Tennis Club

A couple weeks ago, I decided that I am on vacation (since I don't really go to class anymore) and that I should start doing vacation-y things. So, I joined a tennis club and a Barcelona tennis website. Through this site, I meet forty year-old women who kick my ass in tennis and then run back to the British instructor to tell him about how good they are.

This morning I was waiting in the reception area of the club for a re-match with a British flight attendant who beat me a couple weeks ago. The instructor was hanging out waiting for someone and we started talking. Every single one of his stories involved a. A date, b. Getting really drunk, and c. Him being the only guy there. He told me about 16 girls he went out with last night, a nice woman who lives near me that he took out to a movie last week, etc.

As he brushed his wedding-band-free hand over his mouth, I realized that he has herpes. Gross.

Shorty after, I beat the woman who had previously defeated me (he had given her a private lesson to the day before).

F.O.B.

Freshman year, I lived a couple doors down from a Chinese boy who had just moved to the US to go to school. His real name was totally un-pronounceable so he went by Arvin. One of his best friends (Wang) lived down the hall from a friend of mine in another dorm. My friend and I would constantly compare notes on funny things these boys did (made bowls of Cup-of-Noodles the size of football helmets, go to all-night raves in the woods, sneak Chinese chicks into their rooms when their roommates were out).

I distinctly remember a conversation I had with Arvin about dorm t-shirts. I was taking orders and wanted to get him one but wasn't sure if he wanted one/would understand that he had to pay for it. He claimed he really wanted it and I figured if he could take Chemistry classes in English, he probably understood what I was saying - even though he just appeared to be smiling and saying "yes" a lot.

In my current living situation, the woman I rent a room from is the one Spaniard that I can only understand about 5% of the time. Our conversations always end with her saying something incomprehinsible and me saying "Sí," as I back up into my room and lock the door. I'm pretty sure she thinks of me as a total F.O.B. (fresh off the boat, for you non-racists) who hates to leave her room unless it's to go drink all night. I'm sure my situation isn't that similar to Arvin's, but I definitely understand him better now.

Sick

I think I'm getting sick again. Which sucks because no one likes being sick but rules because I can utilize my disease (a very light cold) as an excuse to never go to class (which I wouldn't be doing anyway) and stay in bed all day reading Oprah's Book Club books and watching TV on my computer.

Ma Birthday

Monday was my birthday, and even though some people

weren't here to celebrate it (I'll someday manage to forgive them, I'm sure), it was really fun. The main highlights were going to a Pirate Bar on rap night, cutting class to find a seedy bar in the middle of the day with Ross, and a really nice dinner my mom paid for. Since I hate recounting everything that happens in detail, I'm just going to post a mini-photo-montage of Ross at dinner.

Old Men Are Gross

This morning I decided to go to my US Literature class again (I really don't understand why I keep making this mistake). I hadn't showered in a couple days and threw on the first clothes I could find which happened to be really dirty because I wore them all weekend at La Granja.

On my way to the metro, I passed an old man. As he hobbled by me, he slurped (yes, that's right, slurped) at me. I was pretty disgusted but decided to keep making my way to school (instead of going home and crawling back into bed and crying like I wanted to).

Class sucked.

After class, I was rushing across the street toward the metro (that could take me home to my bed where I could cry about this morning) when an old man said something to me about "chorizo" (sausage), followed by an "adios, guapa" (bye, pretty) as he looked me up and down.

Gross.

La Granja

This weekend we went to our friend Marc's farm in La Garriga. His family is Catalán and have a farmhouse they don't use that he has access to, so we visited. It was really cool, had enough beds for everyone, and the woman who takes care of La Granja fed us a couple meals. Saturday night, we went through 13 bottles of wine and a bottle and a half of vodka (12 people), not to mention the beer we consumed before dinner.

After a couple games of billiards and hide & go seek (what else are you expected to do without technology?), people started passing out. A friend of mine who was visiting for the weekend fell asleep pretty quickly, and for some reason, people decided to wake her up. After some semi-violent shaking, she woke up, ran to the sink in her bedroom (it doesn't drain), and vomited in it. Since the sink is non-functioning, her roommates (two girls who had never met her before) scooped the vomit out of the sink with a cup into a bucket.

Marc was carrying the bucket down the stairs when he slipped and spilled puke all over himself. Somehow, it also got spilled in the kitchen and the girl who got sick mopped the floor up the next morning before she left. Luckily, I managed to fall asleep before she threw up, and wake up after it was all cleaned up. All in all, it was a pretty good weekend.

Classes

I made it to all of my classes this week for the first time since real classes have started. I even got to go to my Introduction to US Literature class on Thursday morning! We discussed "The Raven" because class is ridiculously pointless. Our teacher made us listen to an eight minute long reading of the poem by Christopher Walken she pulled up on YouTube (background noises of a storm included), while she talked about how amazing his voice is.

I'm dead serious, she said Christopher Walken has a good voice.

