This weekend was rather relaxed. I didn't have a soccer game, so friday night after going to soccer practice I was free to do what I pleased. Then, Saturday morning a friend and I went to San Sebastian to go for a walk and we took our cameras along. It was a really nice day out and there was some pretty good lighting, so I guess I'll upload those pictures to facebook along with my pictures from the Canary Islands (which I'll get to next weekend, I promise, I know it's been over 3 months...).
Then, for lunch we went to a Sagardotegia. It's a restaurant-type place where they have giant barrels of sidra (alcoholic apple cider) lined up and, while eating typical Basque food, a guy will call "Txotx!" and everyone lines up in front of the sidra barrels. There's a little hole in the barrel that they open up and a small line of sidra pours out, and everyone lined up catches the sidra in their cups, trying not to let any of it spill on the floor. Once the last person is done, the guy closes the tap and everyone returns to their tables to eat. This, in reality, is how I guess I percieved it to be the way its supposed to work. When I went, everyone basically just went whenever they wanted sidra (usually the groups of people eating together would go together for sidra) and open the tap themselves.
Aside from the sidra, the food is a pretty important part of the sagardotegia (sagarra, by the way, means apple in Euskera). And, if I may say so myself, the food is delicious. For appetizers they gave us txorizo (basque sausage) and bread. For the first course there was tortilla de bacalao con pimientos (a tortilla with a certain fish and green peppers). For second there was bacalao con pimientos (this seemed a little repetitive to me, but equally delicious and didn't bore me, even after eating the tortilla). Then came the best part: the txuleta. It's basically a giant steak, the basque pride lies in this simple plate. Whenever someone asks me if I've eaten/if I like the food here, they'll always be sure to mention the txuleta and how good it is, and they're right. Then, after having eaten all that and watching the adults get sidra and seeing how it worked, of course, there had to be dessert. Another very typical Basque plate, cheese, walnuts and membrillo, a gelatin-type food made out of apple (dulce de manzana, basically) or the quince fruit which is kind of like a pear. It was a pretty memorable meal and if I ever go back to a sidrerÃa, I'll be sure to bring a camera.
After this large, long lunch (another very typical thing here, along with the mentality that eating lunch before 1:30 is practically like eating breakfast), I met up with my friends around 5 o'clock, and spent the rest of the afternoon with them in Urnieta looking for places where there would still be sun as it was slowly setting, but eventually giving up when we found a comfortable place to sit.
It was quite a nice day, and today I've spent most of my day studying history or getting distracted, but tomorrow is my last test this trimester, so I'm pretty happy about that.
On another note, I've been hearing on the news and everywhere about what's been going on in Japan and, of course, I've been following the movements in the Arabic world. I consider myself very lucky to be where I am and live where I do (and have lived where I have), always feeling extremely safe and hardly facing more than a large storm or blizzard. I think we should all keep the Japanese in mind and hope for the best in such a terrible situation.
