Farewell from USAC

Today I got this in the mail from the USAC office here:

Estimados estudiantes,


¡Qué rápido ha pasado el tiempo!

Esperamos que lo hayáis pasado muy bien este semestre en San Sebastián, que hayáis aprendido mucho y que hayáis hecho buenas amistades aquí.

¡Suerte en los exámenes! ¡Os echaremos de menos!

Esperamos que lo paséis muy bien este verano y que algún día nos volváis a visitar aquí en Donostia.

Un abrazo,

Patricia, Tito, Aizpea, Cecilia , Asun


Translation:
Look how fast the time passed!
We hope that you have had a good time this semester in San Sebastian, and that you have learned a lot and have made good friends here.
Good luck on exams! We'll miss you!
We hope that you have a good time this summer and that some day you'll come to visit us here in Donostia (the Basque word for San Sebastian).
Hugs,
Patricia, Tito, Aizpea, Cecelia, Asun

The Final Weekend

So this being the last weekend, the USAC kids are gonna be ragin'.


Normally, the USAC kids go to bars on weekends. The people who stay out REALLY late (like 4 or 5am) go to a club at 3 or so. But, imagine it like this metaphor: The bars are like dinner, and the club is like dessert. People only get the dessert if they are in the mood, and it is only a once in a while thing, not every night like dinner is.

It's Alex I's bday this weekend, so she plans to hit up La Rotunda, Bataplan and Espala (the three big clubs that they go to occasionally) on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night, respectively.

Um, three nights of clubs? Her and her group that go with her are gonna have a sugar coma after eating dessert three nights straight.



Also, I wanted to go to Biarritz this weekend since I didn't have a chance last weekend. Unfortunately (but what could I expect) the weather is RAINY. Oh wow, San Sebastian, thank you for gracing us with a Tuesday and Wednesday with sun, and Wednesday being a two-fer with sun AND a high temperature of 72! THANK YOU. But of course, I know how much it strained you and you now have to revert back to clouds again for another two week period, which includes my final days here. But THANK YOU. Seriously. For those ENTIRE 3 days this entire four month semester that were above 70 degrees? Thanks. I know it was SO HARD.

But anyways. Today's weather was fog and clouds. And tomorrow is rain! And the next day is rain! And the next, and the next. But then Tuesday it changes it up with RAIN. Oh, and all these days are an awesome 50 or so degrees, and probably windy, too! So just fantastic weather for the final list of stuff I have to do:

-Take a day trip to Biarritz, France (Right over the border)
-Go to Irun's (neighboring city) Cider festival Saturday night
-Go to Herri Urrats festival Sunday
-hike to Jesus (statue, that is. If you need a visual...

(it's the lit up thing way up high)

-hike to the mountain with ruins of something

(that's Megan H up there, and her and a few other people went here, I saw pics, and now I wanna go!)

-eat Chocolate con churros (hot chocolate with CHURROS.)
-eat at the beach restaurant "La Perla" and grab a burger there
-rollerblade around Jesus Mountain
-I was gonna surf, because I know I can (remember that time I was in the Hawaii surf magazine? I have copies if you want me to send you one), but with two surfable days this entire semester, looks like that's a negative.
-finish editing spring break vid. Also...BEGIN to edit spring break vid.
-buy last minute souvenirs.

Oh, and study for all my finals, since they are all on the same day, MONDAY.
But at least that gives me tuesday and wednesday to finish my "list."


Some updates about today:

--since I am getting to the end here, I wanted to wear the clothes I haven't worn yet. That includes a shirt-dress I bought this past week. I wore it with tights b/c it was slightly chilly today, and it's a good thing, because I just took them off and remembered that I put like a dozen bandaids on my feet so I could protect them from my shoes giving me blisters. Seriously, I am glad I had tights to cover up my bandaged toes or people would ask me if I fed my feet to the sharks or something.

--My host parents were telling me that if I were ever out with friends, and they were to get drunk to the point that they couldn't stand and stuff, that there is a 24 hour emergency place near the boulevard that administers shots of B12 to people who are super drunk and it wakes them up or alerts them or something. I have never heard of this! The way my host dad described it, he made it sound like it just magically made you better after one injection! Which makes me wonder if it is real.

