The Gods are Angry

I'm sitting in my room watching it rain. Again. Mother Nature's wrath continues in Bilbao. Oh. it just stopped. Give it a minute or two.

Well let's see. I can start on Thursday: took another exam in my business class. I don't think it was too bad. I was just happy to get out of there and start the weekend. The Erasmus party of the week was at a new club called Sala V.I.P. and the theme was Glamour. You had to be dressed up and looking gorgeous. But apparently they were very lax with the dress code because there were quite a few people in there looking like a hot mess. I was letting Bilbao have a go at my H&M dress that I wore in Madrid. It was a really nice place inside although from the outside we weren't sure if we had the right place. It was just some door at an indoor strip mall and there was absolutely nothing going on outside. There were some kids sitting around and drinking and they confirmed that the club was in fact that literal whole in the wall. turns out it was all underground and very nice. Upon entering they hand you a glass of champagne and you're flooded with blue and white soft lights and really good music. And by good, I do mean American. It was just Molly and I from the dorms but we were meeting up with some other friends we knew a little later. The whole evening ended up great. We met some students that study in Bilbao that were from Ecuador, Russia, Mexico and Thailand. We exchanged some info and will definitely be hanging out again.

Friday was a useless day. At one point I went out in search of rainboots. That was a massive failure. You would think in the rainiest place in the effin world that rainboots would be easy to find. Nope. Not for less than $75 anyway. I miss Payless.

Saturday morning I awoke to banging on the window. No, it wasn't a crazy gargoyle, but the hurricane-like wind that had started in the night. Molly was planning on waking up and doing her hair but she went back to sleep because it would've been useless. What a great day for an excursion, huh? We made it to the bus only semi soaked. I had to wear my tennis shoes because I didn't have anything else I could walk around all day in and the mesh let the water right on in. It was about a 30 minute ride to Gernika. This is where the parliament of Bizkaia congregates and also the site of one of the first aerial bombings by Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe in 1937. Way back in the day the parliament dudes would meet under a large oak tree and we saw the remains of one such tree that was preserved as a historical something or other. We took a short and boring tour of the parliament building and from there we went to the Museum of Peace.

This museum had exhibitions that tried to answer three basic questions: What is peace? What is the legacy of the bombing of Gernika? and What about peace in the world today? It was some deep stuff and kinda cool. It was a good sign though that once we left the peace museum the sun was peeking out from some other ominous looking clouds.

From the museum we walked to where we had lunch. The food was pretty good - I'm assuming because I left quite full. While we were eating lunch we looked out the covered windows and it was a white out. At first we thought it was snow, but after listening and looking a little harder we realized it was hail. Crazy, crazy hail. It stopped by the time we left though. We got back on the bus, and went to a place to take pictures of the beach. It was pretty cold so it was a short stop. We did see a rainbow though! It was another sign of peace I think. I'm pretty sure the rest of the time it was raining and we just rode the bus through some really beautiful countryside. ((I had some major camera issues this morning and lost of most of my files but I'll try to steal some for the memories.))

That night we wanted to go out and see what the bars in Casco Viejo had to offer. Astrid's boyfriend was visiting from the states and had just turned 21 so we were supposed to be taking him out but we just met up with them later. We found a bar with cheap drinks and some fellow classmates and went to go chill at the pizzeria across the little street. Had a really good margherita pizza...mmmmmmm, my favorite, of course. We met some other students from Australia and Canada and chilled out in the pizza place and talked for a while. Then we met a friend at another bar and met his Spanish roommates who helped us practice our Spanish even though they were pretty interesting in trying out their English.

I believe we got home around 330 and were awakened rather early to more hail, thunder, and lightning. And it's supposed to be like this for the rest of the week. The weekend has potential but I know I'll be in beautiful Valencia with the sun and warmer weather!