For homework, she advised that we watch The Simpsons Halloween special on YouTube of "The Raven." She tried to explain why would enjoy it, but I couldn't understand what she was saying since she's not a native English speaker and screws up her accent sometimes.

Universitat de Barcelona

I just got back from my Introduction to United States Literature class (this class is a total joke). I probably shouldn't be enrolled to take this because it is targeted at Spaniards who don't really know English and are only in their second year of college. But Davis agreed to give me credit for it, so I'm taking it.

Today, we spent the third consecutive class section covering Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle." Classes here are an hour and half long - which means we have spent four and a half hours discussing "Rip Van Winkle" (also, we never actually look at the text in class). The teacher's English is horrible and her views on American literature is incredibly skewed (she's convinced that everything we do is a reflection of the Revolutionary War in some way).

Another thing I've noticed about Spaniards is when the teacher rhetorically asks "Do you get what I'm saying?" they have no problem responding "No." So, we usually spend an average of 2 hours on each concept because there's always someone who doesn't get it.

I haven't yet made it to a Thursday class since I keep going out Wednesday nights (class sessions are Tues/Thurs), so I may be consistently catching her on her "off" days. My goal for the week is to actually go to all of my classes, so we'll see.

Hug Me Constantly

On Wednesday night, I was considering staying in since I keep missing my Thursday morning class due to hangovers (even if it is Intro to US Literature for non-English speakers) but decided to participate in a bar crawl under the conditions that I was allowed to leave early. At the first bar, while waiting for my mohito, I realized there was no way I was leaving early and was going to probably make it to the end. All the bars were so close to where I lived and I couldn't use the metro closing as an excuse since I didn't need to take the metro.

I ended up missing both my classes the next day (the first due to a hangover and the second due to H&M), but all in all I'm pretty sure I'm better off than Ross.

The night before, a few of us went to Cafe Del Sol - a bar near where we live that is in the running for becoming 'our place' - and the entire time Ross was complaining about how he hasn't been drunk in Spain (and how the last time he was actually drunk was June). I guess this discussion drove him to realize how much he wants to drink?

He showed up to the bar crawl totally plastered. He had finished 3/4 of a bottle of 5 euro vodka on an empty stomach in an attempt to end his sobriety streak. He immediately ran up to a girl he didn't know and kept touching her and talking to her. She came over, introduced herself to me, and told me "Ross is cut off. I don't even know Ross, but he is cut off."

We decided this was a good time to give Ross a shot of vodka (from a second 5 euro bottle) that we had snuck in. We poured it out of the plastic waterbottle we had used to smuggle it in, into a used shotglass in front of him. When we handed him the shot his response was "Aww! Did you buy this for me?" He then tried to get everyone around him to dance, even though no music was playing, and he doesn't usually dance. His dance consisted of waving to the bottles and saying "Bottles, bottles bottles" then switching sides and waving to an Audrey Hepburn poster and saying "Audrey Hepburn, Audrey Hepburn, Audrey Hepburn."

On the way to the next bar, we temporarily lost Ross since he refused to move because he was "waiting for someone to pee." He then refused to go into the bar because "this is the place where murderers are murdered." He also kept telling people things like "I'm as drunk as an animal that shoots odors out of it's rectum... A SKUUUNNKKK," and asking people to "Hug me constantly" (he initially only did this to girls but after some provoking it evolved into "Marc, my man, hug me constanlty"). You would think this would motivate him to stop drinking, but instead he continued to buy beer, and ended up puking under the table at the last bar after passing out:

Figueres

On Friday, we went on an optional excursion to Figueres to see some Roman ruins and the Dalí theater/museum he designed in honor of himself. The Roman ruins were pretty boring - you've seen one ruin you've seen them all. Not to metnion they're just rocks stacked on top of each other. So, Joanna and I adopted a new hobby of "squishing" people who are far away:


The Dalí museum was very cool, though.

Oh Mercé Mercé Me

Last weekend were the Mercé festivals in Barcelona. The city puts on a bunch of free stuff for people to go to (such as Correfoc - a fire run) and it coincided with MTV España's Music Week which involves MTV putting on a bunch of free stuff for people go to (such as huge concerts every night at the Forum). Unluckily, I missed a lot of this because I was in Munich at Oktoberfest, but I did manage to get a good couple nights of Mercé in.

I got to see one of the three nights of Forum shows (a few Euro bands that resembled the Beatles but with more members and more instruments) and Pyromusical - fireworks set to music (think Avril Lavigne "Hey, hey, you, you I don't like your girlfriend" to mass amounts of fireworks over a crowd of people gathered in a Plaza).


Montjuic, the building that the fireworks were over


Plaza España


Pyromusical!

