ISA and First Solo Exploration

Tuesday January 21, 2013

Yesterday was a good day. I already feel like I have been here much longer than I have. I woke up and walked the girls to school with Iciar. Then I had saved pictures of maps on my iPad and started exploring. It was pretty difficult. I'm starting to realize how I am ENTIRELY too dependent on Google Maps... 

I started the day by walking to find the ISA Bilbao office. ISA (International Studies Abroad) is the company who I went abroad with in Sevilla. The office was in an office building near the University of Deusto. The woman there - Geneveva - was extremely nice and very very very welcoming. She gave me a map and spent probably 40 minutes going over it with me, telling me where the best gyms are and some bar/cafe and restaurants to go to.

Straight from her office I went to find one of the gyms that was near there to check it out but never ended up finding it. Instead I just explored a random neighborhood, which I liked a lot. There were lots and lots of retail stores and bookstores and randomly a playground dropped in the middle of the block. 

From there I crossed the bridge and walked by the Guggenheim and through the Zubiarte mall to look for a hair wand but they didnt have any. I did talk to some cell phone companies to start getting that ball rolling. 

Then I went to El Alhondiga. Genaveva told me that I can take my passport there and get a "carnet" made to use at all of the libraries in Bilbao. That will be good because buying books is expensive and I wont want to bring them home anyway. El Alhondiga was very very cool. I don't really know how to describe it. It has almost everything you could want. A gym, a movie theatre, a place for art exhibits, a pool - and that is just all that I know of... There is probably much more. 

After El ALhondiga I probably walked a mile to find another gym to check out. I hadn't been there 5 minutes before she told me that I can ONLY join if I have a Credit Card... which I don't. And it has to be European... which it wouldnt be even if I did... haha I wish that had been on the website. 

After that I went home to make the merienda with Iciar and we went to the school. At some point in this day I had a really good lunch Joseba made.... but I've done so much its really all a blur right now. 

Picking the kids up from school was pretty darn stressful. They are really tired come 5 o'clock but can easily be excited... so pretty much their emotions range the whole span and can change in an instant. They often go from whining to screaming to laughing to crying to refusing to move to jumping all over you. To get the girls in a better mood last night I made my way into their circle of girlfriends and said I had a game. Then had all these 5 year olds put their feet in a circle and for literally 20 minutes over and over and over I did Down by the Banks ... one by one eliminating someone's foot. My parents told me on Skype they'd been laughing while thinking of everything I was going to experience and I think I'm starting to understand. The things you will do to try and distract a kid from being in a bad mood... 

Iciar and Joseba also never really told me what their rules are... So when they are doing stuff that I imagine... would not fly in my household I kind of try to stop them but then this family is SUPER relaxed so I don't want them to look over at me telling them not to do something like... jump on the couch and be like no no that's cool or something like that. For instance Jon and Leire grabbed a toy out of another mom's diaper bag and were playing with it and I kept telling them it wasn't theirs blah blah but wasn't all that forceful cause Iciar and this woman are super close... Then they started trying to feed this baby stuff... haha So then I think... well - these women aren't watching so if I pretend to preoccupy myself with one of the other kids... It can't really be my fault if the women look at whats happening and don't like it cause I also dont want them to look over and have me be trying to stop them from doing something random that they always do... Besides being unsure of how to discipline/act when they do stuff like that everything is really really good. 

Besides a very bad little tiff between Jon and Maia over something they were making for Iciar, last night was pretty good. I had to give them baths and everything all by myself which went pretty smoothly until Maia used almost half a bottle of soap when I stuck my head out of the door to see what the other two were doing. Maia and Leire both wanted to stay in there longer than normal and play "spa" just relaxing and pretending to be pampered... so I figure these first few weeks I'm going to try to be the cool/fun person and let them do whatever they want within reason... I talked to the parents about this also and they agreed. We're trying to make it so I am the fun cool friend that they WANT to be with. They pretty much said they will be my scapegoat for anything negative until the kids know me better and like me more. 

For Story Time - I was going to tell Hansel and Gretel... but they already knew it. Then I was going to tell Goldilocks but they already knew it. then I was going to tell Sleeping Beauty... but they called me trying to change it haha So I had to make up a story.. which weirdly stressed me out way too much haha. So I just started talking. I told them a story about two friends who went into the forest and were playing and touched this tree trunk with their entire palm and when they did that - the tree opened and it was the entrance into this magical world. and In that world everyone has super powers. So I was telling them random Harry Potter and X-men crap I had seen. So once you know about this world... as long as you are good - you can leave and go as you please just by knowing where the tree is. So in the world there was this bad guy who was trying to freeze the whole world... which was his power... and he had not been leaving the world lately... because he knew if he left he couldn't find it again cause he had gone bad so he was trying to conquer it. So everyone tricked him and used his ice to make him slip and they pushed him out of the tree. And then he could never enter again. I'm not saying that would make a great children's movie or anything... but yeah. Jon told Iciar and Joseba that I told them a SUPEEEEER bonita story. As I walked to my room - I was kicking myself for setting the bar high. I pretty much saved nothing for... ever again. haha Super powers and witches and wizards and everything... all done. 

Today has been a good and again VERY busy day. I walked the kids to school then came home for a 20 minute nap. Then Joseba took me to his gym - El Metropolitan. It's on the river and is in between the school and the house... so its location will never be my scapegoat... haha. 

He is a PE/Health teacher like I said for high school students so he came with me and showed me everything then made a workout regime for us. He says he is going to train me and I can teach him English in return. I liked the gym a lot so I joined it... It's pretty darn expensive because it's the nicest in Bilbao... but I literally couldn't find the other gyms that were somewhat near me or some technicality kept me from joining .. I never actually went to El Alhondiga's gym but I'd rather go to Joseba's due to the location and so I have someone to work out with and the prices were very similar. 

After the gym I went directly to take the twins home for lunch which is a HUGE HUGE treat because it rarely happens. I'm glad I did it cause they really liked it... Iciar had promised them they could come home on their birthday but she was showing me Bilbao that day so we didn't have a chance. We ate and played Down by the Banks and then snapchatted everyone I know and took some videos of us singing You Are My Sunshine... They're so stinking cute. 

We had to get the girls back by 3 and since we forgot umbrellas and had to go back and get them I was literally PULLING the girls. I am surprised they didn't get tired... they only whined a few times and I was POWER walking and they were like jogging haha. At one point I was power walking with umbrellas and as everyone knows all serious power walkers swing their elbows a lot... and I literally hit Leire in the chest with the blunt end of her umbrella.... poor thing. She was a good sport. plus there literally wasn't even time for whining haha. Apparently to them - getting to school on time is of the utmost importance. 

So now I'm just hanging out near the school at a pretty cool cafe... I'd probably come here a lot but there isn't WiFi so I will have to find a new place. I want to make sure I don't get too comfortable and start going to all the same places because I dont want to stop exploring Bilbao. It's not very big anyway so I want to try to get to know a lot of it. I think the time is REALLY going to fly by. Pretty much everyday one of the museums is free... and I want to work out almost everyday and read a lot. I also want to meet some people and possibly start tutoring people for extra money... I feel like I have to hurry and do all these things and I keep having to remind myself that it's only my third day here. 

The next real step is getting a cell phone and getting into a routine of going to the Met right after dropping the girls off. That way I could be done everyday... by like 11:30 and have 5 hours to explore and do other things before getting the kiddos again. 

This morning I was very tired!