--Tomorrow I plan to give my host parents and host sister my parents' present for them. I also hope to video tape it, if it isn't too awkward. That way you can see how they react to a gift of Loyola apparel, Frango mints, Hershey's, and BBQ sauce.

--I took note of this today: since I began this trip I was on page 295 of Harry Potter book five, and now I am on...PAGE 295 of Harry Potter five. Isn't that amazing, how time sure flew.

Three pictures are worth about...20 words.

Since I mostly took video on the Burgos/Atapuerca trip, I only have a few pictures from the daytrip. And of the 10 I took, three are uninteresting, two are picture versions of what I already had on video of the super foggy hike, one is the unlit cathedral at night (but it might as well be a picture of a room with the lights off, since it's just black), and one is an out of focus picture of flowers.
PS: Click any picture to see a larger version

Therefore, that leaves me with this picture of the sign on our hike:



Along with this picture of a cool looking shrub.

It's swirly!



Oh, and the picture of the stonehenge-like thing behind an "i-was-just-sleeping-on-the-bus-for-two-hours-can't-you-tell?" Melissa.




My friends took some good pictures too, but as of right now, I only have this wonderful picture, depicting us as a cross between construction workers and lunch ladies with our lice-shield caps and hardhats.


(From left to right: Angela C., Me, Cassi, May, Ana, Natalia)

Three Point Turn FAIL.

On our way home from Burgos/Atapuerca, our bus driver attempted a three point turn on a narrow street. The result was a 206 point turn, with each one getting us more and more perpendicular with the road until the windshield was a foot away from a tree, the back end was hanging over a ditch, and the back tires were dug deep into mud.


FUN!

Visual Proof:

They just keep getting better...

My skills, that is.

I learned how to use a bow and arrow on our recent trip to Burgos/Atapuerca.

At the end, it looks like the arrow I shot was the one in the fake animal's eye. As much as I'd like to say it WAS my arrow, that was the demonstrator's arrow. Mine is very close to the animal, on the right, in the ground, which I think is just as impressive.

Check out this awesomeness:

Okay, who left the brown shoes?

In the USAC program, once you sign up for travelling abroad, it also entitles you to the two trips arranged by USAC in the semester, for no extra charge. The first trip was a day trip (left in the morning, returned late afternoon) to some place nearby with a Basque farmhouse. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend since USAC arranged it on a certain day, then told us they needed to change the day and during this confusion my friends and I booked our Barcelona trip. Of course, right afterwards, we find that the trip was scheduled on the same weekend.

But this time, the trip was overnight, and it was to Burgos and Atapuerca, which is southwest of San Sebastian in Castilla y Leon.


I don't have much time to go into detail now (I know, I know, I also haven't updated on my Spring Break either...but I will get to it eventually), but we did get this email today from the USAC office.

But before I show you the email, let me tell you a couple things as background info. We had to each pay a 20 euro deposit before the trip in case of hotel damages. We also made this trip with students in the Bilbao USAC program, some of which I already knew from the Madrid tour before the semester began.
When we got on the bus to head home on Saturday, Patricia said, "Guys, I have to say, the hotel was extremely upset this morning, telling us that there were many noise complaints and some damage to the rooms. However, we believe this is the Bilbao students' who did the damage, and therefore we will look into it further to get the specifics and pinpoint which rooms are to blame. Therefore, you will not be able to get your deposits back until we sort this out. But I will send you an email this week once we know more."


We got the email, and it is as follows:
______________________
Enviado el: lunes, 27 de abril de 2009 14:08
Para: us
Asunto: excursion deposit/brown shoes

Dear Students,
I am very happy to tell you that we will be able to return the deposit to all the students on the San Sebastian program. We have just heard from the hotel and have been able to determine exactly where the problems originated. Thank you very much for all of your cooperation. We certainly wanted everyone to have fun and were convinced that this is entirely possible without disturbing the other guests at the hotel. I am satisfied and grateful for the way things turned out, at least as far as our group is concerned.
Muchas gracias a todos. Espero que lo hayáis pasado muy bien. Podéis pasar por la oficina con el recibo para recoger el depósito.

