Carnaval

So we basically suck at blogging this past week, but if you knew how nice the weather was this week you would totally understand! Anyways, last weekend we went to Hendaye, France with a few other USACers and participated in “Carnaval.” It was a blast. We took the train there and walked until we found the meeting place. Once we figured out they spoke Spanish we figured out what we were supposed to do. They dressed all of us up in different outfits and then we walked to a big meeting square and basically watched all of the floats that were in front of us go by then we started walking. All in all the actual parade was two hours long with stops along the way to watch other floats sing and dance. Tara, Michael (a fellow USAC student) and I all wore big heads. And when we say big, we mean big. They were huge and we had to have a chest guard to keep them secured to our bodies as well as really strong shoulders. After the first 45 minutes it was really hard to keep them on but obviously we made it through the whole parade. We could partly see through the mouth of the head but it was really difficult to get the perfect angle that wasn’t painful to your shoulders but where you could still see where you were going. Once it was over we went back and took off our costumes. It felt so nice to have the giant heads off! Since we were starving we went to one of the few places that was open with a few other USACers and ordered some personal pizzas.  We didn't know they were going to take them out of a freezer box sitting right next to us and microwave them one by one. They tasted awful and were smaller than a normal personal pizza. And yet they still cost 8 euros along with a water. But despite the food it was a really awesome experience and here are a couple pictures to show the greatness of it all….

Sunday had great weather and Tara, Michael and I went on a four hour walk. Up and around the small mountain thing we have near our house, then to the other side of the city and beach, then back down to the middle of the city and soccer stadium up hills and through side streets before finally retreating back to our apartment for bible study. Dannae brought us McDonalds French fries and we are embarrassed to say they were gone rather quickly… The whole week was beautiful weather and we walked to and from school almost every day. Our roommate Dylan bought rollerblades so I went on a blade/run with her one morning and it was super fun. Tara has been sick the past few weeks so she finally went to the doctor and got some medicine that makes her lungs itch, as well as make her feel a lot better! It was one of our friends birthday this week so we got to celebrate with him by making a cake and taking an extra-long break in class. Pinxto Pote this week was also just too much fun. Friday was spent window shopping before taking an extra-long nap then going to an AMAZING Italian restaurant with some friends. After retreating home with gelato we spent the night giving ourselves facials and watching tv. The boys are in Paris for the weekend, so it is an all-girls all weekend movie extravaganza. This week includes a presentation, a midterm and next Friday, a trip to Barcelona for the weekend. Now that you’re all caught up we will try to be better about keeping up with our exciting lives here in beautiful San Sebastian!

London

We came up with a lot of titles for this blog post throughout the weekend in London. We couldn't decide on one so we used the generic, go to "London." Here were the other possibilities:
London: Comfort Costs
London: Doesn't seem so big when you're speeding through it underground
London: Where dreams of being a princess go to die
London: The place you should vacation with your parents

Anyways, our trip was awesome!! We had a test on Friday morning then spent the rest of the day enjoying our clean and empty house. Our roommates had left the night before so it was just us. Our bible study group came over and we talked for hours and hours before we finally called it quits so we could pack.

Saturday morning we left the house to catch the bus to Biarritz, the French town we flew out of. We were about thirty seconds too late and the bus driver drove away while we chased him down the parking lot. They refunded our tickets and we walked to the train station to try and find a train instead. We walked to the wrong one. Finally, we made it to the train station and bought a ticket to a town in France where we had to get on another train to Biarritz. We had to wait at the train station for two hours and once we got to the airport we waited another two to leave. We wouldn't have been able to make it if it wasn't for a really nice old French lady and a boy who caught the bus from the train station to the airport for us. After all of that plus a two hour flight, we finally made it to the Stansted airport. After exchanging our euros for pounds and buying a bus ticket we rode a coach bus for an hour ish to a bus stop in London. After another half hour walk we found our hostel. It was super sketchy. It was around 7:00 and everyone in our room was asleep so we decided to walk around town. We didn't want to leave our stuff in the room so we walked with our backpacks and it sucked.

The next day we got up early had a really delicious breakfast of white bread and corn flakes and headed on our Britain adventure. We walked through Kensington Gardens and went inside Kensington palace and spent an hour in the gift shop looking at all the wonderful things.
After that we walked to the National History Museum and spent literally the entire day open to close looking around. We only saw 3/4 of the museum but we also had a really delicious lunch there and learned a lot of cool things. After the museum we walked around that part of town and found an old English Pub. We obviously had to get a beer in a british pub so we both got guiness and we also had a delicious dinner there. Next to our table there was a baby shower going on, weird place for that kind of celebration.

