week has been pretty busy!
I went to the pintxos night I mentioned in my last post and luckily some of the people who went last week were there again along with a few new faces. This week the food provided for us was a really tasty looking paella however I´m keeping to the veggie (pescatarian) food over here so instead I got some really good battered fish pieces with salad. After everyone had eaten we split into different groups to do a bit of exploring. Casco Viejo is the old part of Bilbao and has a lot of interesting bars with music and such. We explored and found the street I bought my super cheap hippy clothes from. Unfortunately one student had had a few too many and we had to cut the night short but we all had a good time and I think I´ve now started making a few friends here - guess that´s what happens when you actually get out and socialise!
After a late start on Saturday I ended up spending the majority of the day studying and getting some work done online. Sunday was much of the same. The family were down in Pamplona for San Fermin (watching the running with the bulls) so I was supposed to stay at home with the older daughter and help look after Isa. Funnily enough though the grandparents who´d stayed overnight never left and before I knew it the parents were home so I guess I wasn´t really needed after all.
There always seems to be one day a week were tantrums and tears are pretty much now stop - this week it was Monday. After refusing to talk to me for most of the morning and pretending to sleep instead of doing something fun, the serious tantrums started. After swimming I got Isa dressed and tried to put her shoes on. I tried unfastening her shoes to put them on - nope she wanted to keep them fastened and spent 5 minutes trying to do it herself. I tried to get her to put them on the right feet - refusal, tears and the rest of the day was spent with them on the wrong feet. Then she wanted her hair plaited - the problem being she told me in Spanish and didn´t know the English word while I didn´t know the Spanish word - she also wouldn´t mime like she often does in these situations. The crying and shouting ("TRENZA") began so I suggested we go speak to the housekeeper since I couldn´t understand and she would. This made it worse and as I tried to leave the room to find help I ended up with the door slammed repeatedly - sometimes while I was in the way - and almost ended up with a tear in my trousers as she tried to stop me leaving. Eventually I got out and got the housekeeper who sorted it out but what a carry on! She normally understands when I don´t know a word but not that day - however after lunch and some TV she settle and the Chinese teacher arrived so I could rush off to class.
Moving on - there are now four of us in my Spanish class - myself, two girls from Cyprus who are the same age, have the same name and same future work plans (cool coincidence!) and now we have a young German lad in class too. It´s sometimes a little complicated because to go from Spanish to English to German isn´t easy and I have to explain things to him again in clear English after the teacher has done so - her English is great but not always exact when it comes to explaining some things - at least helping teach is reiterating the facts for myself as I do it.
Tuesday was a pretty easy day since Isa was happy colouring her pictures or things I´d drawn for her for most of the morning. I got some studying done in the afternoon and in the evening Marie and I took Isa in her pushchair for a walk to the next town. The walk was about 10km there and back and some of it was pretty rough when we had to go round the steps but the views were pretty awesome and with the heat to contend with it was good exercise.
On Wednesday the swimming teacher was sick and after I made a comment to Marie about maybe taking Isa swimming myself if it was warm enough the housekeeper passed on the comment to Isa and I got stuck in the pool with her. I wouldn´t have minded except it definitely wasn´t warm enough but after it was mentioned to the lass I couldn´t exactly turn round and refuse - never mind.
I had class in the afternoon followed by a wine tasting lesson at the school. It was meant to be a reasonably serious lesson but we all had a good bit of fun and I was pretty happy to find I understood most of what was said considering it was all in Spanish and the guy spoke pretty fast. After the class one of the students said his friend´s band was playing a gig so a bunch of us tagged along much to the surprise and amusement of his friends. They´re called Hotzen and play Indie-Basque music and I think if they only changed their soundman they´d be awesome! Regardless of that though they still sounded great.
Thursday was fairly quiet with no swimming this time and after the Chinese teacher showed up in the afternoon I hung out in my room reading and studying before Marie, Isa and I went for another walk - to Sopelana centre this time. When we got back we woke Isa up for dinner but she wasn´t happy about getting up - the sulking and crying returned but after we left her to it I think she realised it wasn´t getting her anywhere so she settled, ate her dinner and went to bed properly.
The swimming teacher was well again by Friday so Isa had her normal lesson then and after lunch got a decent bit of studying done before heading out to the weekly Pintxos evening. This time it was tortilla on the menu (basically a thick omelete with either potato, meat or other ingrediants in it). once everyone had finished our group decided to head out of town to the fiestas in the nearby town of Santurtzi. Seemed like a good idea except it was on the opposite side of the river to where I stay and on a different metro line, however I was assured I could get across the transporter bridge at any time and walk to a station that joined with my metro line so off we went. There were a few complaints about how long it took but once we got there we met a couple of lasses who´d finished studying at the school and headed into the fiesta. There was some decent music in the beginning but then it changed to a young boyband who seemed very much like a rather annoying British one who´s name I´m sre will instantly spring to mind for a few of you and mostly as a band to avoid! A couple of other ones in the group had the same thoughts as me so I spent a good bit of time standing a little way off talking to them while the others danced and sung along when they knew the words. It´s how I got talking to a pretty cool Canadian guy called Sheldon who lived on the other side of the river too.
