La Rioja, País Vasco, and... lots of work

So this weekend was our program trip to La Rioja and País Vasco, two regions in the north of Spain. I'm sure you're sick and tired of hearing me tell you how beautiful all these places are, but that's really just too damn bad for you. Our first day, after waiting about 4 hours for our bus to come, we headed off on our 3ish hour drive to La Rioja. I forget the name of the first town we stopped in, but we saw this monastery where the first Spanish and basque words were ever written. It was pretty cool from a historical perspective, and also...you guessed it... incredibly beautiful. The north is a lot greener and we were in the mountains where there were sheep grazing on the hills. After that we went to another town in La Rioja whose name I forget, and we walked around before having a phenomenal dinner. One of the great things about these trips is getting to know the monitores who are all so awesome. At the dinner I got to sit near monitora Bibi, who is pretty freaking awesome. After dinner I was competely exhausted, but fortunately we went back to the hotel to sleep. Hallelujah.

The next day started off with a tour of a vineyard at 11 AM & wine tasting at noon. Yes, noon. Even though it was really early to be drinking, that was probably the best glass of wine I've ever had. Oh yeah, the type of wine called "Rioja" happens to come from this region of Spain (La Rioja. Crazy, right?). So it was pretty phenomenal.

After wine tasting, we went to San Sebastián in País Vasco, this awesome town right on the oceanfront. First we had another delicious meal, and then, being the complete nutcase that I am, I made my friends go wade in the ocean with me. It's a miracle that I still have friends. But it was a lot of fun, and I can't wait to actually go swimming in the ocean (on the southern coast, where it will be warmer) in two weeks!

After San Sebastián we went to Bilbao. I went to dinner with Annie, Rachel, our guide Mario, these 2 French girls who are friends of one of the monitores, and the monitores. It was pretty fantastic. Mario, our guide, is a ridiculous human being and started smoking a joint after dinner while we were heading to a bar. The bar was a lot of fun, as things tend to be when the monitores are involved. They're all such fantastic people.

The next day we went to the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, which is far and away the craziest looking building I have ever seen. I'll put up pictures soon.

So that's pretty much how my weekend went, and now I'm back in Madrid, waiting for this week to end. All my work seems to have fallen in this one week, so it's only tuesday and I'm already exhausted. But it's ok- I may be exhausted, but I'm exhausted in Spain.