Today is my last day in San Sebastián. Tomorrow at this time I will be waiting to get on the plane to Madrid, and from there to Munich.

My last few days here have been great. I have been seeing a lot of movies, the last one yesterday, and I actually got the chance to meet some of the cast and the director of Morirse en Domingo at the world premiere on Tuesday. I really really loved Little Miss Sunshine which was hilarious and Children of Men which was a disturbing vision of the future but an excellent movie.

Wednesday I walked up the Monte Urgull where I had a great view of the city and the ocean, and the sunset. Other than that I have not been doing that many touristy things. I actually never went to the naval or San Telmo museums here and I don’t think I will today but that is okay.

I don’t have any specific plans for today. I will just walk around the city y disfrutar de mi última día en esta bonita ciudad.

I will write again when I am back home. ¡Buen fin de semana y un besito! ¡Agur!

It has been over a week since I last wrote in here, so I will try to update you on what I have been up to:

Tuesday last week I went to Oñate, a small town in southern Guipuzkoa (the part of the País Vasco that I am in). The weather was bad but it was nice there. We visited a university and a church, and in the mountains Arantzazu, a convent… you can check out both places on their website: http://www.oinati.org/.

Wednesday I went shopping, I bought some books in Spanish and some clothes at Zara that were on sale. Wednesday night I went to a latin dance class, where we learned the basics of salsa and another dance. It was really fun, and I want to learn how to dance salsa properly sometime.

Thursday I went to a wine tasting at the school. They offered kind of a class on learning which wine goes with what. I still know very little about wine but at least I do know now how to know if a wine goes with a meal.

Friday I didn’t do much, I just got some rest because the weekend was busy:

Saturday I went on an excursion to Navarra with some people from the school. We went for a walk/hike to a waterfall that was really incredible. The lake was a kind of turquoise color. Very pretty. We were going to go to some cave afterwards but it got too late, so we changed our plans and went to Pamplona. We just walked around the Parte Vieja a little and got home around 2300.

Sunday I went to Bilbao with another woman from the school. We first went to the Guggenheim Museum there, but that was a lot nicer from the outside than on the inside. Then we walked to the Parte Vieja, and just walked around for a few hours. We ate at a Chinese restaurant, and took the bus back to Donostia.

Monday I got the program for the Festival de Cine (Int’l Film Festival) which is starting today in San Sebastián. I also enjoyed walking around the Old Part again, since the weather was nice for the first time in a week. I picked out some movies I wanted to see and got tickets for five movies.

Tuesday I decided I wanted to see some more movies so I got tickets for four more movies, heh. Evelina, another student at Lacunza, and I went back to my apartment and cooked lunch together and then we went shopping for a few hours. I got myself some ballerinas at Stradivarius.

Yesterday was really nice and warm (34ºC/93ºF), and the sky was completely blue, so after I had lunch with Evelina at a Chinese restaurant, I went to the Monte Igeldo, and took the cable car up to the top. The view from there is just incredible!! The ocean is so blue and the bay of La Concha is sooo beautiful from above! Then I walked to the end of Ondarreta beach at the foot of Monte Igeldo, there are holes in the ground there and during a storm, water comes up like a fountain. Yesterday was mostly quiet so it was just the wind. I watched the surfers for a while, and walked back to the apartment. I was so tired so I just stayed home for the rest of the evening, and went to bed early.

Today I want to check out the naval museum and the aquarium but if the weather stays nice I might just stay outside, and not go to both of the places. Tonight I am going out again to Molly Malone’s; since it is Thursday, pretty much everyone of the school goes will be there.

The film festival is starting today, but I do not have any movies for today. Here is a list of the movies I am going to watch:

09/22: Sleeping Dogs Lie
09/24: El Custodio
09/24: The Tiger’s Tail
09/25: Click
09/25: Children of Men
09/26: Morirse en Domingo
09/27: World Trade Center
09/28: Little Miss Sunshine
09/28: Las Vidas de Celia

There were a few more movies I was interested in but I couldn’t get tickets for all of them, and I didn’t want an overkill of movies. Nine movies in seven days is already a lot.

By the way, my class is going well. I have been in the same level class since I came here, and all the grammar was a revision to me. That was good because I needed the revision, but now we have revised everything that was important to me, so on Monday I am switching to a class one level up. I do want to learn something new, or get a revision of the more complex grammar.

Well, I am going to go now, I want to have lunch and then go to the port (where the naval museum and the aquarium are). If there is actually a storm I think I will try to go to the Zurriola beach to watch the waves or to Ondarreta for those holes in the ground.

I meant to write a little more today but I just spent so much time on editing and uploading pictures that I have no time left to write much.

