Vamos a la Playa!

It’s hard to believe that our first week here in Pamplona is already over! After a week, I’ve been starting to miss family and friends and it’s definitely hard to be away from home (Thank God for Skype at least!)  However, all of us here have really begun to get to know each other and it’s nice to be together for an orientation. We’re finally settling into our hotel (it took us a week to: 1. find the dish soap in the cupboard, and 2. realize that the “bin” we were using as a trash can ended up being an umbrella holder. At least the housekeeping staff was nice enough to put a trash bag in there for us. I can’t imagine what they might think of us!).

On Thursday, we all went to a dance class so that we could learn how to rumba, and I learned how uncoordinated I really am. Despite the lack of rhythm, I had a lot of fun learning some of the steps. My favorite part about the class was definitely the classical Spanish dance that our instructors performed for us in the end.

Yesterday we had our first weekend excursion to San Sebastian. We have trips planned each weekend while we are here in Pamplona and we were all very excited to go to the beach. It was about an hour drive from Pamplona to San Sebastian and we arrived at about 10am. After walking around the city for a little with the entire group, we had the whole day to ourselves and we enjoyed the free time.

After walking around the city, a few of us decided to grab some lunch at a café and I enjoyed an awesome tortilla sandwich. After this delicious meal, I cannot wait for some home-cooked Spanish cuisine instead of the university cafeteria food! As we finished eating at the café, we saw a large group of protesters walking down the street. We learned that they were protesting for the independence of the Basque country: a province in Spain that considers itself completely different from the rest of the country and seeks autonomy. I had learned about this in previous Spanish classes, but I found it to be very interesting to be seeing this protest firsthand.

After lunch, we then headed to the beach where we relaxed, took a nap, and swam in the water. We had a good chance to relax and enjoy the amazing weather! This past week has been extremely hot, so it was really nice to spend some time on the beach. Aside from a little sunburn, overall we had a great day in San Sebastian!

This entry was posted on Monday, August 22nd, 2011 at 11:44 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Responses to “Vamos a la Playa!”

1. Jeannie LaPlatney says:

   September 6, 2011 at 6:49 pm

   Hi Shannon,

   I would love to hear more about what you witnessed in the protests. How were the other people in the city reacting? How old were they?

   Glad you had a nice time.

   Best,
   JML

2. secain13 says:

   September 13, 2011 at 6:22 pm

   It was pretty interesting because the other people in the city didn’t really react to the protest, I’m guessing that they are pretty common there. The reactions made it seem like the protests were nothing out of the ordinary. The protest wasn’t too large but there were people of all ages, kids to adults, that were chanting. I thought it was very interesting to witness!