During the fireworkks, a voice came on the loud speaker and said something I couldn't understand. Then, all the locals in the crowd pulled out sparklers (to participate, I guess?) and held them up for the rest of the show:

Oktoberfest

I went to Oktoberfest in Munich last weekend. Since I'm sick of explainig it, here are some pictures (courtesy of Julie - who actually brought a camera) that pretty much sum it up:


Germany:sausage::Spain:ham


You go in tents all day (such as this one) and drink


Beer wench


Inside the tent


People I went there with


Germans who taught us drinking songs

Also, I made this my profile picture on Facebook:


Then got a message last night from my mom (yes, my mom has Facebook):

I am sure Oktoberfest was tons of fun, but that picture is not your best....Love, Mom

The Clown

I moved into my apartment a couple days ago, but Rose, the 40 year-old woman I'm living with, was out of town working on her thesis about Leprosy, so she had some of her daughter's friends taking turns staying here and watching over the dogs.

The first day there was a girl named Rosita (which is confusing since my roomie's name is Rose) from La Mancha who is about to leave Spain for a year and travel through Mexico and South America. Yesterday, she randomly disappeared and was replaced by a really hot guy whose name I don't know. I assumed he was Rose's son - she has a couple kids in their 20s.

I came back from dinner last night and was sitting in my room on AIM when he came and knocked on my door to see if I wanted to have a glass of wine with him. I didn't want to be rude, so I went and sat with him for a little while and talked about where he's from (Barcelona) and how he knows Rose (his girlfriend is friends with her daughter). I finished up my glass (after a lot of really awkward pauses where I would just look around the room to see what the dogs were doing) and was about to get up when he quickly poured me another glass. I asked him what he does for a living, and - I shit you not - he's a professional clown.

I understand that it's possible that this kind of thing can get lost in translation, but I had him clarify multiple times and he is definitely a clown. It's even called "clown" in Spanish (and all over the world, according to him). He went to three years of theater school and at the end was finally allowed to take clowning classes. He asked me to come to his street performance on October 20th in Poble Nou. I asked him if there would be other clown-friends assisting his act and he said only one - it's a really tough gig to get, apparently.

I think he misinterpreted my genuine amusement in his clown-ness (I got up to go to the bathroom at one point and came back to him playing circus-esque music on the piano) as interest in him, because he started asking me if I have a boyfriend, and trying to talk me out of my plans ("You don't REALLY want to go to Barceloneta, do you?"). I asked him if he had a girlfriend, even though I knew he already did, to see if he was going to pull some sleazy story-switching. He responded "Yes, but she's living in Holland so it doesn't matter."

Although this is by far the hottest Spaniard I have met so far, there is no way I'm going to toss my morals out the window and do anything with a guy who has a girlfriend. There is also no way I would do anything that could get back to my roomie who I haven't even lived with yet. I also think it's wrong to fool around with clowns. I left and went out to Barceloneta and by this morning he had already been replaced by some new dog-watcher.

Best Music Videos Ever

Since I have finals tomorrow for my Intensive Language Program (real classes start Monday), I've been doing all kinds of procrastinating and came up with a list of the top ten music videos ever. I've spent countless hours in front of YouTube watching videos from my Middle School-hood and deciding which ones are the best.

The Criteria:

- It has to be great because of the video, not the song

- It helps to have a good story/cool visual effects/etc.

- It can't be "Thriller," "Smells Like Teen Spirit," "The Wall" or any of those other videos that always fall first on VH1 countdowns

Here's what I ended up with:

1. "Weapon Of Choice" - Fatboy Slim (http://youtube.com/watch?v=0WW8flwpH-Q)

Features Christopher Walken dancing around a hotel with some extremely cool effects (he FLIES). This got number one mostly based on the fact that I would never listen to this song on it's own (especially not in its entirety) but gladly watched this video twice in a row.

2. "Hey Ya" - Outkast (http://youtube.com/watch?v=XvIw5ZqC1ms)

This is a fairly simple video but there's still enough going on to keep it entertaining. The opening scene where the manager is talking to them gives it a slight plot and the video feels very classic. I especially like videos where there are only a couple people playing multiple characters. The kids dancing in their living room is really great, too.

3. "By The Way" - Red Hot Chili Peppers (http://youtube.com/watch?v=TdagH15ZEwQ)

Entertaining.

4. "Vogue" - Madonna (http://youtube.com/watch?v=xRIYvfhXrdA)

She's really cool in this, and I like when they're dancing and they all swing their arms behind their heads at the same time - the dancing in general is really cool. Madonna looks really glamorous but not to the point where it's obnoxious.

5. "The Whole World" - Outkast (http://youtube.com/watch?v=p5UJjQt3bkM)

Even though this video is kind of scary, I really like the circus theme and how un-afraid Outkast is of looking totally gay by wearing blonde wigs.

6. "Baby One More Time" - Britney Spears (http://youtube.com/watch?v=_BclTRsTBZM)

There are some really stupid points to this video, but when it actually came out it was incredible how much air time it go on MTV. Also, I went to her concert back in the day and there were SO many girls dressed up as Catholic school girls - the fact that she can influence so many people by a couple minutes of music video is incredible.

