La Última Semana en Santander

Hola! Well guys, just like that, my time in Santander has come to an end and I am now on a train to Madrid. Man, I don’t even know where to begin. I apologize if this post is a little all over the place--I am currently writing this while running off 3.5 hours of sleep over the last two days. I have this new saying: “You can sleep when you die.” That’s the lifestyle I’m living right now. It definitely isn’t sustainable so I’m going to need to sleep eventually but sometimes you do what you have to do to fit everything in. So, let me start at the beginning of this week.

Well this was week four and so we had a very different schedule. At the beginning of this week, I looked at my schedule and knew it would be crazy. I had an all-day excursion Monday and Wednesday, class for 5.5 hours on Tuesday and Thursday, four big assignments due on Tuesday, two due on Thursday, and one on Friday with the big final exam on Friday morning. Yeah… so you could say it was a packed week. It started with us going to Bilbao on Monday morning. It’s around an hour and a half drive to Bilbao from Santander so we took a bus as a group. We stopped in a little town in the middle of Bilbao and Santander on our way there and it was so pretty! It was right on the coast so we got some pictures in front of the mar (sea) with los montañas (the mountains) in the background. Then, in Bilbao we toured the Guggenheim Museum and then explored the city after. I had way too much fun. I’m not a very artsy person but this museum was very unique (and inappropriate) so I enjoyed it a lot. After we toured the museum we found a restaurant where a group of friends and I ate and it was probably some of the best food I have had in Spain. It was such a nice place and the waiter was having a fun time talking with us in Spanish. Then...okay, I’m not a shopper but when I have something I really want and I find a store that has it, I can go crazy. Well, we went to H&M, which I know they have in the US, but they have clothes that are the style of Spaniards. I found some flowy shorts and pants and some shoes and I was way too excited. We also got helado and I found a Starbucks. I definitely didn’t get anything from there. There’s no way am I buying Starbucks in Spain. After we got home, I realized how different Santander is from other cities and it made me excited to explore the rest of Spain in the upcoming months. Tuesday was full of class and homework. Then Wednesday, we went to a pueblo (village) that has been well preserved from the Romanico times. I actually don’t know how to say it in English because there’s a difference between the Roman times, Romanesque times, and one other one. Too much roman for me… anyway, it was really cool but we didn’t really do much. I sat with my friends in a bar and got coffee and just talked. We then ate our goodbye lunch in this really delicious restaurant where I ate way more food than I should’ve but I was able to talk to one of my professors, Javi, and I really enjoyed lunch with him. He’s the reason DU goes to Santander because he grew up in Santander and is now a professor at DU. So he has a very thick accent when he speaks in English and then he’s fun to talk to in Spanish because he speaks it so naturally. Oh, it was great. So he had completed a half ironman race the weekend before and we were talking about it and he showed me a picture. The caption said “Finished ½ iron man” and I go “Solo medio?” which means “only half?” and he goes “Solo?! Solo?!” (only?! only?!). The table had a paper covering on it so he demanded a pen from my friend and proceeded to dramatically write out on the table what exactly a half ironman contained. Something like a 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike ride, and then 13.1 mile run. He then ripped off that piece of paper and gave it to me very emphatically. Apparently it’s not “solo” in his mind, because it was very challenging and took him five hours to complete. Don’t get me wrong--it was a big accomplishment. I just loved how offended he got. After our lunch, we went to this other pueblo where, up in the hills, there were caves from a long time ago that we could go in and explore. I was exhausted after that excursion and just the entire week. Well then, on Thursday we had tons of class. In fact, we finished class at 7pm and had our final exam at 9am the next morning on material that we had learned in class that day. That’s how the intensive programs work here I guess, but it is a quick turn around. I was being positive and thinking, well at least it’s fresh in my mind. I wanted to do well on the exam so I stayed up until 3:30am studying. I wasn’t able to start studying until 12am because, by the time we finished class, and then with dinner being so late and taking so much time because that’s Spanish culture, I had no time to study except during my sleeping hours. Then, I woke up at 6:30am to study more. Well, after my exam, I was exhausted. I took a nap and just took my time packing. It was weird that the program had come to a close but it was also relaxing in a sense. I had a great goodbye dinner with my host mom and another french exchange student and then I went out with my friends after. We found a pizzeria called Sibrita’s where they had gluten-free pizza (that was amazing) and it was super cheap too! I was so, so happy. It was so good. I am going to dream about it, literally. So...in Spain, on the weekends, it is very typical to be out until 6am. The bars don’t even open until 2am or 3am. Anyway, since it was the last night, we went to the beach bar. It was so much fun but we were there until 6am. I had originally planned to wake up at 7:30am for breakfast to leave for the train station at 8am, so I figured it was not even worth it to go to bed. As I was trying to stay awake for the hour, I was journaling. You can tell in my journal that the words got progressively worse, handwriting wise, and--this is my favorite part--I switched to spanish mid-sentence and then fell asleep on my notebook for 30 minutes. This was my sentence…”I pray my experience all over Europe will be great. I also Tengo pizza y fue delicioso.” That translates as “I have pizza and it was delicious.” So, remember how I said just a few sentences ago that “I’m going to dream about the pizza place, literally.” Well...I think that’s what was happening. The restaurant and food had such an impact on me that I wrote about it in Spanish in my journal. Guys, I was dying laughing when I read it later on. It is a journal entry I will always remember.  Well, that is more or less my eventful week. I am so excited to meet up with Amanda and Peter and Alison and am also super ecstatic to get some sleep in a bed. Gracias y buenas noches (thank you and goodnight)!

This is the gluten free pizza place!

My host mom and I made gluten free banana bread!