Heater

Earlier this week, I went to Sevilla to see my dad and stepmom who are currently road-tripping through Spain. When I left Barcelona there was roughly one cloud in the sky, and the Spaniards were incredibly bundled up. I was on the verge of adding "Seeing what ridiculous things Spaniards will wear when it's about 68 degrees out," to my interests on Facebook after observing how many layers people can wear and somehow not die of hypothermia and exhaustion.

I checked the weather in Sevilla, noted that it was supposed to hit 75 my first day there, then get progressively hotter, packed a couple pairs of sandals and left.

Thursday night, I got back to Barcelona. While I was gone, Cataluña managed to enter some sort of ice age. I was convinced my toes were going to fall off before I made it inside after my cab ride from the airport. After getting inside, I pretty much donned every article of clothing I own and haven't taken them off since. The woman I live with likes to leave every window and door open during the day (even though she was the one telling me I was under-dressed a week ago), and at this point I'm positive the eskimos have it better than I do.

I couldn't figure out how to turn the heat on in my apartment, and was forced to fall asleep completely submerged in my covers, trying to exhale toward my feet to avoid frostbite. I would shift in the middle of the night, exposing a couple square inches of my leg and almost enter a hyperthermic seizure.

Today, Rosé (the woman I live with) gave me a heater. It's about a foot wide and a couple inches tall and I'm pretty sure it will burn the entire country of Spain to the ground if I leave it on for longer than six minutes. There are several settings, but I've been instructed to only use one because the rest "smell like burning." Upon close inspection, I realized the heater has enough lint and paper wedged in the heat-emitting section to burn down a small village, but at this point I really don't care. If it breaks, I'm pretty sure I'm going to have no other option but to kill myself.