Como se dice...?: rain rain go away

I've never been much of a city person by any means but the one thing I am really enjoying about city life in Bilbao is the amount of time I get to spend outside walking here and there and everywhere. Oh wait, just kidding its been raining for the past two weeks which is really beginning to put a damper on things. The rain hasn't been much of an issue until Friday, when I started teaching English at a school nearby. And when I say nearby I mean a bus ride and a walk away. So about not being used to the city....it was my first time taking the bus...I got off on the wrong stop...It started raining...I forgot my umbrella. So this is where the rain became an issue. Oh and I got lost walking to the school. Oops. Luckily I left with more than ample time to allow for such inconvenciences and I made it to La Salle (pronounced la sigh-yay), with ten minutes to spare.

My first class was a rowdy group of 13-14 year olds with a very false notion of America...Do you watch wrestling? Do you eat at McDonalds? Do you have a gun in your house? where only a few of the ridiculous stereotypes I had to dispell. Aside from that, the students were great. They were excited about everything and were receptive to everything I had to say and do. The only bad part was I had no idea what to say and do. I was just kind of thrown into the classroom with no direction from the teacher or my professor and was simply told to "talk about the United States" uhhhhh....seems easy...its not. The whole organization of the program is practically nonexistent and if it weren't for the kids and the great opportunity for them to have a native speaker in the classroom to help them learn, I'd quit. Perhaps I just need to prepare more for my next sections. I found it incredible that they take four languages at the school: Spanish, Basque, English and either French or German. And they are very proficient in all of them. My linguistics professor told my class to do our children a favor in the future: speak to them in both English and Spanish when they are young so that they learn both naturally. Sounds good!

While I was at school everyone else from ISA went to El Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao which I was kind of upset I missed, but Renner brought me back a cool colored pencil so that made it better. The museum is free on Wednesdays so I'm sure I'll make my way over there.

Last Friday we went to Gernika, the city that inspired Picasso's famous piece, El Guernica...if you don't know what that is, look it up! We walked around the small city and went to two museums, The Peace Museum and a museum about Basque culture. There was a quiz for the day that asked questions about the museums and things around the city, probably a tool to keep us interested because it was rather boring, but Renner and I worked together and we won! Two tickets to the Cuban ballet in February, we make a good team :) Afterwards we all went to the Biodiversity Center about ten minutes out of the city. The building was an old tower but they converted it into a mueseum to keep tourists coming.

Here are some pictures from the last week or so!