7. "Doo Wop (That Thing)" - Lauryn Hill (http://youtube.com/watch?v=bGBKCff9o2k)

I really like the split screen between the '60s and present day New York City block parties. It kind of bothers me that present-day-Lauryn looks smaller for part of it, but it's still a really good video.

8. "The Bad Touch" - Bloodhound Gang (http://youtube.com/watch?v=iTW8oUV8Aq0)

THEY'RE DRESSED IN MONKEY SUITS FOR CRYING OUT LOUD. And they managed to get famous off a song about "you and me baby ain't nothing but mammals so let's do it like they do on the discovery channel."

9. "Las De La Intuicion" - Shakira (http://youtube.com/watch?v=NqkkAvRJ28M)

She's wearing a purple mod wig and she dances with saran wrap and manages to not look stupid at all.

10. "Together Again" - Janet Jackson (http://youtube.com/watch?v=5PwpZVlOumc)

I'm pretty sure she actually went to Africa to film this, and it looks really awesome. Her hair is slightly less awesome, but the elephants make up for it.

Rebels

Over the course of the long weekend, three of my friends have been kicked out of bars/clubs - one each night we went out. It would be great to have some really cool stories about doing something so awesome they had to ask us to leave, but mostly these are all just pretty sad and embarrassing.

David - We went to a club called Catwalk in Barceloneta with disco on the ground floor and rap upstairs. The drinks were really overpriced and the guys on the rap floor were extremely creepy, but it was still pretty fun. Later in the night, it got really crowded and Karli and David went to the bar to take shots. They bartender poured their shots and then walked away. Karli turned to David and told him that they should take the shots and just run. Karli managed to pull this off flawlessly, while David - one of the only people over 6 feet tall in the country - was grabbed by the female bartender, then hustled out of the club by a bouncer. We found him outside, covered in ketchup eating a hot dog.

Guillermo - We went to a bar called L'Ovella Negra off Las Ramblas for this guy Gabe's birthday. The bar is kind of an underground tavern with a lot of tables and people from all over the world. We befriended a couple British guys, one of our friends beat them at a chugging contest, and we were having a pretty good time. We tried to sing Happy Birthday to Gabe but the bouncers got annoyed and made us be quiet. Guillermo gave Gabe a bottle of Absynthe for his birthday and apparently it was being passed around under the table. As it got back to Guillermo, the bouncer saw it, and asked him to leave. Later that night, Guillermo threw up on the side of Corte Ingles (the Spanish version of a Macy's/Safeway/Pricey Target in one).

Joanna - We went to a bar/club called Lila last night that was packed with foreign students. It was pretty awful, and we had been promised free Champagne which we never received so we weren't super happy. When we first got there, I had to go to the bathroom and there was a huge line in the girls' room so I just went in the (then empty) guys' restroom. Later that night, Joanna decided to do the same. She waited her turn in the packed bathroom line by the urinal, and was almost to the front of the line when a guy told her she needs to leave and go in the girls' room. She argued with him for a little while, then pretended to leave so he would leave her alone - but immediately went back in. The guy ended up telling the bouncer and having her kicked out. I managed to find the guy and convince him to go tell the bouncer to let her back in, but at that point the bouncer was fed up with Joanna trying to argue her way back in and refused to let her in. I stayed inside for a little while longer, but after hearing that they were calling the police, Joanna and I went home.

Tossa de Mar

Since we have a four-day weekend in honor of Cataluña, Joanna and Alex and I decided to hop on a bus and go to Tossa de Mar in Costa Brava for the day. It was really pretty, and nice to go to a beach that existed pre-1992 (the beaches in Barcelona were man-made for the Olympics).

Since there's so much to do in Tossa de Mar, our activities included: reading, drinking lots of beer, and passing out on the beach. It was pretty uneventful.

Emily

Emily's finally here! It's really weird to see people from home here in general, it really freaks me out. But I'm still really excited.

Last night we went to this really cool bar called L'Ovella Negra (the black sheep in Catalan) that was kind of an underground-tavern. The guy in front of me in the picture is my new British friend, Toby, who told me I can stay with him if I ever come to Britain even though he doesn't live especially close to anything.

I bought my tickets to go to Amsterdam in November today. I'm really sick of everyone making plans that fall through, so Joanna and I booked a flight and a hostel and we're definitely going!

This entry is kind of all over the place, but I also lost my Spanish bet. I was talking to Jim (the guy I have the bet with) about flights to Amsterdam and was having the entire conversation in English without even thinking about it. Halfway through, I realized I wasn't speaking Spanish and decided to just play it off because he obviously didn't notice. As I was hanging up the phone, Jim said "Oh Hillary, one last thing... I just heard a lot of English come out of your mouth." Apparently I'll be buying him some drinks in Amsterdam. Oh, well. At least I can finally speak English now. After wanting to say things and having to keep them to myself I realize that must be how shy people feel all the time.

