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On Tuesday, November 3^rd I arrived for 10 days at Arterra Bizimodu, which is a “collective”—a group of people that hope to live better by sharing a lot of their day-to-day living including cooking, activities, and living spaces.

The community at Arterra came together a couple of years ago to rent out a giant building in a small town outside Pamplona called Artieda. The building used to be a school for priests and after that an old-age home, so each apartment was outfitted with it own little kitchen and bathroom:

There’s also a big common kitchen where a lot of the residents eat lunch together. On Saturday, I bravely volunteered with another guest to cook lunch. We made “arroz caldosa,” which is like a rice stew and we also made some hummus from scratch.

My first night at Arterra, I felt pretty lonely and didn’t know what to expect from the coming week. In Barcelona, I had friends to hang out with at night, and now I didn’t know anyone and was sitting in a cold apartment, eating cup of noodles for dinner. I didn’t have wifi on my phone, so I couldn’t call home either. I put on every layer of clothing I’d brought with me, got under a blanket, and tried drawing the flags of the two countries I’d been to so far: the United Kingdom (not sure the airport in London counts, but it was easier to start with than the Spanish flag) and Spain (more detailed).

Even though I was alone in a strange new place, I felt comforted by the beautiful nature all around. Over the next 10 days I would go for walks with the new friends I would make (I’ll show you photos of them later so you know they’re not ALL imaginary).

There are a lot of families at Arterra and so the collective started a school. They wanted their kids to be as happy as possible, so they did some research and decided they would make it Montessori! The teachers are training in a Montessori center in Madrid. While I was at Arterra, I would meet with Rocio and Lide after class and gave them advice from my observations during the morning and, most of all, from my experience at SFPM!

I also showed the students photos of my life in the US and of course my classrooms and they loved it! I also brought and read them “Make Way for Ducklings” in Spanish (“Abran Paso a los Patitos”) and “Cinco Monitos Brincando en la Cama” (can you guess what book that is?). The students in the school spoke in both Spanish and Euskara, which is the language of Basque Country, the Northern region of Spain that we were in. Places in Basque Country have both a Basque and Spanish name and sometimes they can be completely different – for example, “Pamplona” in Basque is “Iruña.”

It was Rocio’s birthday on Thursday, and so she made a timeline of her life to share with us.

When I woke up on my first morning at Arterra, I luckily did start making friends and we did lots of fun things together over the next 10 days.

Me with Jesus, Linda, and Mauri outside the town hall in Plaza de los Burgos, Pamplona. Jesus lives in Arterra, Linda (German) was visiting for a 6 week internship, and Mauri lives in a small community outside Barcelona

With so many wars going on throughout Europe in the Middle Ages and beyond, many cities have impressive walls built around them. Pamplona is no exception and had its walls super-fortified in the 1500s. This means that nowadays one of the ways to get up to the city is by taking an elevator over the walls (left). On the right is a picture of me in the Plaza of San Francisco. When I told people from the neighborhood I was from San Francisco, some of them thought I meant this square! I would see MANY more buildings, churches, and plazas with this name in different parts of Spain.

Sophie and I in Lumbier, the closest town to Arterra that actually has a grocery store. Sophie is in Spain for a year on a Fulbright Grant and turns out she is also from Massachusetts (but went to college in California and has also lived in Spain and Ecuador, so we had a lot in common!)

I also ran into a long-time friend, Trish, while I was at Arterra. It wasn’t a total coincidence but how it happened is: my friend Lauren ran into Trish’s best friend in Washington DC, found out Trish was going to medical school in Spain, gave Lauren the number to pass along to me, I called her, and it turned out she would be in Pamplona the same afternoon I was going to a nearby park with Arterra friends for Alan’s 2nd Birthday. Trish and I know each other because she was the “Residential Advisor” on my hallway  my first year of college. This means she was like my dorm mom and she was the best. I was so happy to see her again!

Parque de los sentidos (Park of the senses), Noaín (near Pamplona). The park had different sections dedicated to the five senses

Alan’s mom (center) made him this delicious looking cake from scratch! She rolled out the colorful frosting coating with a rolling pin.

Many of the people who live at Arterra have jobs in Pamplona. One day, I went with Jesus to visit the high school he teaches at, which is called I.E.S. Huarte. Jesus used to work as an electrician but during an unemployment crisis in Spain he was one of many people to lose his job. Luckily he found a way to still make use of his training and passion by teaching his trade to high school students. I.E.S. Huarte is different than a typical school because students go there to learn a particular job, for example woodworking or car mechanics. Students in “hostelería” are studying to work in restaurants or hotels and get to practice by cooking lunch for the teachers every day. Mid-morning the teachers can come into this “classroom” (which looks like a cafe) and buy the food and coffee at very inexpensive prices. At noon, they can pay a little more and get a sit down lunch where the students serve them from the menu they’ve cooked themselves. The food was delicious (and getting waited on even better)! I’m thinking I should bring this idea back to the US with me…

A photo of the Jesus’s classroom for electrician studies and me standing in front of the school’s entrance.

