So I´ve been here for about a week, and its been pretty amazing

The first two - three days were tough... getting adjusted to the time difference, food, the city, etc. but now I feel more settled in.

I decided to do a family-stay, and I am so glad I made this choice. The food here is so good! And its one less thing to worry about. Of course there are advantages to being in an apartment with other students, but I definitely don´t regret my decision. I can already see how much more practice I´m going to be getting since I´m staying with a family.

So much has happened this past week alone; it´s hard to know where to begin. The first few days have been a lot of orientations and tours of the school and nearby cities. The school is definitely different from any university from the states. There isn´t much of a campus, just one large building that has everything. Unfortunately, I won´t be taking any classes with Spanish people, its only people from my program. I believe that the Spanish school curriculum is different… they´re going through their week of exams right now, whereas we just started our classes.

The tour of the different cities was a lot of fun. There are so many beautiful beaches and sites around where I live… I can´t wait to go exploring and check them all out. We also went on a tour of Bilbao, which is the main city; about a twenty minute metro ride. It reminds me a lot of Washington D.C; how it’s a metro ride away, and even the buildings and the city-feeling I got from being there.

The city I live in, Algorta, is beautiful... It´s a smaller town and everything is walking distance. The bus and metro are pretty much the only means of transportation for me... I use a bus to get to school everyday.
The beach is about a ten minute walk away from my house, and it is so beautiful!

This past weekend, I went to San Sebastian, which is about an hour away from Algorta. It was their patron’s day festival, so I went to check that out... and it was amazing. The city is beautiful, and the beach is right along the outskirts of the main town area. The festival was incredible too. The actual festivities started at midnight, and it went on all night.

I can already tell that my semester here is going to be amazing.

Algorta

Algorta

Bilbao

San Sebastian