Coming down the home stretch...

So today marks the beginning of my last full week at Martin. Which is sort of mind-blowing. Just throwin' that out there...

This past weekend was somewhat uneventful; I had intended a day-trip to Pamplona, but the combination of a hefty bar tab Sunday nite and torrential downpour on Tuesday & Wednesday yielded a weekend spent mostly in cozy sweats watching movies on the couch. Oh yeah, and EATING. Shocker.

It was Vaughan and Kevin's last weekend here, so Saturday nite was their big 'adios' dinner. We snacked on clams and beer while we cooked, and dinner itself was appropriately excessive; it had to be in order to commemorate their send-off. Surf 'n Turf was the name of the game: ribeye steaks, sauteed tiger prawns, mashed potatoes, sauteed wild mushroom medley, and a creamy roquefort sauce to go over... well, everything. Sauteed chard and leeks on the side, a few bottles of teriffic wine, ample beer, and we were as good as it gets. Seventy-five percent of the table could not finish their plates, which, for this crowd, is saying a lot.

Like I said, the rest of the weekend left little to blog about, but I wanted to take a chance to look back and reflect aloud (or, as aloud as one can get when writing and not speaking) on that from whence I came. My initial reactions to almost everything around me, upon arriving here, were not far from despair. I was hating my crowded apartment, the restaurant kicked my ass up and down the street, I wasn't sure about my roommates, the town of Lasarte was far from what I had imagined... I thought I was going to struggle pretty hard to get through this experience.

Now I look around me and cannot believe I once felt the way I did. My apartment, though not the most spic n' span I've ever inhabited, has truly become a comfortable place and feels like my own. My roommates turned out to be truly good friends and incredibly fun people, and I am genuinely sad to see them go. The restaurant is a breeze now, all of its original challenges bested and then some on the road to becoming a significantly better chef. Even Lasarte, though admittedly still kind of a lame town, has grown on me; at least Naiban, the bar I come to every day, has grown to become a favorite spot of mine. Plus, I have done so much amazing traveling and seen so many unbelievable places and things that when I do have a day or weekend when I stay local, I kind of appreciate having my tiny, crappy, little town that I know so well.

I still have seven work days (15 shifts) left at the restaurant, so the battle is far from over, but I'm starting to get that excited flutter in the pit of my stomach that signifies a change on the horizon. Gotta keep my head down and keep moving forward, but it won't be long now...