Fiesta, Fiesta!

Once again, luck is on my side. Saturday was a perfect hot, sunny day to wander around the city. I met with Greta, my Italian friend and Alodie, my French friend in the morning to go explore the second hand market. After that Greta heard that there was some fiesta going on in some plaza in the old part of the city. We wandered around and found an amazing international fiesta for ending poverty. There were booths from a number of different countries and a paella competition with people from different countries making paella that represents what they eat. Just looking at the gigantic pots with different rice dishes was cool, but we also got to try all of them for free! You had to be pretty aggressive to get a plate and some food, but it was worth it. The photo below was my favorite. There were 4 different rice dishes in one and each one was incredible!
Just looking at these photos now makes my mouth water (but it doesn't help that it's lunch time here and I haven't eaten yet). 

The coolest thing about this is it's common. They don't advertise much for these fiestas, but if you keep your ears open, you can find a ton of cool stuff going on here. The next day the couple I'm living with found a fiesta with a whole variety of desserts to try. Generally I would be super psyched for a dessert fiesta (I have a huge sweet tooth), but I think there's a reason Spaniards eat fruit for dessert. Their paella is much better than any of their sweets. 
I don't have any particularly interesting story for the photo below, but I was told I needed to post more photos of myself. Here I am with my friend Greta at Playa Zurriola. The beach might not look that crowded, but in front of us is practically all of San Sebastian and the surrounding towns. It was a hot Saturday (85 degrees) so the usually busy beach was insanely crowded.
Unfortunately, after walking around town in flip flops for days, my feet finally gave out. I had to stay in my apartment all of Sunday and most of Monday because my foot hurt so much I couldn't walk. I got some logging and transcribing done and just took it easy. Now my foot is still a tiny bit sore, but as long as I wear sneakers I'm fine.

Luckily with a few ibuprofen I was good to go on Monday night to the Noche de San Juan. Noche de San Juan is a fiesta on the longest day of the year (June 23rd). There are celebrations in Donostia, but the smaller Basque towns have the cool traditional celebrations. We went to this tiny town called Abaltzisketa that's in the middle of the mountains away from any place I've ever heard of. Asier drove me and a number of the Australian girls from the Urban House hostel. 

Asier is amazing! He stopped the van part way there so I could get out and film the mountains in the mist. When we got there it was raining so he held my umbrella for me while I shot scenes in the town. He also scouted out good shots for me. The town was absolutely gorgeous. All the buildings were white plaster buildings with stone lining the windows. I'm so psyched that Asier took us there, because a town like that is too small for any bus route. 

When the fiesta started the lit a little bonfire and had children dressed in traditional Basque garb come and perform dances around the fire. I was in the perfect spot to film all of them. They were so adorable! Unfortunately, I didn't get any photos, but that will make the documentary that much better to watch. After the little kids danced, the older boys had a donkey race. This wasn't very nice to watch because the boys beat the donkeys behinds with a plastic stick to get them to move and they beat their heads to get them to turn. After the race ended, the dancing began. There was a live band playing what appeared to be traditional Basque music. There was  different dance to every song and everyone in town seemed to know them all. They did all of the dances in circles and they involved a lot of jumping and kicking. 

One of the other traditions on Noche de San Juan is that people jump over the bonfire. Asier was the first to start and it looked pretty easy so I thought I'd give it a try. A man got some sweet photos of me jumping and emailed them to me today. This one's my favorite. Only a few people jumped over it  and I was the only girl to jump it. The photographer said I was very "valiente" (brave). I don't think it was much of a feat, but the picture is pretty awesome.
I am so glad I'm doing a documentary. I think other IROPers must be having a blast as well, but I feel like I really lucked out. I get to go to really cool events and talk to interesting people and that's my work! It's my duty to travel to beautiful places here so I can capture it on film. Yet this project is also forcing me to push beyond my comfort zone. These opportunities aren't just handed to me. I am pushing myself to talk to people I wouldn't normally talk to and ask people for favors. I am here to make a good, complete documentary and I need to challenge myself to do it. Yet it's still unbelievably cool that I need to go to fiestas for work.