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