Pueblo-ing

Kaixo!

Zer moduz? Everything here is “oso ondo.” I’ve surived my post-vacation blues by occupying myself thoroughly until the end of the school year, which for us auxiliares de conversación in the Basque Country is today! Yipee! I actually had my last day of class on Friday since the Bachiller students finish earlier (the school year doesn’t actually finish until June but I had a shorter contract this year). My last day was a bit anti-climatic since I had had less and less class up until the end. I’m going out to eat with the other teachers on Friday to celebrate/say good-bye and I’m really looking forward to it.

On the weekends I’ve been practicing the most typical Spanish custom around: ir al pueblo. Anyone who has ever taught English here knows the drill.
“Good morning class! How was your weekend? What did you do?”
“I go to da beelaj”
“Sorry? Oh! You went to your village?”
“Jehs” {Yes}
Well, so did I! Not my village, of course. I haven’t got one. Well, I suppose the closest thing would be Lac du Flambeau. You see, your village is usually where your parents and/or your grandparents are from. Nowadays people are flocking to the cities, whereas in Franco’s time country living was at its finest. Ah, urbanization.

So a few weekends ago my friends, Marta and Bea, took me to their village in La Rioja, Ollauri. Both sets of their grandparents are from there and it’s where their mom and dad grew up. Along the way we stopped in some other pueblos to look around, drink some wine (totally appropriate given the region). We had a lot of fun and drank a lot of wine. Coincidence? Maybe not.

But the pueblo-ing fun didn’t stop there. The next day I went to see David in Pamplona and we went to the village of Baquedano to visit Parque Natural Urbasa Andía and see the headwaters of the Urederra river. In Basque,”ura” is water and “ederra” is beautiful. I had seen pictures of the mystic sparkling blue water and had been dying to see it in person ever since. However, we had some bad luck; since it had rained the day before the deep blue had turned to more of a muddy brown. It was still cool to hike through the Urbasa mountain range though. Also when we got back to the pueblo I had a good time people watching. Almost bought a wheel of cheese and chuckled to myself as I watched a little boy running down the street with shoes untied, shouting in a squeaky voice 10 times his size “Aguuuuur, Iker!” (Most typical Basque name ever, well, next to Unai, Ibai, Ion, Ander, etc….)

All these pueblos and I forgot to mention that David has a pueblo too! I tell everyone he is from Pamplona but he’s actually from the village of Berriozar. Well, the village has spread out from the old town so the part where he lives is basically like a neighborhood of Pamplona (don’t tell him I said that!) Anyway, I signed up to run the Berriozar race! 7K! Not too far but because we had to go through the actual pueblo, which is pretty much straight up and then straight down, it was bruuuuuutal. But worth it. David’s dad ran too and we had a great time. I felt pretty accomplished at the end as well.

My last pueblo experience of the month has been in a Catalan village! It was a Chilean reunion! David and another friend from Navarra (who loves and always brags about his village… “en mi pueblo, en Caparroso…” haha) and I went to see our lovely amigas catalanas (from study abroad in Santiago) for the weekend. David and I were real troopers, bus-ing it overnight from Pamplona to Barcelona. We did some sight seeing with Regina (ex-roommate of David and aforementioned Caparroso man, Pablo) and most importantly watched the Champions league final, which Barça won! Menuda celebracíon! We were with about 30,000 other people at the Arc del Triomf. Pretty cool. Finally after a night of celebrating we ventured to Regina’s pueblo, Santpedor (home of Barça coach, Pep Guardiola). I had been there last year to visit Regina but David had yet to make the trip so we stopped to have lunch with her family (so nice!) and take a trip up to Montserrat mountain.

After a full week of pueblo-ing I’m ready to stick to the city. In theory I should have lots of free time to enjoy it now that I’m finished at the high school, but that’s never the case. They’re going to stack some more hours on at the academy and I’ll be “a tope” teaching English until the middle of next month. Only a few weeks left!

Hasta luego!

Love,
Katie