Se lluvia en Bilbao.

My first full day in Bilbao has passed, and I’m settled in. I knew that it rained a lot here, but this is even giving England a run for its money. Today was cray cray; there were perhaps three moments when it didn’t rain, most of the time it just poured from the sky. It hailed a couple of times too. That was fun.

I arrived to Bilbao yesterday morning, having gotten up at 4am in Finland in order to make my 6.25am flight. Because I have fabulous friends and apparently find sleep unnecessary, I slept for an hour and a half before leaving. At least I snoozed through both of my flights! Looking through the little airplane window as we descended towards Bilbao was the first of many glimpses to my home for the next 19 weeks. Beautiful, snow capped mountains, little villas and Basque cottages on the sides of the mountains and then Bilbao itself; a bustling city situated within mountains. 

There are 7 other students from Omnia with me here; I’d name them here but I can’t remember all of their names. They’re all living together, in two flats not too far from me. Yesterday was spent just hanging around the area where we live; I actually ended up crashing on the sofa of one of the flats for the first night. We also got a bubbly (cost a grand total of 2.75€, welcome to Spain!) for the first night celebration and even managed to go for a beer even in our weary states.

My flat is really and nice, and pretty new. I’ve got my own room and bathroom (!) which actually is really nice. My flat mate is a woman called Ana, and from little time I’ve spent with her, she seems like a vivacious and cool woman. Tomorrow she's gonna show me around, and we're spending the day to get to know each other more. Also I have wifi here which the other students are really jealous about! Literally their only complaint about the flats they’re in was the lack of internet connection. Oh how we are the addicts of internet. I myself am a self confessed addict too. Damn those social media sites. And fanfiction (I really blame them).

I start working at Andra Mari on Wednesday, and on Monday I went to visit it quickly. It’s really nice, and the views are spectacular! I met the owner, a nice and bubbly man called Roberto, who promised to pick me up from the train station on Wednesday morning. I met a couple of the chefs too, they seemed really cool too, and I think we’ll get along. Well I hope so. I also dragged my chef’s knives here and turns out I don’t need them. At least I’ll have good knives to use at home. Seriously, you couldn’t cut bread with the ones here.

I haven’t spoken much Spanish yet; but at least I’ve got the basics still down. Because the last place I really spoke Spanish was Argentina, I have the Argentinean and South American accent when speaking it. But in a month I’ll probably be hissing all of my s’.

I hadn’t realized how proud the Basque people were of their country. All the signs are in Basque (euskera) first, then Spanish. One of the other students asked Iker, the guy who’s taken care of all of our placements etc here, whether there are certain types of clothing that should be avoided. The answer was simple: you can wear anything you want except nothing with a Spanish flag. The Basque are insistent on this being their country, and want nothing to do with Spain itself. Also when I asked about the local football team, I said “Atletico” and Iker was very quick to correct me and say that it’s “Athletic Club”. And even though it’s the third best team in Spain, they don’t get as much recognition internationally as they only sign Basque players. And people in the Basque country don’t support Spain’s football team when they play internationally either. They don’t support France either. And they don’t like FC Barcelona or Real Madrid either. Probably shouldn’t profess my love for Barca and Messi very loudly here.

My favourite thing about Bilbao so far? The fact that it's called Bilbo in Euskera.