The past few days have been really great. Thursday I went out to Molly Malone (an Irish pub) with a bunch of kids from my school. Mano (he’s in my class and my roomie) and I spent most of the night talking in Spanish, which, as you can imagine, made for quite an entertaining conversation!

Friday the school offered a trip to a closeby town, Fuenterrabia, where el Alarde, a parade and big fiesta took place that day. It is a really charming little town and the parade was fun to watch. I took bunches of pictures and had a good time.

Saturday, I went to Biarritz in France with four others (Mano and Johanna, and Alisa and Hamido from my class). Biarritz is nice. The town center is nice, but actually not that special. The coast is gorgeous though. It is a lot more rough than here, and I loved walking along it.

Sunday I spent at the beach here, watching the rowing regatta (la regata), and sunbathing and swimming.

Well, since I uploaded some pictures earlier, you can see them here if you like: Click!

I have no time left now, because they started the movie, so I have to go, but I’ll write again soon! ¡Hasta luego!

I am in San Sebastián now. So far everything has been going well. My flight to Madrid was delayed though, and so my suitcase didn’t make it on the plane to SS. I met a girl who had the same problem so we reported it, and took the bus to the city. I decided since I didn’t have much luggage to carry, I would go to the tourist office with her, to get some information myself. It took us a while to find it, including a stop at the reception of a ***** hotel where we asked about how to get there. The office had siesta until like 1530 so we tried finding a place to eat, but the closest was McDonalds. Kinda sad that my first meal in Spain is McDonalds but I was hungry so what can you do.

Then I walked to my apartment, and met my roommates. I have five roommates (one is leaving tomorrow though) and from what I can tell they’re all nice. I was stuck at the apartment until my luggage came, which of course it didn’t at 1800 (like they had said) but 1930. I relaxed, listened to some music, and took a shower (since I am used to my luggage getting lost I had everything necessary in my carry-on bag.

Then I took a walk around town, and spent most of the evening at the beach… the city is so freakin’ beautiful, wow! I am totally in love with it. All the buildings and the beach and everything is soooo gorgeous.

Today I started my classes and so far it’s fun. It does feel different learning in Spain instead of a German environment, so hopefully it will be good for something.

Anyway, I have to go get lunch somewhere, because I am starving. I had to skip breakfast because I got up a little late and had to rush to school. Then I’ll get some groceries and other things I need, and probably walk around town some more. Tonight there is a welcome party so I am going to go there.

Well, just wanted to tell y’all I’m doing fine, and got here safely. Later!

In less than eight hours I will be on the plane that will take me to Madrid where I will have a layover and at 1250 I will arrive in San Sebastián. Today was way too stressful for me to be nervous about the trip. Now I am done packing - I was not able to take as much as I originally wanted, and I had to put a lot more into my backpack, because of that damn weight limit of 20kg on checked baggage. It is so easy to pack 20kg worth of clothes, shoes, and other stuff you need on a vacation. I will have to get up at 0430 which is in four hours and I still have to take a shower, so I will get about 3.5 hours of sleep. It sucks but what can you do. I will be able to sleep on the plane a little so hopefully I will be awake enough to take a walk around town tomorrow in San Sebastián. The weather forecast for the next week is great - 29°C (85°F) tomorrow and Monday, and even 32°C (90°F) on Tuesday! I am so excited about getting to stay at the ocean for a month - the bay looks gorgeous on pictures, so I am sure I will not be disappointed.

I ended up not finishing my termpaper. There is just no way I could have written 15 pages within the past few days. I did get started but I have only written the introduction (one page). So today I made copies of two of the books I had gotten at the library here, because I have to return those in two weeks (my mom will do that for me). The third one is available at the library in Heidelberg so I will get it from there.

Yesterday I was in Augsburg at Susi’s. Tina gave me a ride, and we got there around 1830. We helped prepare the buffet, and around 2000 guests started coming. We ended up being like 17, 10 more than Susi had expected, so it was crowded but fun. I had a really good time and the food was great. I didn’t know any of Susi’s friends but Tina, but I had some nice conversations with some of them anyway. I took the train back home around 2345 and my dad picked me up at the closest subway station (suburban trains don’t run that late) at 0100. The picture is of Tina and me, I think it’s really cute.

Thursday I saw Thank You for Smoking at the movies. It is a great movie, very black, but I like that kind of humor. It was really a fun movie, and at the same time not funny, but that’s how black humor is.

Well, I will end this here as it is late and I want to get a few hours of sleep before I get on the plane in 7 hours.

I will update occasionally from San Sebastián, as the school has internet, so hopefully I will be able to write and post some pictures before I get back here on the 30th.