When I finally arrived at Blanca’s apartment right off Plaza Real in the Barrio Gótico I took a nice 5 hour nap, followed by some tapas (small plates of food—so you get to order a lot of them), and then about 14 more hours of sleep! The next day to gradually ease into a new place, I went for a walk just like I might in San Francisco, except I was walking slower, looking around me more, had to think harder before I spoke (to make sure my words came out in Spanish), and also, I had no idea where I was going.

I was happy my feet directed me toward the beach where there were plenty of people in the water, although I’m pretty sure none of them were Spanish (if you live in Barcelona, summer is already long gone). I saw several people collecting rocks as they walked along the beach. Since I only recently had taken great pains to lighten the load of my backpack, I resisted the temptation. Instead I climbed on this:

Luckily I have a friend from college who’s been living in Barcelona for 8 years on and off, so my wonderful aimless wanderings were only during the day, and then I always had Jon’s company for dinner!

Jon’s newest job is giving gastronomic (fancy word for “food”) tours, so he knows all the most delish spots to eat. As a vegetarian, the three most common dishes I’ve experienced are: Patatas Bravas—these are like home fried potatoes (sometimes crispier than others) with a slightly (barely) spicy mayonnaise sauce; Tortilla Española—potato and egg omelets, but fluffier than the omelets they make in the states because you cook it in the shape of a pie; Pan con tomate—in some places they let you make it yourself so I learned how—you rub garlic on your lightly toasted bread, then drizzle olive oil, squeeze and rub tomato on it, couple dashes of salt and yum.

I also got to hang out with Jon’s roommates including Jose from Cadiz, Spain (who’s one of the only people I’ve met who loves sleeping almost as much as me!) and Jackie, who’s Indonesian and German. Here we are on Halloween 🙂

Although Halloween isn’t a Spanish holiday, they heard about it here and so mainly teenagers and young adults celebrate by painting their faces white with dark circles around their eyes and fake blood around their mouths. There’s no trick-or-treating (poor kiddos, happy teachers!)

One last note about Barcelona for my students who love random facts and mustaches: Sunday, November 1^st, my last full day in Barcelona, was also the start of Movember— a far lesser-known event than Halloween, but no less important. Movember is an organization that raises money for men’s health, but is better known for turning the month of November into an excuse to shave your beard and sport a moustache (for charity!). Since one of Jon’s jobs is repping the ingenious “moguard” (that protects your moustache when you drink), we went to a big, mustachioed party complete with food trucks, dance floors, and of course barbers eager to craft moustaches.

I left Boston, Massachusetts, where I’d been visiting my family, on Tuesday, October 27^th, 2015. I really should have packed the night before, but I’m a bit of a procrastinator (I find if I leave everything until the last minute, I’m more efficient)—so I stuffed the last of my clothes into my backpack about 15 minutes before I left the house for the airport.

If you’re curious about what I packed for 7 months of traveling in countries where I’ll experience all 4 seasons, you can see I tried to bring a little bit of everything:

The picture books are to gift to schools I visit, the magazine to read on the plane, colored pencils to spice up my journal (the purple one). Also, I bought a used kindle paperwhite online (not pictured) so I can read to my heart’s content!

Now you know what’s inside my backpack. When I got it all packed up it looked like this:

The “silk traveller” is like a sleeping bag sheet that adds some warmth, but is way smaller (and less warm) than an actual sleeping bag. The green pouch at the top of the bag is a pack cover that goes over the outside of my backpack in case it rains.

And here’s me, with my 7 months-worth of luggage 🙂

The little backpack zips onto the big one (I’ll have to show that in another photo) and I will end up ditching that purse for a smaller one right away.

I was nice and squished on my flight in the middle of the middle 4 seats, but they served us a huge dinner and then 3 hours later a small breakfast, so at least I kept busy eating and watching bad movies. We landed in London at 6am in the morning, which was only 1am in Boston (asking my smarty-pants phone about time zones helps me to keep this all straight!). Even though it was so early, all the stores were open and busy. I resisted buying this teddy bear to take along with me on my travels:

Anyone know what 1,652.15 pounds (sale price) is in dollars?

I wasn’t tired enough to sleep on my first flight (plus every time the airplane bounces, even though I know turbulence is nothing to worry about, my heart races a mile a minute) But at 10am when I got on my 2-hour flight from London to Barcelona (5am Boston time) I was really sleepy. I fell asleep about 4 times during the time between when we landed in Barcelona and we finally taxied to our gate to get off the plane.

I have arrived at my first destination. Time for the adventures to begin!

(Disclaimer: this photo is from Logan Airport in Boston.  I was too sleepy when I got to Barcelona to think to take a photo!)