Making Friends

I’m kicking myself because I failed to hold up to what I promised myself - updating this on approximately weekly basis to record my experience in Spain. But I guess better late than never, so here I am trying to recollect some of the bits and pieces that I can remember from my calendar and from the pictures I have taken. Whatever I do end up remember must be pretty special :)

Friends, here we are again with the magic word. As an action item from my previous discussion with my roommates about wanting to make meaningful connections, we decided to host some people at our own apartment as a means to create an intimate environment for conversation. We weren’t very clear on the directives, and instead of inviting people that I already know pretty well, I should have invited people that I was hoping to know. Including the three of us, we hosted a total of 10 people, with some fruits, black bean soup, and some tortilla with mole and salsa verde. I was responsible for the ice breaker activity so I suggested that everyone writes three facts on three separate strips of paper and we would draw them and guess who they are. Initially I wasn’t sure if this would be a cringy activity but we ended up learning a lot about each other, and each fact led to many more questions of why and how something happened. Note to self: always ask people interesting facts about themselves and most people are more than happy to share.

Kevin is one of the new friends I made in the MBA program, and something I really admire him is his consistency on making sure we spend time together on a regular basis. Originally this hang out was meant for me to try out the food he makes, but after finding out that Rupi Kaur was performing that same day, I suggested that we go to the poetry reading instead. Neither of us have been to a poetry reading so we had no idea what to think or expect. And of course, before getting nurtured in the soul, we had to first nurture our bodies. We found a cute Italian restaurant nearby with handmade pasta, and made the mistake of trusting Google Maps that the restaurant was open at 7:30 PM (a rarity in Barcelona as most restaurants usually open at 8 PM or later for dinner), but fortunately they didn’t let us wait for much longer. I don’t remember the specifics we ate, but I did remember that it was delicious. The poetry reading was held in a night club, and the audience was predominantly female with some male audience sprinkled between being brought by their partners. Rupi talked about love, mental health, misogyny, and her identity being born in Canada. Where are you from is a question that is constantly asked at the beginning of the program, and now I’ve settled more comfortably with my identity as Taiwanese first who has spent the last decade living in the United States.

Now to the highlight of this week - the trip to Bilbao with my roommate Melissah. I still remember this so vividly that I wasn’t able to check in on the app for some reason and somehow I decided to have a (sour) beer with my roommates right before our flight instead of heading to the airport sooner. And for the first time I arrived too late to the airport and couldn’t check in. With the discount airlines there’s not much I can do other than almost buying a new ticket, which fortunately there was another flight in an hour or two that same day. Bilbao is in northern Spain close to France with its own language of Basque, a lot of good wine, a lot of meat, and some interesting parallel with Barcelona. During the food tour, we went to 5 different places and had some pintxos and wine. We were on the tour with a couple from Dublin - Ashley and someone (??) but it was to celebrate Ashley’s 40th birthday. We first learned that each bar has there specialty pintxo item, many of them sit on a slice of bread. Basque region has its unique culture, some self-governing feature, and also the headquarters of many large Spanish banks and companies due to tax benefits. Unlike Cataloña, Basque had a deal with the Spanish government where they are able to use the tax income in their own region. The general feeling walking around was that thr roads were all pretty clean and nice. Some very delicious cheesecake after being told we’re too far away from where “Basque cheesecake” is known

Another highlight of this trip was making a new friend, Salomé, who was a solo traveler. We met on our first day in Bilbao helping her take a picture in front of the puppy and then again the next day when we went on a day trip to Gaztelugatxe and San Sebastian. I wish I was braver, but it was actually Salomé that approached us and started a conversation. We ended up having dinner together on the day of the day trip, and spent the rest of the time in Bilbao together exploring Guggenheim and other parts of Bilbao.

Was a week of little school and much fun :)