Yael

On one of the first days of culture class in Cádiz, this girl with water splashed all over her face came up to me singing "Kiss" by Prince as she got closer. Since I've historically never been a huge fan of people invading my personal space bubble, this small, wet, Prince-emitting girl immediately became someone on my shit list. But, after spending the last couple months together, she's really grown on me. Things that I initially interpreted as slightly creepy I now find charming and hilarious; whenever I go to the bathroom in the class we have together, I come back to find something I own vandalized (my name tag now reads "Hillary '08").

A couple weeks ago, we went on a class field trip to Pedrables, one of the buildings Gaudí designed, with huge statues on the roof. We were standing on the roof enjoying the view of the city when a man came up to us and asked if we thought "she" was okay as he pointed to someone rubbing their body up and down one of the tile shapes. As we got closer we realized that it was Yael, eyes closed, really getting to know the statue:


When we left Cádiz, most of Yael's friends ended up going to Granada or Madrid, so she wasn't too stoked on Barcelona. Once she figured out there was an alternative school in the mountains she had not signed up for, she was even less stoked.

Last night, I was in someone's room in the Residencia and a guy from our program came in, gloating about an apartment he had found. Turns out, he had gone with Yael to look at a place (after she has made multiple charts, spent days looking for places, and convinced our Catalán teacher that she would be a great roomie if she really can't find anything by our kick-out-of-the-residencia date) and decided that he wanted it for herself and essentially stole it from her.

The worst part of this was everyone defending him in discussions about this (based on the fact that Yael gets sick when she drinks so she doesn't drink often, so she wouldn't fit in with the "cool" roommates that come with the apartment). What kind of sick person can be mean to someone who loves everything (including statues)?

Sushi

Tonight I went out for sushi with Joanna to Barri Gotic. A couple days ago I read a letter to the editor about how bad the neighborhood is - drug addicts lying in all the gutters, drunks vomiting, etc, so I felt really safe walking around with Joanna in the middle of the night overhearing conversations about which of someone's friends has money.

We got to the sushi restaurant and it was totally full, reservation only. It's tiny and one of the only sushi restaurants in the city. We managed to get a barstool and they let me stand while Joanna sat. After a little while, the couple sitting next to us asked the waitress for the check (in English). She didn't understand them and asked me to translate. I like to think of this as step one of her warming up to us (up until then she had seemed very unpleased with our standing/sitting formation).

She then proceeded to take forever to get our order in, after we stole a stool from the couple. (Note: when she took our order, she just handed me a piece of paper and had me write down what I wanted since she didn't have time for us. She didn't make anyone else in the bar do this. This was pre-translating help time.)

We spent an hour or so waiting for sushi, a food that is usually immediately available, which is especially great because Joanna stayed home sick today and all she had eaten was a croissant. When they did bring food out, they would only bring out things that I had ordered, which Joanna didn't want to eat since she didn't want to risk getting sicker by eating fish (she stuck to veggie/soup based dishes).

By the end of the meal, we weren't too full, and we had been in the restaurant for what felt like years. We were about to leave, when the waitress told us the two guys sitting at the table closest to us had sent over some sake. Turns out it was the guy that Joanna had kept staring at because she was fascinated by how gay he was and I kept accidentally staring at when looking longingly toward where the food comes from. He was a little too old for us, but wasn't bad looking. His friend, on the other hand, was not looking too good. I'm pretty sure he was shorter than me, and his hair was going pretty fast.

They tried to convince us to come out to a bar with them (the bar was supposedly "chulo," but when older people drop words that mean cool it freaks me out a little). We ended up leaving and not going to the bar. For the record, this is the first time in Barcelona anyone has bought us drinks AND asked us out.

Also, I took a picture of a guy playing violin in the metro on the way back!

Crabs

Today in class, one of the California girls in our program turned to one of the girls from Illinois (we don't really get along with the kids from Illinois for some reason, probably has to do with the fact that everyone from Illinois seems to be a moron) and mouthed "I have cramps." This was totally out of the blue, since they aren't really friends and it was during the middle of a presentation. I saw this and was sure she said "I have crabs."

Speaking of Other Blogs...

Some other blogs I am secretly in love with - mostly people I know...

hillaryswoolley.blogspot.com - Zoe's blog invented in my honor. She's way funnier than me.


j0clay.blogspot.com aka Joanna España - Joanna's take on everything we do, pretty much the same stories from a different and more descriptive perspective.


rosserichards.blogspot.com (see below) - Ross' Spain blog with some Vonnegut-y observations. Me gusta.


palomasenlaplaza.blogspot.com - Matt's Granada blog. Some weird shit happens here (think getting locked into an office when trying to get a laundry card, weird interactions in the streets with locals, etc.).

Ross

Since I haven't been carrying my camera with me anywhere - probably a combination of laziness and my roommate's paranoia rubbing off on me - I've been stealing mass amounts of photos from Facebook. Mostly from Ross (rosserichards.blogspot.com):

Gracias, Ross.

