Kike

We have a club promoter here named Kike who constantly e-mails all of us. His arch-nemesis is a fellow promoter with the same name but spelled differently: Kyke. (Pronounced Key-Kay for both) They've been around since fall, but I just got an invitation to one of their birthday parties ("CELEBRATE KIKE") and decided to share.

My Magical Day Continued

After missing my class earlier today (see George blog), I decided to leave my room for a little while and go grab some coffee with Marc. I ended up leaving my apartment at the same time as Rosé who was on her way to work finally (5pm). On the stairs, I made some small talk, and told her I was on my way to get coffee with a friend.

When we got downstairs, I introduced her to Marc who may very well be one of the worst people at coming up with things to say to people he doesn't know (not to mention that she was standing on the side of his deaf ear so he had no idea what she was saying or that she was even talking to him). After her making a joke about coming to get coffee with us (which he didn't hear), she decided to just stop walking and stand in the middle of the street waiting for us to walk away. Marc didn't understand what was going on and looked back at her - she was just starting at us. Then, instead of going straight to the coffee shop, Marc pushed me down a random side-street beacuse he was uncomfortable but it was coincidentally the same street she needed to go down to get work. The entire thing was gut-wrenchingly awkward. Esepecially since Rosé and I don't really talk that much so we won't be able to laugh about this later.

I also just found out/realized a lot of my friends aren't going to be coming home from school this summer so I probably won't be seeing much of them, which is really too bad. I'll write another entry if anything life-altering takes place in the next few hours.

Idiota

So far this semester I had made it to all of my classes. Last night I read some more of Don Quijote (even though I hate it) because I was planning on going to class today. For some mysterious reason, my alarm went off at noon (class starts at 11:30am) and I was initially pretty annoyed that my newfound life of actually attending class was obviously coming to an end. Now that I don't have my perfect attendance record, I feel less inclined to go to every single class.

I pulled a full on George Costanza (blamed my oversleeping on God - he only believes in God for the bad things), but then I realized that this entire thing is my fault. Yesterday morning my alarm went off at 10am and I decided I wanted another hour of sleep, so I reset it to 11am, then reset it to noon an hour later.

The bright side of all this is I now have more time to sit around and finish my book, and drink some tea. The down-side is that Rosé apparently never goes to work anymore and being home all day is way less pleasant if you aren't alone. Her computer is broken so she now spends all her time in the TV/common area of the apartment, slowly turning into the Spanish equivalent of a midwestern couch potato.

Natural Beauty

Today I consumed at least 3 cups of coffee. Maybe more, but it's possible I forgot about them from caffeine-overload-induced-blackouts or something.

Cup 1: Lunchtime coffee (my usual 1 cup for the day).

Cup 2: Pool game coffee. Usually I have beer during pool games, but, due to mini-lent I had to select a new beverage. This cup was a little colder than I like my coffee to be, but it had chocolate flakes on top to compensate for the tepid milk. I was walking to Joanna's afterwards, and I passed someone who may have been a homeless man. He said something to me in Catalan, and I had no idea what he was talking about. 9 times out of 10, if someone speaks to me in Catalan, I will know what they are saying based on A. the situation, or B. the fact that they are saying something extremely basic/asking me for a cigarette while acting out smoking. I told him "No entiendo," and he followed me, repeating what he was saying. Luckily, I was only 10 feet away from Joanna's apartment at this point. As I opened the door to her building, I resorted to saying "What?" on the off-chance that he spoke English. He motioned to his lip and said "Is that a piercing or is that natural?" Since my lip is NOT pierced, I said "It's natural..." and he responded with "Oh. You're very beautiful." I nodded and just walked away unsure of what he was talking about. When I got into Joanna's elevator, I looked in the mirror and saw that I had a piece of chocolate stuck to my face above my lip. I wiped it off, so I guess I'm not beautiful anymore. Sigh.

