Tuesday, April 26, 2005

leaving Pamplona

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Wow, I can't believe it, but we're leaving Pamplona tomorrow. Tom and I are heading to Madrid tomorrow, Granada Thursday, Salobreño (Saturday...the beach!), and then back to Madrid to fly to Philly one week from today!

It's funny trying predict what I'll miss about Spain and about Pamplona. Probably things that annoyed me while we were here. We'll see...

I gave my presentation to the library staff yesterday...a little nerve-wracking, but I think I did okay. At least everyone here was kind enough to say i did okay. I was later told that I only made up two words, which is really not too bad.

Okay, back to work...lots of loose ends to finish up here before I depart!

Monday, April 18, 2005

Casa rural, photos, and scripting errors, oh my!

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Hola,

Last week I wrote a nice long post, and when I went to post it, something glitched and it got deleted. I have no idea what all I had written, but here's a synopsis of what's been going on lately:

  • Our friend Rich visited for a week, and we went out A LOT (a good thing, except for me being the only one who had to get up the next morning!).

  • We visited Barcelona two weekends ago (with Rich), which was beautiful but quite crowded with tourists (like us, but in our way).

  • I finally posted my photos at Yahoo Photos. There is a TON there, but I tried to organize them into folders.

  • My internship is going well, and I feel semi-competent with Spanish!

  • Perhaps most exciting, I have a job interview scheduled for when I get back to the States!


This weekend, Tom's parents flew in to Bilbao and we rented a casa rural near Extelar. The town is a beautiful, quaint Basque village about 45 minutes north of Pamplona. The house was about 6km up up up some rather rough roads, and we were renting a 3 bedroom section of the house. It's an old, gorgeous house on a pony farm! It rained most of the time, but we had a fire going and we made pizzas, so all was very well. We took a little trip into France (which is about 7-8km from Extelar, along a very windy road), and visited Sare (a beautiful, quaint French Basque village) and St. Jean du Luc (which we've seen before...it's along the beach). We're back in Pamplona now, and Tom's folks are here till Thursday. Who knows what we'll be up to...

I can't beleive that next week we'll be moving out of our apartment and heading off to Andalucía! We'll be there for about 4-5 days, then we fly out of Madrid in about 2 weeks. Now that the language barrier is less a problem, I'm ready to stay longer...Spain's a lot more fun when you're not in a constant state of frustration!

Monday, April 04, 2005

lunes, the big game!

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An exercise in frustration: trying to find a computer where I can use a damn CD-ROM. You wouldn't think it would be so complicated, but, as the mantra goes, this is Spain, so all things will be more complicated than they should be. I have a ton of photos I've been wanting to upload for a while, but I still haven't found the means to transfer them from my laptop (which has no internet access) to a computer with internet. Grr.

UNC won the semi-final game on Saturday, whee! That helps to make up for my Spanish frustrations. Tonight, they'll play (and beat, of course) Illinois in the final game. I will be checking online first thing in the morning, as it's my only source of information! Vicarious fandom is difficult.

I'm back to class in 10 minutes. It's been 2 1/2 weeks since I've had a class, between my trip to England and the never-ending Semana Santa holiday. I have no idea what's going on with the class. Actually, I tried to go an hour early and it took me 20 minutes to figure out why no one was there yet. Duh.

We'd been worried that the Pope's death might cause a national (or university) holiday--a day of mourning or something, but so far, I haven't seen anything. Of course, the way I'll learn of it is by trying to do something or go somewhere and to fail. No advance notice needed.

Our friend Rich is here visiting us this week. We just might go to Barcelona this weekend. Wa-hoo!

Vale, me voy a clase. ¡Hasta luego!