Decaf Coffee

This morning I woke up at 8 (clearly a miracle of nature) even though I didn't fall asleep until past 3am since my body has convinced itself that bedtime isn't until 6am (probably a side-effect of going out five nights in a row).

I made my way downstairs, then through the really awful breakfast line - where all the give you is a burnt, greasy croissant and an empty coffee cup - and went over to the coffee machine. I pushed the red coffee button and nothing happened. I then pushed every other red button on the machine and started freaking out. I found Ursula, our awkward student program director, and explained that the coffee machine "no funciona." She pushed the blue buttons (which I've always stayed the hell away from since the person who taught me how to use the machine told me to go for the red) and coffee came out!

She asked me what I had been pushing and I pointed to the red buttons (stupid vow of Spanish). Turns out, I've managed to "kick Ursula's biggest habit!!!" (I hate Ursula) by drinking decaf every day. She stood there talking about coffee forever, and all I could do was smile in nod since my obscure, European coffee machine vocab isn't up to par.

No wonder I can barely stay awake in class regardless of how much coffee I drink in the morning. I just assumed it was really cheap because the rest of the food is so bad.

I miss good food. And Zoe. See below:

Month of Spanish

I decided to only speak Spanish for the entire month of September, since I can talk for hours on end about women's rights or drug legalization in Spanish but don't know how to talk about what I did yesterday. It started out as fun, harmless activity to improve my Spanish but now I have a couple bets going, such as I have to buy all of my friend's drinks one night if I speak English once, but he has to buy all my drinks if I make it.

Supposedly I already messed up because the first night I was arguing with somone and yelled at them in English. I don't remember this at all, but my bet opponent does.

Razzmatazz

Last night I went to see Ratatat at Razzmatazz, a huge club in Vila Olimpica that has 5 separate bar/clubs in it that all play different kinds of music and have different themes. It was really fun but really easy to lose people, and I'm pretty sure Ratatat ended up playing for less than an hour.

We left after 5am so the metro was open again. The group I left with was only 4 people, one of which I'm not that close to because I wasn't in Cádiz and is kind of an asshole to me. He always looks like he's not having fun when we go out (if he even makes it out), so I was trying to dance with him and hang out with him so he would feel more part of the group. On the metro he refused to sit with us, but eventually gave in, then wouldn't talk to us. Another guy from our group asked him what was wrong, and he just pointed at me and said "I can't listen to this. Her awful Spanish is really brutal."

First of all, I'm pretty sure his Spanish is horrible. Second, people shouldn't be consistently rude and mean after I try to actually make them feel like they fit in and go out of my way to be nice, which is really difficult for me.

Alfa

This is a picture of one of the halls in our school. I figure I should mention it at some point since we spend 6 hours a day there.

Last night we went to a bar called Alfa in Gracia, the neighborhood I'm moving to in a couple weeks. The bar is known for it's 90s music and 45s hanging from the ceiling. I was so excited to go request 90s music all night, especially since the DJ didn't seem to know of very much good music. I went over to the bar to try to help him out.

After I requested "Tainted Love" by Soft Cell (my sixth request of the night), the DJ put his palms together and said - in English - "Please. This is my night. MY MUSIC." I walked away from the bar, defeated, and went back to dancing on the almost empty dance floor (the only other person dancing was a middle aged man who has mastered a soft-core dance imitation of Napoleon Dynamite). By the end of the night, it filled out and the music got slightly better.

Apparently (although I will deny this to the grave) I put my cigarette out in one of my friend's beers which he had set down on the bar to go dance. I guess I assumed it was empty. When he first took a swig of it (that's right, he didn't actually see me do this) he thought someone had slipped a rufee into his drink. A gross, huge, cigarette-flavored rufee.

House-hunting

For the last couple weeks I've been going through complete house hunting hell. Every apartment either had something very wrong with it (6th story with no elevator, 5 people sharing one bathroom, my only roommates would be two older men) or I wanted it more than life itself and never got a call back. Yesterday I finally looked at my last apartment.

It was slightly run down, everything was really bright, and it was very small. My new potential roommate showed me around, told me about how she hated her Italian ex-roomie and specifically wanted someone from California. Meanwhile, my other potential roommate - a raging lesbian wearing a nike t-shirt with the sleeves torn off - stood in the corner judging me. As I was getting ready to leave, they told me I could sign right then and there if I wanted. They even pulled out the strategically placed paperwork that they happened to just have RIGHT THERE. I glanced at the angry lesbian roommate, glaring at me from under her mullet bangs. I told them I was waiting to hear back from another apartment and left. Then I called them last night and told them I found another place.

I'm now going to live with Rose, a middle-aged woman who has a nice apartment in a really good area and two dogs. Hopefully that will work out. Regardless of how many good stories I would get out of living with the lesbian, it's not worth the extra 80 euro a month for an uglier apartment.

Beach Clubs

Our residencia that we almost got kicked out of last night/this morning.