After a lot of partying from the majority and more spectating for a couple of us Sheldon and I finally gave up and headed home but after all the fuss with some of the group getting lost with another´s bag and people falling over and other people getting lost again I only got home around 6am - not something I have any intention of doing again any time soon. Since I´d really only had a couple of drinks I was pretty much dead on my feet while the others were fueled by drink and once I got home I only had about an hour to sleep.
Saturday was the day I´d got bus tickets to go to San Sebastian! After a sleepy hour and a half on the bus I wandered around for a while trying to remember the sites I´d seen on my last brief visit. By 12.30 I was really hungry and found a great sandwhich shop in the old part of town so I could sit outside and eat looking out on the beach. In the afternoon I spent a little time with everyone else on the sand basking in the sun but it was pretty hot by this point and I decided to leave and find some shade instead. There was a pretty cool (apparently) Irish bar I found along the way and after a quick talk to the guy behind the bar - me in Spanish, him in English as is normal - I got some mint tea and a glass of ice so I could make iced tea. I chilled out there for a good part of the afternoon before wandering a little more and heading for the bus. I did think about walking up to either the viewing point on one side of the bay with the large Jesus statue or the one on the opposite side with the old fairground but at 32 degrees it was left for another time. After helping a young Lithuanian lass get her ticket sorted and find her bus I caught my own and slept most of the way back.
In the evening I had a nap, then headed up for dinner before going back to sleep properly.
Today we´ve been out walking again. My normal shoes are almost completely dead so I was offered a pair of the older sisters trainers - unfortunately they were a bit too small and within 20 minutes on regular pavement I got the first blister I´ve had in I don´t know how many years! I finished the walk in flip flops in the finish even more determined to fix my converse!!
This afternoon I´ve mostly been reading and napping a little - think I´m still a little worn out from Friday´s galavanting!
Well that´s all I´ve got for you for now, time to add some pictures and get back to my book!
Ciao for now.
So I´m little later than planned with this latest blog post but the back end of this week has been pretty busy!
I went to the pintxos night I mentioned in my last post and luckily some of the people who went last week were there again along with a few new faces. This week the food provided for us was a really tasty looking paella however I´m keeping to the veggie (pescatarian) food over here so instead I got some really good battered fish pieces with salad. After everyone had eaten we split into different groups to do a bit of exploring. Casco Viejo is the old part of Bilbao and has a lot of interesting bars with music and such. We explored and found the street I bought my super cheap hippy clothes from. Unfortunately one student had had a few too many and we had to cut the night short but we all had a good time and I think I´ve now started making a few friends here - guess that´s what happens when you actually get out and socialise!
After a late start on Saturday I ended up spending the majority of the day studying and getting some work done online. Sunday was much of the same. The family were down in Pamplona for San Fermin (watching the running with the bulls) so I was supposed to stay at home with the older daughter and help look after Isa. Funnily enough though the grandparents who´d stayed overnight never left and before I knew it the parents were home so I guess I wasn´t really needed after all.
 |
| Pre-class selfie showing off my dreads |
There always seems to be one day a week were tantrums and tears are pretty much now stop - this week it was Monday. After refusing to talk to me for most of the morning and pretending to sleep instead of doing something fun, the serious tantrums started. After swimming I got Isa dressed and tried to put her shoes on. I tried unfastening her shoes to put them on - nope she wanted to keep them fastened and spent 5 minutes trying to do it herself. I tried to get her to put them on the right feet - refusal, tears and the rest of the day was spent with them on the wrong feet. Then she wanted her hair plaited - the problem being she told me in Spanish and didn´t know the English word while I didn´t know the Spanish word - she also wouldn´t mime like she often does in these situations. The crying and shouting ("TRENZA") began so I suggested we go speak to the housekeeper since I couldn´t understand and she would. This made it worse and as I tried to leave the room to find help I ended up with the door slammed repeatedly - sometimes while I was in the way - and almost ended up with a tear in my trousers as she tried to stop me leaving. Eventually I got out and got the housekeeper who sorted it out but what a carry on! She normally understands when I don´t know a word but not that day - however after lunch and some TV she settle and the Chinese teacher arrived so I could rush off to class.
Moving on - there are now four of us in my Spanish class - myself, two girls from Cyprus who are the same age, have the same name and same future work plans (cool coincidence!) and now we have a young German lad in class too. It´s sometimes a little complicated because to go from Spanish to English to German isn´t easy and I have to explain things to him again in clear English after the teacher has done so - her English is great but not always exact when it comes to explaining some things - at least helping teach is reiterating the facts for myself as I do it.
