Just another week in Paradise

The week passed by as normal but with the exception that the weather was beautiful every single day. Friday after our final exam we headed to the beach to spend the day with literally almost all of USACers. Our friend Max played live music for us and there were people surfing, volleyballing and passing the football around. Food and drinks were shared with lots of fun conversation and the sun brought out everybody's good side. That night we watched The Dark Knight Rises with our roommates while drinking amazing hot chocolate.
Saturday we joined some friends and hiked to a nearby town. With lots of detours and pauses to enjoy the landscape the hike in its entirety took about 4 and a half hours. We then grabbed some food and rode the 20 minute bus ride home. The scenery was breathtaking and it prompted lots of conversing about just how lucky we are to have a hike like this right in our back yard. Another topic that came up a lot is American Food. Taco Bell, Sonic, Chipotle, McDonalds, Red Robin etc were the main points of interest. We really are Americans. And proud of it!
There were a lot of stairs and steep hills that gave our muscles a work out. It was perfect weather, sunny but not too hot.
After showering and changing we went to our first cider house. If you remember from our first excursion to a Basque Farm House, cider was/is an important "staple" of Basque Culture. There are many cider houses throughout the Basque country and the one we went to was small but really interesting. There were hollowed out barrels to sit in and normal tables as well. The whole idea of a cider house is you pay a certain amount and then get unlimited cider and a four course meal. The meal includes two fish dishes, steak cooked "vuelta y vuelta," which literally means seared on one side then seared on the other. The whole middle is rare. Tara and I being the "tiquismiquis" of the group (picky eaters,) made ourselves try everything. We both liked the first fish dish because you couldn't taste the fish, neither of us enjoyed the second fish dish and Tara was not about to eat more than a few bites of raw steak. I on the other hand was pleasantly surprised at how much I loved the steak even though it was rare. The cider was actually pretty good and Tara loved the walnut dessert.

Today was spent on the beach again hanging out with our roommate Dylan and her family who is visiting. After another concert from Max we all had lunch together and then went our seperate ways. We had another group meeting tonight and watched a sermon from our friend Dannae's church. It was a good meeting although we were missing a few people.

This week is supposed to go back to sad gloomy weather but only 12 days until Spring Break!!

Until next time,

Tara and Taryn