Last night we decided to go to the clubs on the beach since they tend to be free and we haven't been down there yet. Since we didn't want to pay for expensive drinks, we drank in the dorms before we left, then we walked to the metro. We decided to try to beat the metro system by sticking together and only swiping our card once. I didn't really understand the concept of sensors and sprinted through (the sensors can tell where you are so if you're going to pull this off you need to appear to be one person) and the doors closed on Joanna (me sprinting and Joanna being 3 feet behind me made us not appear as one person).

We got to the bars, went into the first one and danced for a while, but then it closed. We spent the next hour or so trying to convince the club next door to let us in, but they really didn't want to and recognized us when we tried to get in again later, so we ended up catching a cab and going back to the residencia. We had arguably the coolest cab driver ever, who was blasting music and dancing with us, and let us into the cab even though we had too many people (he was from Granada, I miss Andalucia even more now).

When we got home, we decided to hang out in our dorm room, but the doorman kept coming up and yelling at us for being loud, even though there were only five of us and we really weren't loud at all. After a few minutes, he sent up a meaner, angrier door man who threatened to send us on a plane back to the United States and then call the police (in that order?). (This pissed me off so much, I apparently turned on my computer and blogged about it - this was at 5:30am).

Our night could have been worse. My friend Nick drank an entire fifth of vodka, started to go to a concert but randomly walked off the metro and spent the night by himself wandering around Barcelona, occasionally taking breaks to take naps on the sidewalk. At one point he bought some chips from a gas station, and a lighter so, if he met some hot chicks, he could hit on them by lighting their cigarettes (he had no actual use for a lighter himself; he had no cigarettes). He ended up by the constitutional building on the other side of Barcelona, staring at it and thinking about how cool it was. Then falling asleep in front of it. He eventually got on a bus to Plaça Espanya and took the metro home. So, even if I got yelled at by a doorman, I managed to stay awake and not lie down on the sidewalk.

Barcelona Residencia

They just threatened to kick us out of the residencia and send us on a plane back to the US for being awake and listening to music. No me gusta Barcelona ahora.

Sants: For Virgie

This post is dedicated to Virgie "Rookie Night" Poole.

Last night, Joanna's friend Steve was visiting Barcelona from London so we used him as an excuse to go out to dinner and try to do fun things. First, we took the metro to Las Ramblas - the "main street" in Barcelona - and got dinner at a Tapas place that might be a chain (Tapa Tapa). We ordered a pitcher of Sangria, and on the second glass, Joanna literally punched her glass all over the table reaching to show me something. We ended up going through two pitchers between the four of us, then drunkenly watching mice playing in a tree next to our table. Instead of being revolted by how arguably unhygenic rodents are, we thought they were the cutest things ever.

At one point, I went downstairs to go to the bathroom. When I came out of the stall, this woman in the other stall opened the door for a second, glanced at me, and then slammed herself back into the stall. My initial reaction was: "Oh God, this woman wants to have sex in the bathroom and thought I was her boyfriend. Awkward." I decided to really pace myself washing my hands to force an awkward interaction when she came out. After a couple minutes, she came out - wearing short-shorts and straw wedges - and crept into my stall, obviously looking for toilet paper, which I had just used the last of. She then crept to the men's bathroom, and ended up rushing in there and stealing some. The entire thing was way more comical than it should have been because her wedges were so tall, so she was standing really oddly.

After dinner, we went to a street festival in Sants. They have a lot of neighborhood street festivals here, where they intricately decorate the streets, and then party for a week. By the time we got there, it was getting toward the end of the festival and there was just a huge drum circle, but everyone was dancing and drinking (no open container laws) in the street, and I now feel a lot closer to Barcelona culture and miss Cádiz a lot less.

Sorry Virgie, no scandals, I'll try again later.

Barcelona

I'm here!

Homesick

In the movie Almost Famous, there's a scene on the bus where Patrick Fugit turns to Kate Hudson halfway through singing "Tiny Dancer" with the band and tells her "I need to go home." She responds by mystically waving her hand in front of his face and saying "You are home."

Most people who see this watch her and think "God she's so free and beautiful, if only I had been abducted by a mediocre band in my adolescence and gotten a chance to write for Rolling Stone and meet Kate Hudson..." But for some reason, my reaction was more along the lines of "You're not home! You're a minor and you're around a lot of unsafe shit and you should go home, regardless of how crazy your mother is! Don't fall for the groupie, you idiot!"

This is kind of what my homesickness is like. I'm really enjoying my surroundings and it feels dream-like to be this far away and this liberated. The most interaction I have to have with my parents is the occasional e-mail which I can choose to read whenever I want to. Ex-boyfriends, college counselors, and small fights that have been replaying themselves for years in the same friendships are so far away. But I still know in the back of my mind that this is not home and - regardless of how unpleasant things back home can be at times - I am really starting to miss having such a firm grasp on everything and being able to predict it all. None of this is familiar or comforting, and I still feel uncomfortable interacting with strangers in a language that I'm still convinced high school teachers invented to stretch our minds. I'm starting to think about everything I'm so far away from, which is really making me miss it. No matter how familiar this all gets, it's still going to be really foreign. At least I don't have to put up with Kate Hudson or other free spirits yet.