Cup 3: Joanna and I had the genius idea of going to a café and getting some reading done. We ended up just drinking coffee and going back to our apartments to read (which I'm obviously not doing right now, so that fell through).

What's strange about all this, is after all that coffee now I just want to take a nap.

Plant

Rosé has this disgusting plant in the bathroom right above the sink that literally smells like a 90-year-old man's anus. Not that I would know what that smells like firsthand, but I'm assuming it's something like this plant. The worst part of this is, when I brush my teeth, my mouth tastes like mint, so I can smell things VERY distinctly.

As a result, I have to inhale the smell of anus at least twice a day. Even if I step away from the sink for the actual brushing, as long as I am still in the bathroom I can still smell it. I'm waiting for it to die, but it's been going strong since at least September, and I'm pretty sure this f-ing flora is going to outlive me.

Facebook

My little sister, Brett, now has Facebook. She's 10. My family is taking it upon themselves to take over the site, apparently. Now my mom, brother and sister all have Facebook. There's only one sibling left.

Mini-Lent

Ross and I decided to give up drinking for a little while - not because we have evolved into miserable, homeless alcoholics or anything like that, but because we end up spending a lot of money on going out for beers when we should be coming up with better things to do. Initially, we were going to give up drinking for Lent, but then I realized that St. Patrick's Day and Lent don't work well together, and since I'm going to Dublin in March, it's probably not going to happen.

Now, we have invented mini-Lent, and are not drinking until St. Patrick's Day. We're already experiencing effects: we don't really care that it's the weekend, and are being extremely productive. It's horrible.

Carnival

I went back to Cádiz for carnival this weekend. Carnival was really cool, they wear these really bizarre disguises and you and your friends are supposed to have matching costumes. They find it hilarious for men to dress as women. ESPECIALLY if fake breasts are involved.

Initially, I felt like a little kid in a candy shop - going back to Cádiz was fun and it made me pretty nostalgic for summer. But, by the middle of the night (our train back wasn't until 5am) I felt like I was in some sort of apocalyptic disaster where everyone had whistles and noise-makers. As someone who was raised in an essentially noise-free household (my mom hates sound), I wasn't doing too well with the noises. Also, as the Spaniards got drunker, the men who are typically pretty respectful adopted tendencies of the average construction worker without the consequences of being maced/sued.

We went back to the Residencia a few times to visit it and use the bathroom, and were considering taking a picture inside when we were asked to leave. The doorman recognized us as people who don't live there. At this point, I was ready to go back to Barcelona. I had fun, but it's nice to be back.

Hostel Life

For the first time in my Euro-tripping experience I'm staying in a real, live Hostel. Up to this point, we've gotten by with budget hotels and bumming off our friends who live in the cities we visit.

Right now I'm in Sevilla getting ready to go back to Cadiz for carnival on Saturday and we're staying in this hostel I found online. Last night, it took me about three hours to fall asleep since my bed was right next to the door and I could hear every conversation happening in the lobby. By the time I managed to pass out, someone tried to bang down the door so I had to get up and let them in. Turns out, this British guy had shown up around 1 in the morning and wanted a room so they stuck him with us. After seeing what the setup would be (Joanna, him and me) he went back into the lobby to complain. I listened to him tell the hostel worker how "unpleased" I looked to see him, and argue his way into a different room.

Meanwhile, Joanna ran around the room stuffing her things into her suitcase and locking it, sure that this guy was going to steal all of her valuables and make a run for the border. This morning when we woke up, he wasn't in our room because he had moved upstairs. We got to eat breakfast with him, though, which could have been potentially awkward but it turns out his friend was in another room so he had an actual reason for wanting to switch.

Some good things about hostel life:

- FREE coffee machine

- Cheap

- Comfy beds

Some bad things about hostel life:

- No hot water in the sink in our room

- One shower/toilet for about 20 people

- Korean girls who run into your room in the middle of the night screaming and looking for other Korean girls. They also do their laundry in the sink of the bathroom that everyone has to use.

All in all, it's great.