Monday was a busy day. We bought a tube ticket for the day and headed off to our first stop. We bought tickets to Wicked and then saw the changing of the guard at Buckinham Palace. It was really interesting to watch and the band was playing even though it was snowing. It was a lot longer than we expected so we warmed up inside the giftshop before going back to the tube. For those of you who don't know the "tube" is the underground railroad system. It is really efficient and cheap. We were pro status halfway through the day. The days travels included: St. Paul's Cathedral, Big Ben, The London Eye, The London Tower, and Harrods, the biggest store ever. If we did the trip again we would have definitely spent more time and money going through the cathedral, riding the London Eye and touring the London tower. Harrods took us an hour to walk through and that was barely scanning through each of its 7 floors. After all of this it was finally time to go to Wicked! The musical was magical and we had such a great time watching it. The performance was great and the atmosphere was really fun. After that we took the tube to Kings Cross Station and saw Platform 9 3/4, the most magical and perfect moment of our lives. We also walked around Piccadilly circus and then had dinner at a weird cafe next to our hostel.

The final day of our trip we walked through part of Hyde park and enjoyed the massive amounts of oxygen given off by the thousands of trees. Caught the bus and got back on the plane back to our home here in San Sebastian.

Speaking of the plane....There was a whole rugby team on the same flight as us and three boys behind us kept grabbing our hair and touching our arms through the seats and playing music loudly and asking us if we knew French. At one point they tried to give us suckers which we politely declined until finally they wouldn't take no for an answer so Taryn chucked it back through the seat and grabbed their cell phone from between the seat. That shut them up for like a whole thirty seconds. After that it was love, and they asked for our phone numbers...

Excursion

Hola!
Happy February!
We have had a really busy last couple weeks, but today marks exactly one month since we left the United States! Time sure flies when you are having fun right?

Last week was basically the same as normal, finding out we did really well on our first test, two of the three higher grades in class, Tara's was obviously the highest! No suprises there:)

On Friday we didn't have school! We had an excursion instead so we all hopped on the bus and drove for a while until we reached Caserio Igartubeiti  and saw an old farm house. This place was so crazy. The farm house was ginourmous and in the middle of the house there was a giant apple press so they could make cider. The only place in the house that allowed fire was the kitchen, so the only place that had light was the kitchen. They had a couple bedrooms with twin or full size looking beds that usually slept four or more people at one time. These buildings were very complex. To get the perfect shape and size of the wood someones great great grandpa would have had to start planting a tree, start shaping the tree and then every child after that had to keep up the tree until it was finally the right shape and size for building. There were no nails or screws in this building, as every piece of wood fit perfectly together. It is two stories, the bottom of the press starting in the middle of the house and upstairs is where they would gather the apples to press and make cider for their family and for the town. All over Spain there are different cider press farm houses.
After the farm house we went a little higher up the mountains to Aranzazu and went to a church and to lunch. The church was different than any other one we've seen in Spain. The inside looked like a mountain and it had so many pues. We only spent ten minutes or so here before walking up the hill to lunch.
Lunch was amazing! Our first dish was vegatable paella, something we have been meaning to try. It was delicious. For the main course we had chicken and french fries. It was also really good. The dessert was stupendous! It was vanilla icecream with a hard chocolate shell. There were a few people next to us that didn't like icecream so we definitely got our fair share of icecream. We then went to a town along the coast called Zumaia. It was really beautiful but smelled like cow manure. It was actually just goat manure. Everyone on the West coast commented on how the smell reminded them of home and everyone from the East coast looked appalled. A geologist took us on a walk around the beach and up on a cliff. He showed us rocks that were really really old and told us how this part of Spain used to be under water. It was pretty interesting but most of us were more interested in the breathtaking view.
Our weekend was fun filled, we met a few kids studying in the nieghboring city Bilbao and on Sunday we had our first bible study at our house. It was really interesting to hear other peoples point of view and we are having another one tonight.
This week was our first week of teaching! The school wanted teachers that were already friends so they could use the same lesson plans for the classes as they are very similar. The USAC people of course chose us. The school is a 20 minute bus ride from the center of town. The school is a German and Spanish school, and most of the students speak Basque and are learning English. We each teach for two hours, one on Tuesday the other on Wednesday. This week was just an introduction week so we talked about ourselves and our lives in America. Most kids awed over the giantness of Tara's sorority house, how close Idaho was to "Caly-fornia," and how different Boise State's blue field was. They asked us lots of questions and we can't wait for the rest of the semester.

Today we took our final for our first class. Spanish 211 is done. We have a four day weekend because it is another festival, Carnivales. We aren't participating in it because we are flying to London tomorrow! A weekend spent pretending we have british accents and staying in our first hostel!

Talk to you after London!
Tara and Taryn