Beach one day, Mountains the next!

March 11, 2010:
I’m almost a week late writing about last weekend, but better late than never! Last Friday, Jane and I took a day trip to San Sebastian beach. We were blessed with gorgeous weather, so we had an amazing time! There is a huge fort on the top of a mountain in the city, so we climbed up there first and had a wonderful view of the beach and the city. We walked around the town for hours and went from café to café trying different foods and pastries and coffee. When we went down to the beach, there were people surfing in wetsuits, which is fairly normal for a 55 degree day. But then we saw people in BATHING SUITS! Just swimming along in the water, like it wasn’t frigidly cold in there. I took off my shoes and walked barefoot, and that’s adventurous as I got! All in all, Jane and I had a great time exploring the old city of San Sebastian.

Saturday morning we went on the excursion of Navarra with the university exchange students. We basically just drove around in the mountains and looked at little towns and stopped at scenic points. It was a little bit boring, but we had an amazing lunch, which made it worthwhile. We had this meal included in our entry price: we went to a nice hotel and they served us SO MUCH FOOD. We were actually lunching for more than 2 hours. That’s how the Spaniards do it, I guess. They kept bringing baskets of bread and bottles of wine and we had this asparagus, egg, shrimp casserole thing and steak and French fries. Then, they had a smoke break; they brought around ash trays. It was so gross! I feel like I have a smoker’s cough due to secondhand inhalation here. EEW. But then, they followed with arroz con leche and coffee for dessert, so I was appeased.

Saturday night, some of my girlfriends and I went to our friend Michelle’s flat for her birthday dinner. She had been cooking and preparing all day for us to come, so we were obligated to eat a TON again. I think all of us were a little bit sick of food by the end of Saturday night! But overall, it ended up being a really fun day.

This week, I’ve been working with a mission team from Florida who is here teaching English. Since I happen to know English, as well, I’ve been helping teach the classes. And we’re all going to Biarritz, France for a daytrip on Saturday. So the next time I blog, I’ll write about that!