and so it goes.

we have it good. we all have it good and i think sometimes we don´t realize. maybe i´m speaking too generally. maybe other people realize it all the time. maybe we don´t all have it good. but i do. but it takes time for me sometimes to step back and realize that this life is good. and i am blessed.

quick health update: forked over the cash for the derm yesterday and we have finally diagnosed the mysterious red bumps on my body. sigh. phew. relief. turns out, my body is pretty freaky and weird. you see, i received some kind of bug bites when this all started. then, my immune system didn´t want to respond normally... by just getting rid of them. it found some allergy to, or something it couldn´t fix about these bug bites. so it started making it´s own bug bites. my body is producing these red bumps all by itself, and it seems that it´s having a grand old time doing it. my left arm is infested with them at this point in time. annoyance. however, the extremely sarcastic and english-speaking doctor prescribed me a foamy cream to put on them and a little antihystamine (yea, right, like i can even get close to spelling that correctly and like i have any desire to waste my time looking it up. ha, to say ¨have any desire¨in spanish is tener ganas de and it´s really common. that just popped in my head. wow, i stray from topic really easy.) to put these bumps to rest. AMEN. my vision is still fine. i had a little scare because my left eye vision isn´t as good as it was before, but the inflamation isn´t back and i have another appt. in a week to check up on it.

so. back to real life. last night was grand. kristen, melissa and i decided to be a bit more adventurous and venture to a real spanish bar, not the fake irish pub kind that our group tends to cluster towards. we wandered around asking a bunch of spanish people where this one amaia told me about was because we forgot what street it was on. we got there and met a really great group of five spaniards who are studying biology at the private university in Navarra. (we go to the public one) We went with them to another bar after. It was just so great because it´s always interesting to meet new people, and not only are we interested to hear what their lives and customs are like, but they like to hear about what we are like too. And it´s all very fun in the bar atmosphere because it´s not some formal meeting with an intercambio. It´s real life fun combined with learning which makes me feel like I´m not a complete waste of life. So yay. More Spanish friends.

Today we had our last group excursion to a bunch of towns around Navarra (the autonomous community where Pamplona is situated). We visited Sos (where Ferdinand the Catholic - you know, the guy married to Isabel who united almost all of Spain, sent Columbus over to America, and expelled all the Jews and Arabs from Spain? - was born in a castle), Javier (the town of San Francisco, an evangelist who traveled all over including to Asia), Sanguesa (another town that I believe is part of the Camino de Santiago), and Oibar (gee, I think that´s the basque spelling of the name of the city, but who knows. I can´t keep these things straight. By the way, basque is another language spoken in this region of Spain that has existed before the Romans even came to Spain and spanish (technically called castellano) was even spoken... in the b.c. times.

Here´s a little fact of the day, if you didn´t know. Spanish (castellano) isn´t the only language spoken in Spain. There´s also Basque (I´m not sure if that´s how you spell it in English, but it´s vasco or vasquence in spanish.), Catalán, and Gallego. Again, I don´t know any of these words in English, it gets a little bit confusing for me here while I´m describing. I have this intense linguistics class where the material is so in depth that I honestly don´t know most of the stuff in english because they aren´t common words and I have learned the subject only in spanish. so words like catalán (the language) i just don´t know how to say in english. and words like yeísmo (a characteristic of the southern dialect of spanish where they do not distinguish a difference between the sound of ll and y... yea, confusing, i know). i have no idea how to say these things in english! isn´t that crazy?

Anyhow, these villages were really very beautiful, but there´s only so much wonder I can find in seeing the difference in the arches of a romantic church and a gothic church. And you can only see so many carvings of religious people before they all start to meld into the same things.

I find much joy in eating on these excursions. It´s always like a 7 course meal. On today´s menu?
fresh bread
a mini sausage
little tiny pepper
bean soup
fish (maybe cod?)
block of ice cream
coffee
yup, 7 i was right. can we say full?

I would like to post pictures at a later date.

I bought these little truffles for my host family and Pilar was superhappy with me. Yay! Even though she has been grinding my nerves a little lately. She gets a little opinionated sometimes, something the teacher in charge of the study abroud program, Nelson, says is pretty common for Spanish moms. She can be a bit rude sometimes, but I think it´s just how they work here... she doesn´t know it. But you can never have a perfect, always happy relationship with anyone, and that´s what I have to remember. I loooooooooooove my real parents, but that doeesn´t mean I never get mad at them or they never get mad at me. That´s just how I have to look at it here. She´s going to act like a mom, regardless of whether or not she really is my mom. So, I´ll still be forced to drink whole milk, eat cold burnt toast, and throw away all my garbage in the one garbage can that the house has. It´s just my Spanish way of life.

Today Amaia brought home brownies! Ahh. I thought they didn´t exist. Of course, they said ¨galletas Americanas¨(American cookies) on the front, so really, it´s true. They don´t exist in Spain. They are just something that they think Americans eat. She warmed it up and it was still hard. It´s impossible to find a good soft brownie here.

I´m going to San Sebastian tomorrow, and I can´t wait! We are going to the spa that looks out onto the beach! ($30 for 3 hours in a spa, you cannot beat that, anywhere) There are hot tubs, huge pools of sea water, and I hear it´s paradise. What a life I have!! One hour bus ride gets me three hours in a spa. We are going to walk around and gift shop and get lunch and pintxos (little appetizer things), a specialty in San Sebastian. Can´t wait!