Bilbao and Guernica, Spain

1/15/2013 -1/18/2013

Bilbao and Guernica, Spain

Oh wow it’s been a while… Here we go… My first week of classes is over! Contrary to every other day that I’ve spent abroad, these four days flew by (no Friday classes for study abroad students), which is fine by me because now it’s the weekend! I find myself understanding more and more Spanish every day. Well, I understand more words… but I don’t understand more sentences. Putting together the meaning of a sentence with the little words I do know is tough since it takes me such a long time to recall the translations of words. However, I speak as much Spanish as I can and I ask for a lot of translations for new words I want to use… even the thoughts in my head are sometimes in Spanish! My home stay is great and I really like Rosa Maria. She is a little quirky and it cracks me up! Sometimes I can hear her whispering to herself when I’m in a different room… she talks to the TV if there is something that really interests her… and when talking to me, she will repeat herself over and over until I understand (which doesn’t help – if I don’t understand it the first time, the 10^th time will be the same! Haha) Nevertheless, she is too funny. On Friday, our group took a day trip to Guernica. I’m sure it was very informative, but the tour was in Spanish, so I didn’t catch much. However, I can tell you a little about Guernica… Guernica is known for being the site where there was the first big civilian bombing.  During the Spanish Civil War, Franco, the Spanish dictator, was buddy-buddy with Hitler and together they wanted to defeat democracy and the Basque country. So basically, they tested out their bombs on the innocent town of Guernica and its inhabitants. Saddest story ever. The trip to Guernica was really cool though!