"Home Sweet Home"

After so much travelling recently, I’ve enjoyed sticking around Pamplona this week. It’s been nice to stay close to home. Or the closest thing I have to it, anyway. Especially since, on Tuesday, I’ll be leaving for a ten-day trip to Sevilla and Italy (read: Rome, Florence, and Venice), so I definitely need the time to relax. I’m super excited for my Semana Santa trip, but I have a feeling that I’ll be more than happy to be done traveling for a while once I get back to Pamplona again.

Even though this week was a little more chill, there were definitely some fun things going on! On Monday night, I went with Julie and Maja to a play at the university. There was a theatre festival these last two weeks with a different play every night, and the one we picked was called “La Cantante Calva,” (The Bald Singer). Apparently, it was originally a French play, but we saw it in Spanish, obviously. We loved it! For my dear fellow English majors (if any of you are actually reading this…), the play was very Samuel Beckett-esque. It was absurdist theater, and it was hilarious! It seemed to have Beckett’s postmodern theme of the simultaneous necessity and impossibility of communication (okay, I’ll stop being a nerd now, I promise). For example, there was a part where the characters were all telling stories, but the listeners would have the wrong reaction; someone would tell a sad story and the others would all laugh, or someone would tell a funny story and they’d get scared or start crying. So funny! And I understood the play for the most part, which was nice. There were moments when everyone else in the crowd was laughing except for Julie, Maja, and I because we didn’t quite get a few of the jokes, but still, we were able to get some of the humor. That was a good feeling – when you can understand the humor in a language, you know you’re doing well.

Tuesday was also lots of fun – I went to Barañain (a part of Pamplona that used to be a pueblo but is now connected) with Kristen M. and Lise to see the market there and visit them at their host home. The market was cool – there were lots of fun things to look at, and it was neat to hear the vendors calling out to passersby to try to convince them to look and buy. We even got some little muffins for free from a (very attractive) young man at a bakery stall – when we were eyeing the yummy-looking sweets, he was like, “Oh, you guys are Erasmus students, right? Here, these are for you!” Hehe! Such fun. We’re not strictly Erasmus students, since that’s the European exchange student program and we’re part of a different one, but that’s how the people of Pamplona know the exchange students, so it’s just easier not to correct people.

After the market, I went with Kristen M. and Lise to their house. The place they live in here is gorgeous! It’s the most regular house-like place I’ve been in since coming here. The houses in Barañain are all connected to each other, so it still doesn’t look much like an American neighborhood, but it definitely feels a lot more residential than the part of town I live in. The house is huge and really pretty, and it was fun to see Kristen and Lise’s room and kitchen and bathroom and all that good stuff. We even got to watch part of an episode of “Sin Tetas No Hay Paraíso,” a really awesome TV series that the girls watch with their host family most nights. Their host sister bought some of the seasons on DVD, since the show isn’t currently running on TV. Which is a shame, because it looks really cool! After that, it was time for lunch with the girls’ host parents, Antonio and Peñi. The meal was delicious, and Antonio and Peñi were so much fun! I found them very easy to talk to (why is it that I can talk in Spanish better with everyone besides my own host family? I don’t get it), and they were really nice. Peñi had us in stitches with her funny stories, and both of them taught us some new words and such. A very fun time
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Wednesday wasn’t too eventful, other than the fact that I got to watch a historical romance movie! In English!!! I was stoked. A friend of mine sent it to me, and I will be eternally grateful to her. And that same night there was a little thunderstorm, which made me super happy. I’ve missed the sound of thunder! And I have a feeling that it doesn’t come around a lot in Spain, so I made sure to enjoy it to the fullest.

On Thursday, we had our last dance class, which made Kristen M. and Lauren and I pretty sad. Taking that class is one of the best decisions we’ve made here! We learned so much (much more than dancing, as well) and made lots of friends. It was so nice to do an activity other than class for a while, and made us feel like we were a part of real Spanish life and that we were taking advantage of one of the many wonderful things this city has to offer. Pretty much the best 32 euro I ever spent
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Also on Thursday, Lise and I had a fun little moment – we were walking through campus after class, and we saw this little tiny bird hanging out on the sidewalk. Instead of flying away when we got closer, like we would have expected, it just sat there, unperturbed. We got closer and bent down to look at it – I even touched it – and it still didn’t do anything! We were amazed. We thought it must have a hurt wing or something, so we thought we’d better move it to the grass where no one would step on it. So I picked it up, and it just chilled in my hands for a bit – not trying to get away, not pecking at me – just sitting. When I went to put it down, it perched on my finger for a moment, and then all the sudden, it just flew up into the tree nearby! So it wasn’t hurt after all. So crazy! I felt like Snow White or something :-P It totally made my day!

On Friday, I got together with Julie and Maja again and we went to Julie’s flat to make lunch together – she taught us how to make veggie pâtè, tortilla de patata and tortilla with vegetables (Maja is a vegetarian and Julie doesn’t eat meat that often, so…). It was so yummy! And it was so much fun to hang out and talk with those gals – we’re all pretty low-energy, calm sort of people (most of the time :-P) so it was a quiet and relaxed afternoon, which was nice. We had a great time talking about the differences and similarities between our countries and learning about each other. It’s cool that all three of us are from different countries, and yet we have a lot of common ground.

Today has been pretty relaxed – some more planning for Italy and some homework, and that’s about it. Oh, and I got to sleep in for the first time in about three weeks! That was heavenly. Tomorrow I think I’m going to go to the Palm Sunday procession with Kristen M. and Lise – I’m really excited to see what that will be like!

This will probably be my last blog post until after I get back from Italy. Just so you all know. So in two weeks, expect to see way more than you ever wanted to know about my fabulous tour of Italy! Hee hee :-) I send my affection to you all, and I’ll talk with you again soon!