Saludos, Patricia

P.D.
Alguien ha dejado un par de zapatos(¿zapatillas?)marrones en el autobus. Los tenemos en la oficina.
_______________

The first Spanish part says "Thanks to everyone. I hope you had a good time. You can stop by the office with the reciept to get your deposit back."

And that little PS part says "Someone left a pair of brown shoes/sandals on the bus. We have them in the office."



So in conclusion of the trip, we partied, but not hard enough to have to pay, and someone lost a pair of shoes.

Toki Alai

Donºt to mind the odd characters...I am having issues with this portuguese keyboard....so bear with me.
also, SS is code for San Sebastian from now on.

So for a volunteer project for USAC, I went with three other students, Michelle, Diamond and Jason to a high school in SS´s neighboring Irun, where we taught English. It was fun to prepare a lesson on literally whatever we wanted. We were split into twos to do the teaching, and I was paired with Jason. We decided to teach a class about music, in English.

This was all planned for Friday morning (since i donºt have class on fridays). Jason was upset because the previous week when he did this activity, the other three usac students were 45 minutes late to meet him at the SS train station and they were therefore 15 or 20 minutes late to the teaching thing, which was just embarrassing. To fix this, he wanted to meet up at the SS station at 6.45am to get on the 7 or 7.15 train, which takes about 30 mins, then take a taxi to the school, as planned, since the taxi takes about 10 mins. That way weºd have plenty of time to settle in and get organized, as well as have a cushion in case there were issues.

Well, i wake up at 6.20 and eat and such and strap on my rollerblades to go to the station. I get there at about 6.50 and only diamond is there...michelle is 4 mins away via bus, and jason is supposedly going to be there 15 minutes from then.
When we all arrived, we hopped on the train and went to irun. Mind you, it is pitch black this early in the morning. We got to Irun just as cafes were opening and grabbed a croissant as we walked in a general direction where we thouht the taxi stand was located. We wandered until we found one, then of course there werenºt taxis there. We called the number on the sign, then waited, then some man was like ´need a taxi, come this way!´´ then we walked a block or two then saw our taxi pass us so we ran back to catch up with it. We hopped in and got to the school just in time.

We then split up and were led to the classrooms. The first class was pretty rowdy, but once they settled in, we began.

We began with an activity where Jason and I write 4 items about us on the board, then the class has to ask questions about them to figure out what they were.

For example, I wrote: Eric, August, Kate Nash, and Anna Levon.
The class then would ask ´´ís anna levon the name of your mother´´ or ´´ís kate nash your best friend´´ until they got it right.
Then, they had homework before we arrived to come up with a list of questions to ask us. It was fun to answer them, and many were repetitive. Some questions included, ´´what do you think of basque food´´ or ´´how long are you in spain´´ and of course, being from the USA, ´´have you met any famous people?´´ of course, when I said i met John Goodman at the LAX airport, they had no idea who that was. Nor did they know Shia LeBouf until I was like, ´´hmm, Transformers?´´Then they all nodded in acknowlegement, then oohed and ahhed.

We then moved onto our activity. We first had them list as many typed of music they could think of, like Rock, pop, flamenco, reggae, rap, country, etc.
Then we had them think of specific artists. Then, they each had to come up with a sentence to describe the sound of one of the artists they listed. We gave them a bunch of examples on the worksheet, and by far my favorite was ´´I donºt like Pinkºs music because it sounds like crying babies!´´

Then, the best part was when we gave them a list of adjectives to describe music, then we played a few songs on Jasonºs iPod. Radiohead, for example, was not well recieved by the first class who thought it was loud, repetive and annoying. The second class, however, thought it was catchy and cool.

Then we moved on to the next class, where we did the same thing and got some different responses. We called on one kid who was shy and asked him a question (of course, in english) and he stared and was like ´´mmm...no entiendo.´´ The kids in the room laughed and were like ´´Heºs...how do you say...short?´´ Then Jason was like ´´óhh, you mean SLOW.´´ It was funny.

