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Visiting Bilbao
During Transition Year, I decided to go to Spain in order to improve on my Spanish.
Spanish is my favourite subject at school and I was also very interested in Spanish culture. My friend and I decided to go straight after our Easter holidays, to get away from another 2 weeks of school (heehee very sneaky and well planned!)
Anyway, we arrived at Bilbao airport very early in the morning because of a problem with the flight back home in Dublin. We received a transfer to our host family, organised by the school in San Sebastian. During our 2 weeks there we stayed with a very nice Spanish lady, or so she seemed, called Teresa, who was 67 years old and owned a pension for students abroad in the heart of the nightlife area of San Sebastian
We stayed in a room together although you had many other options like living in separate rooms and living with different families. The school (Lacunza Escuela de Espanol ) we went to was a 15 mins walk from the apartment. We had to go through a written test as well as an oral one and unfortunately my friend and I were separated as we had different abilities.
The next few days were amazing! We woke up at 8am for school and finished at 1 pm. We had the rest of the day to ourselves. To my mom's horror, I discovered the shop “Pimkie” and basically bought the whole place. There was also Zara, Tommy Hilfiger, Pull n Bear and soooo many others. Let's just say mom wasn't too happy when I returned home with NO money!
We went to the beach with our new American, French and Swedish friends who were a lot older than us. We're only 16 therefore we felt a bit out of the group at the beginning but later we fitted right in. The guys surfed while we sunbathed. We spent our time checking out the hot Spanish guys and definitely getting some numbers.
I must say, we were verrrrrrrrrrrry picky about food. We discovered a delicious ice cream shop and a Pick n' Mix sweet shop. And okay, the fruit n' nut selection was delicious. We were just being healthy…don't give me that look! We had lunch every day at our fave burger place called Mama Mia.
Here's the baddie bit…every night we hated going home to dinner…Mrs. Teresa had very little cooking experience and half her food was cooked in half a litre of oil and it was all fishy! Although her pumpkin soup was amazing and her Spanish tortilla wasn't too bad either.
Anyway, I must say my pockets and bras were full of cooking oil…because we stuffed her food down there every chance we got. Oops!!! She also stuck notes everywhere, like for example "Put the toilet seat down" grr!
We had a few bad experiences like getting stuck with the wrong crowd at discos but we are all okay so let's just say make sure you know the people you talk to before you call them your friends.
I must say I've learned a lot more Spanish. I will definitely go back to San Sebastian, it is an amazing place and you have loads of options if you feel like you need to be entertained. Plus the people are very friendly. The school programme was poorly organised however, there weren't that many good activities arranged by the school apart from one great tour of the city.
By: Sandra Plantos
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