Tuesday was a pretty easy day since Isa was happy colouring her pictures or things I´d drawn for her for most of the morning. I got some studying done in the afternoon and in the evening Marie and I took Isa in her pushchair for a walk to the next town. The walk was about 10km there and back and some of it was pretty rough when we had to go round the steps but the views were pretty awesome and with the heat to contend with it was good exercise.
 |
| Great view walking back from Getxo |
On Wednesday the swimming teacher was sick and after I made a comment to Marie about maybe taking Isa swimming myself if it was warm enough the housekeeper passed on the comment to Isa and I got stuck in the pool with her. I wouldn´t have minded except it definitely wasn´t warm enough but after it was mentioned to the lass I couldn´t exactly turn round and refuse - never mind.
I had class in the afternoon followed by a wine tasting lesson at the school. It was meant to be a reasonably serious lesson but we all had a good bit of fun and I was pretty happy to find I understood most of what was said considering it was all in Spanish and the guy spoke pretty fast. After the class one of the students said his friend´s band was playing a gig so a bunch of us tagged along much to the surprise and amusement of his friends. They´re called Hotzen and play Indie-Basque music and I think if they only changed their soundman they´d be awesome! Regardless of that though they still sounded great.
 |
| Hotzen playing on Wednesday |
Thursday was fairly quiet with no swimming this time and after the Chinese teacher showed up in the afternoon I hung out in my room reading and studying before Marie, Isa and I went for another walk - to Sopelana centre this time. When we got back we woke Isa up for dinner but she wasn´t happy about getting up - the sulking and crying returned but after we left her to it I think she realised it wasn´t getting her anywhere so she settled, ate her dinner and went to bed properly.
The swimming teacher was well again by Friday so Isa had her normal lesson then and after lunch got a decent bit of studying done before heading out to the weekly Pintxos evening. This time it was tortilla on the menu (basically a thick omelete with either potato, meat or other ingrediants in it). once everyone had finished our group decided to head out of town to the fiestas in the nearby town of Santurtzi. Seemed like a good idea except it was on the opposite side of the river to where I stay and on a different metro line, however I was assured I could get across the transporter bridge at any time and walk to a station that joined with my metro line so off we went. There were a few complaints about how long it took but once we got there we met a couple of lasses who´d finished studying at the school and headed into the fiesta. There was some decent music in the beginning but then it changed to a young boyband who seemed very much like a rather annoying British one who´s name I´m sre will instantly spring to mind for a few of you and mostly as a band to avoid! A couple of other ones in the group had the same thoughts as me so I spent a good bit of time standing a little way off talking to them while the others danced and sung along when they knew the words. It´s how I got talking to a pretty cool Canadian guy called Sheldon who lived on the other side of the river too.
After a lot of partying from the majority and more spectating for a couple of us Sheldon and I finally gave up and headed home but after all the fuss with some of the group getting lost with another´s bag and people falling over and other people getting lost again I only got home around 6am - not something I have any intention of doing again any time soon. Since I´d really only had a couple of drinks I was pretty much dead on my feet while the others were fueled by drink and once I got home I only had about an hour to sleep.
 |
| Impressive old church tucked away in the corner |
Saturday was the day I´d got bus tickets to go to San Sebastian! After a sleepy hour and a half on the bus I wandered around for a while trying to remember the sites I´d seen on my last brief visit. By 12.30 I was really hungry and found a great sandwhich shop in the old part of town so I could sit outside and eat looking out on the beach. In the afternoon I spent a little time with everyone else on the sand basking in the sun but it was pretty hot by this point and I decided to leave and find some shade instead. There was a pretty cool (apparently) Irish bar I found along the way and after a quick talk to the guy behind the bar - me in Spanish, him in English as is normal - I got some mint tea and a glass of ice so I could make iced tea. I chilled out there for a good part of the afternoon before wandering a little more and heading for the bus. I did think about walking up to either the viewing point on one side of the bay with the large Jesus statue or the one on the opposite side with the old fairground but at 32 degrees it was left for another time. After helping a young Lithuanian lass get her ticket sorted and find her bus I caught my own and slept most of the way back.
In the evening I had a nap, then headed up for dinner before going back to sleep properly.
 |
| Hanging out at the beach |
Today we´ve been out walking again. My normal shoes are almost completely dead so I was offered a pair of the older sisters trainers - unfortunately they were a bit too small and within 20 minutes on regular pavement I got the first blister I´ve had in I don´t know how many years! I finished the walk in flip flops in the finish even more determined to fix my converse!!
This afternoon I´ve mostly been reading and napping a little - think I´m still a little worn out from Friday´s galavanting!
Well that´s all I´ve got for you for now, time to add some pictures and get back to my book!
Ciao for now.
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