Hola,
Sorry I have been really busy. I had two tests last week and it was just chaotic. I am horrible at Spanish grammar so I spent a lot of days after class getting tutored on how to use the grammar that we learned. Ok so whats been going on:
Last weekend I went to Madrid to hang out with the family. I booked my flight way in advance so it would be cheap and accidentally booked a night earlier. When I got to the Bilbao airport it literally looked like a tornado went through there. There was garbage all over the place, shredded paper, and just a mess. When I asked what happened I was told that the cleaning crew went on strike, but before they went on strike they decided to make a mess. I LOVE SPAIN! I arrived Thursday night and the family didn't arrive until Friday morning. So I met up with Luisa Thursday night and we went out for dinner. I have lived in Spain for over 2 months and this was my first real Tapas experience. It was delicious, but not quite filling enough. We then left and walked around, I didn't have much money for a place to stay so we started looking for a hostile for me to stay in. I finally found one for 20 euro for the night and experienced my first hostile. It was nice because I did end up getting my own room, but the bed sort of had a musk to it and I woke up at 4AM with a backache, sore throat, and stuff nose. I tried to sleep on my back the rest of the night which didn't work out and I left the hostile at 8 AM in search of the hotel I would be staying at with the family. I knew i couldn't check in before 11 or so, so I grabbed a little breakfast and a newspaper and sat outside in sunny Madrid reading and eating. When I could finally check in I took a shower and immediately napped. I woke up and shortly my family arrived! They were definitely jetlagged so we decided to take it easy that Friday night. We hung around the area walked around and what not. It was great to get some motherly love and comforting, something I do miss from the states. Saturday was another beautiful sunny day and we decided to go to the Palacio Real. I had been there already from a previous trip, but I knew that Mom and Madison would love it. We did that, came back took a siesta and went out to dinner. Mom and Dad had talked to the flight attendant who was from Madrid and he had suggested a Paella restaurant so we went there. We ate seafood paella with calamari, shrimp, clams, all the works it was undescribable. Mom loved it and would entertain us by eating the heads off the shrimp. That pretty much highlights my third and final trip to Madrid.
This weekend I am staying in Bilbao once again. La Rioja is wine country in Spain, where most of the Spanish wines come from. It is known all over the world and a few of my buddies who know wine well have told me that I do have to drink a La Rioja wine. Well thats all they serve here and finally yesterday we decided to go visit a Bodega which is a place where they make and bottle wine. We didn't make a reservation for a tour and completely forgot that siesta is a normal Spanish thing and arrived around 1 in the city of Haro which is part of La Rioja. We saw some bodegas which ended up being closed, and decided to go grab a wine and some lunch. We stumbled upon a restaurant that had cuts of meat. This was the first time I had had a steak anytime in Spain. We had some of the local wine, which is really cheap because they can just get it by walking down the street and then we headed out. We talked to some people and found some bodegas that were open. Tasted a few wines, one that was from 1987, and that pretty much consisted of our time in Haro. We have decided that we will go back, with a reservation next time now that we know a little bit more information.