I was surprised that the winery where we ate in the Biosphere of Urdaibai looked so much like the Appalachian mountains in North Carolina and other eastern states. I have really missed the mountains and the beaches that I used to visit all the time when I was in elementary school. Because of that, there have been some days when Bilbao felt more like home than Nebraska. The forest in the picture below looks like the area near my house where I used to play hide-and-seek with my best friend. Evergreens and ferns are very typical flora for North Carolina, so I was surprised when I saw them on the mountain. The trip to Urdaibai was both happy and sad for me. It made me miss my old home in North Carolina, but I was happy to have the chance to swim in the ocean at Mundaka and see the mountains again. I usually make a trip back to North Carolina every summer to visit my extended family, but I did not get to do that this year because I chose to come to Spain instead. Getting to see parts of Spain that remind me of home just made this trip even better.
Although I didn't take my camera with me to Sopelana earlier this week, I was glad to spend some quality time swimming and relaxing on the beach there. I do not always get to go to the ocean when I go back to North Carolina because my family comes from the center of the state...literally. Less than a mile from my old house, there is a square, cement plaque on the ground that marks the geographic center of the state. Anyway, I spend most of my time in North Carolina with my family in the central part of the state, so I have not been to the ocean for a couple of years. Going to the "beach" in Nebraska is not the same because that actually means going to a man-made lake or a sandy river-bank, so going to the beach in Spain has been especially awesome!
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