historic sites and hail

so the most bizarre thing about this week/weekend has been the weather. it has been rainy all week which is a bummer, but i can deal with that. yesterday there was a huge hail storm when we were in Guernica, which for a few minutes, turned the street white like snow, (more about that later) and then this morning we opened our shutters to yet another hail storm. it wasnt like any hail storm i have ever seen. at first glance it looked like rain, it was coming down so fast. when you looked off into the distance you realized it was extremely dense and made it hard to see in front of you. it was intensified because it would come barreling around the sides of tall buildings adding to the noises and visuals. when the hail subsided and huge lightning bolt struck (at first i thought it was Amanda taking a picture on her camera), but when the ground shaking thunder rumbled i knew otherwise. i was expecting a terenchal downpour, but one never came, and now its sunny! but it is supposed to rain for like the next week so im not going to get too excited about the brief sunshine! i shot a video of a little bit of the hail storm but im not sure if it really does it justice.

yesterday we had our final excursion of the semester to Guernica. Guernica is the city where the parliament of Biscay is located; it is also where the Lenhendakari (president of the

Basque country) takes his oath. It is most famous for the painting that Picasso did of it after it was bombed by German planes in 1937 by the order of Franco. It was a monday, market day, when the city was full of people buying and selling goods. Almost 2,000 civilians were killed and the entire city was destroyed, but the Biscayan assembly and the Oak of Guernica survived the attack, making the Oak tree a symbol for the town. The original oak tree is now preserved under a gazebo like structure. I fall more in love with the countryside around this area. I love all of the traditional Basque houses that are built into the mountains. they look so peaceful and secluded. We got to see a lot scenery on the bus ride as well as some coastal views.