wowwwza

Hello everyone. What do I have to tell this time, you ask? Well... let me see.

I got initiated into pintxo culture last Saturday night: after watching some heavy Chinese documentary about drug smugglers, Aina, Claire and I (later joined by Louise) hit up a bunch of good pintxos places in Gros. First on the list was a bar I can't quite remember the name of right now, but which is affectionately called by Aina '1985', although within the group we are somewhat at odds about what the exactly appropriate year-label should be. We don't even have the decade down. All we know is the atmosphere is pre-1990. This tiny place has great pintxos, a long cocktail list, all of which are prepared with love by the curly-haired owner, who always dresses up in his snazzy vest, and the best part: the music. But I'll come back to that.

After 1985, we moved on to three other bars, having a couple pintxos and a glass of red wine at each one. It was so much more relaxed than the Parte Vieja; it was nice to have space to talk and not have to fight crowds of people for the waiter's attention. And of course, the pintxos were amazing. But yes, I know, I have yet to go to La Cuchara, which Aina swears has the best pintxos in San Sebby. And the best arroz cremoso, which was my favourite pintxo of the night.

We returned to 1985 for a cocktail. The other 15 people in the bar seemed content enough, but that couldn't compare to the lust for dance that brought us four girls back there. Lights were dimmed and Boney M was played. Lots of Boney M. And other awesomely danceable songs. I am a complete nerd, but basically this is the music I look for when I want to go out to dance to. Oh yes, I remember now: The Final Countdown came on and I rocked out the guitar solo. Oh... my god. The shame. And the utter, utter joy.

Hahahaha. Aaaaalright. The only down point to that bar is that the waiter wasn't too happy about giving us glasses of water - he'd give them to us, and then make some comment about how we should be buying bottles of water. I do always feel weird/bad about asking for water at bars for some reason; I mean, yeah, I guess I'm not making you any money. But I love water (as anyone who knows me can affirm), I love the fact that it's free, and I don't like creating waste by buying bottled water. Hence why I cart my Sigg bottle everywhere with me. I hate feeling bad about loving water. So I guess if we ever go back there, I'll just make sure to bring my own water, and avoid the conflicts.

The rest of the night was just spent bar-hopping. It had its messed up parts, so I won't go into it, and instead I'll move straight into reporting on my excursion to the Peñas de Aya with my kids.

We left 8.30 Monday morning from Rentería, met the other bus of kids from Bayonne, and did some orientative games. It was really hard to get the Spanish and French kids to mix, and who can blame them - neither of them really spoke the other language. I was kind of surprised that seemingly none of the kids from Bayonne spoke Basque. I may have mentioned this before, but the kids I teach are all taught in Basque, so they're bilingual. One of the teachers from Bayonne, Jon, was native of both Basque and French, so Carlos (a teacher from my school and the leader) would make announcements in Basque, which Jon would then translate into French for his students - that's how I knew what was going on. Normally I just speak Spanish (obviously) in my schools and I have no problem; it was kind of funny to suddenly have to switch sides in order to understand.

We first visited a bunker that was built by Franco before the Second World War; although he was an ally of Hitler, just in case Hitler got some strange ideas into his head, Franco decided to build a line of bunkers along the border with France. So all of Spain's concrete went into building these things, not to mention a lot of money and labour from the prisoners of the Spanish civil war, and now there's a string of bunkers along the border of the Pyrenees. Huh. This one was just pretty much a tunnel underground. The exit was never finished, so it just looks like a cave.

All about protecting the Spanish people, huh, Franco.

Anyway, next up was a grouping of cromleches (is that the correct plural?). These are stones from the Neolithic grouped in circles - the most famous one, of course, being Stonehenge. They're also found in France, India, Portugal, the Americas... Their meaning is still fuzzy - maybe they were just tomb markers, or maybe there was some big geometric conspiracy going on.

(Side note. I just checked on Wikipedia for cromlech, and it turns out that although in Spanish and French they use the old english word cromlech to describe these things, while dolmens are other things, in English we usually just use 'dolmen' to describe them - God, what the hell.)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/35664045@N06/4336891567/

Moving on, we proceeded to the Peñas de Aya - Aiako Harria in Basque - and climbed one. It's funny how it started as just a nice walk up through a forest.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/35664045@N06/4336892805/

Then it started getting snowy. I was carrying a bunch of stuff and getting my feet soaked through my ragged Converse shoes that I wore because I was just going to throw them out anyway. I know, whine, whine, right.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/35664045@N06/4336893755/

Up at the top it was pretty windy and snowy - we cursed the snow pretty bad on our way back down, too. Lots of sliding was involved. The crazy part - it all melted that same day. Goddamn you, snow. It was weird looking down to Donosti as well - it looked all sunny and peaceful, and here we were getting snow-whipped.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/35664045@N06/4336894875/

Anyway, blah de blah, we hiked across the mountain, made it to a hostel, made sure all our kids were fed and then gorged on meatballs and french fries, and the next day went to a mine that's now out of use. The tour was in Basque soooooo can't tell you a lot about that place.

I was really tired this week.

P.S. I still don't understand how to put pictures in my blog, so for now I'm leaving those stupid urls in. Cry about it.