Then we had a 20 min break, as well as the students. We all met up again, with Michelle and Diamond and had some coffee. We then went to the last classroom where we were told the kids had a very low level of english and that some would have to be spoken to in Spanish. One girl stood out as seeming very knowledgable about English, outshining most of the students. I only stayed for a short period in this class because I had to leave early to catch my 12.40 train to Bilbao from SS.

I left and got in a taxi that the teacher called for me. She also handed me a gift as a thank you, which i wasnºt expecting. It included cookies, sausage, cheese, and 2 cans of paté. I took the cab and realized that i only had 8.50 euros left, and i knew the train costed 1.50. I took the taxi as far as about 6 euros got me, then hopped out. The driver insisted the station was a bit further but i avoided explaining the sitch and told him iºd be fine right there. I walked a few more blocks and got to the station at about 11.05. I got on the train, strapped on my rollerblades and went home, where I got my luggage and headed off to the SS bus station...

Mistranslation?

I just love Cecilia, who works for the USAC office here. She is probably only in her late 20's, and she is just the cutest thing! She is a Spaniard, so when she speaks English (which is very fluently) she has an accent and sometimes words/phrases things strangely. Sometimes she can't find the correct word in English and will repeat the sentence over and over up until the point where the word is missing, until you help her out.
I think I find her so entertaining b/c I know this is probably how we USAC students come off to other Spaniards: trying to find the right word, ordering the phrases differently, not conjugating stuff, etc etc.
She is so nice and her personality is so meek but at the same time very eager to help you and it is just really fun to go talk to her about the simplest of things.



Occasionally the USAC office sends out emails to inform us about activities coming up, weather occurences, etc, etc.
There are a few people who write these things in the office, because there is Patricia, Tito, and Cecilia as well as about 2 or 3 other women who work in the office. Patricia, Tito and Cecilia are the ones we usually chat with, the others are just the red shirts.
You usually can tell when Cecilia writes these emails because of the use of "interesting" and "curious" in the completely wrong contexts. One time Katie went to the office to ask her about a local gym, and she said it was "curious" and the price was "interesting." We were like, "Umm, so...expensive?" And she just nodded her head with a serious face, then began shaking it to say no, then said "no, it is to say...no expensive." LOVES IT.
Some people haven't had enough "curious" encounters with Cecilia to understand what her exact usage of this word means (I don't really either, I guess), so, like Cassi did today, they say "huh?" and cock their head to the side.

Anyway, here is an email with what I am talking about...

Hello everyone!

On Saturday, March 21st the Club Vasco de Camping has organized a curious, different and entertaining hike.
They will meet at 9:30 a.m. and go to Polipaso in “Monte Igeldo” to plant trees!
If you’re interested in helping them, please, stop by the Club Vasco de Camping to sign up and get more information.
Take pictures if you go and send them to us. “A tree is forever”: it will be there when you return to San Sebastián in a year, in ten…


Well, this has been interesting. I will post something curious soon!

They just can't get enough...

...pictures of us USAC students!


Last night in Basque cooking the two USAC supervisors took many, MANY pictures. It was unbelievable how many pictures they were taking. We were in the kitchen an hour and a half doing the same thing over and over, but they would just take a bajillion pictures of us doing the same thing.
"oh, here are some students cutting stuff"
"oh, here are some students cutting stuff!"
"here are some more students cutting things."
"here are some students eating things"
"wait, here are some more students eating things!"
"Oh, more students eating things!"



And then they just go ahead and post them online!

Well, I am sure you all would like to see them.

Go here:
http://www.gastronomica.com/
Click on "Eventos"
Then, under Curso Cocina USAC, scroll to where it says "ver mas" aka "see more" and it will show you some more pictures.
To see even MORE pictures, click the part that says "Galeria de fotos" I will let you assume what that means.

ENJOY!

PS, that website is in Spanish, so if you can read it, enjoy! If not...it says some pretty simple stuff. Like, "here are some American people cooking stuff."