En las montañas

After completing my first day of classes, I’ve finally decided to put up a post about where I live and go to school!  Woohoo!  I think I am going to do it in several parts though - I have a lot of pictures, and since the Internet is slow, it will take me approximately 238947329847 years to upload them all.  I live in the city of Bilbao, which is located in the northeast corner of Spain near the French border.  My friends and I are considering taking a day trip into the south of France, which should take about 2 hours by train, if that gives you a better idea of where we are located.  Bilbao is not an overly large city, and it was built originally as a “manufacturing” type of city – since it is so close to the sea, it was easy for things to be shipped.

 

One interesting thing about Bilbao is that many people who live there do not consider themselves to be Spaniards, although technically the Basque Country, in which it is located, is still a part of good old España.  In addition to having some different customs and cuisine up here, many people speak Basque, which is actually extremely different from Spanish.  The area even has its own flag:

Taken at Plentzia

One main feature of Bilbao is the river flowing through the center of the city – instead of being called el río, the typical Spanish word for a river, it is la ría because it flows the opposite way of what is normal.  I walk along la ría to school every day, and the University of Deusto is situated there.  There are many architecturally interesting bridges there, including this one, which is fairly famous:

Pedestrians only!

Here are some pictures of the modern part of Bilbao (the part near the University):

You can see the mountains in the back!

Taken from the bridge near school - you can see the Guggenheim

Fountain marking the center of the city

Today, I finally started classes!  I have only been to one day of classes so far, but the professors seem really awesome.  I am having a slight dilemma over which classes I should take – I’m for sure signed up for Introduction to Hispanic Literature and the readings seem really interesting, but the language course is slightly up in the air.  I’ll figure it out, though!  Anyway, my tarea awaits…