Finales

I just had my finals for my classes at Universidad de Cádiz, so now I have a couple days of fiestas and then I get to say bye to half of my new friends and go to Barcelona with the other half.

Today I was sitting in the Plaza in front of the Residencia eating sandwiches and the people at the next table over were not only stupid Americans, but loud, Southern, stupid Americans who were ranting about where to get a "DAMN BURGER" and how afraid they are of birds. I had friends back home who were afraid of birds but they came up with unique philosophical explanations (envy birds because they can fly; their unblinking eyes; etc.), but these people's explanations were slightly more primitive:

- "They all like, fly up in your SHIT."

- "Holy Shit, that one's just a-stopping by."

- "I HATE birds, HATE 'em."

Although I know I'm a total foreigner, at least the people on our trip are making a decent effort to blend in (buying brightly colored beads that aren't necessarily attractive but are very Euro-trendy; drinking throughout the day; wearing a strapless bathingsuit so there are no visible tan-lines - I'm definitely not ready to sun-bathe topless). Hopefully Barcelona culture won't be too different.

Ejercicio

Queso.

Everyone is realizing that, after living solely off fried foods, cheese and beer for the last month, that we're probably going to be fatter than our new friends in Barcelona. Especially since we don't really have scales in the Residencia and even if we did, they would tell us how many kilograms we weigh, and no one knows what that means.

Instead of embracing this and investing in a large bag of Bugles and holing up in our rooms, a lot of people have started exercising, which I find completely hilarious. So far the most popular thing among the guys involves going to the beach (usually by running) and doing pull-ups on a bar down by the water while trying to pick up chicks. The girls mostly just look at pictures of themselves on facebook from before they came here and think about how skinny they used to be - sometimes this results in a run. So far I've played in the ocean twice. I think that counts as exercise, and I'm sure that cancels out the hundreds of beers I've had.

Plaza De Las Flores

Joanna playing in the electric car in front of the Fried Food Restaurant. When you walk by these cars on your way home from the bars there are always little kids in them, having the time of their lives, even at 4 AM.

A week ago, my culture professor told us which restaurants in Cádiz were worth our while. Since it's the weekend and the comedor is closed, I decided to try this fish-frying restaurant close to the residencia. I got there, waited in line for a really long time, kept being asked if I was the last one in line, saying yes, getting cut in front of, etc. I finally got to the front and the shrimp I wanted (basically there's a large vat of every kind of fish fried but it goes fast) was out, so I had to wait a while so they could make more. Eventually, I got a quarter kilo of fried calamari and shrimp wrapped in butcher paper and went and ate it by the residencia so other people could get sandwiches - for some reason no one else wanted to eat that much fried food.

I got through a lot of the calamari and a couple shrimp (eyes still attached, I'm such a trooper) until I started to feel really uncomfortably full and sick. Although i'm a little disappointed in myself for not eating the entire quarter kilo (costs less than 5 euro) of fried food, I definitely did better than I would have a month ago. If I keep eating fried food for at least 2 meals a day, I may someday work up to the entire serving of fish. It shouldn't be hard since the only place you can get food that isn't fried (such as a salad) is at McDonald's which is on the other side of Cádiz, and it's extremely expensive.

Las Indigenas

Last night, we decided to go to Woodstock bar again, since it's dollar beer nights on Thursday. While we were there, we recognized the people who had been playing the obnoxious music in the residencia, and decided to go talk to them for a bit and figure out how much longer they would be lurking around annoying us. They're a travelling band from Valencia, the ones we met at the bar were:

Raúl - A 12-year-old who plays trumpet, and is the only one we could really understand everytime he spoke. At one point, he was talking about how he didn't drink beer, so I assumed he didn't drink (since he's 12) but it turns out he just really likes vodka instead.

Las Chicas - The 3 14-year-old girls who though I was a model in the elevator. I can never remember their names, but they're really nice, and like to cat-call Ben from our program, because they think he looks like Adam Brody from the OC. They don't drink or smoke but like to hang out with people who do.

Victor - A 17-year-old who grows mass amounts of pot back in Valencia. He looks kind of like a lesbian woman, but seems pretty cool.

Kiko - A 20-year-old clarinet player who is totally the token loser.

Anonymous balding 25-year-old who I didn't really talk to.

The girls taught us pretty much everything they know about swearing (including masturbating vocab), music (they love Green Day), and how hot they think Ben is. They also think we're awesome because we're American, and were telling Joanna about how they think I'm "guapa" while I was in the bathroom. Even though they're constantly trying to convince us to come to their concert which I want to avoid because I'm sure I'll have really brutal flashbacks to yesterday's nap the second I hear their music, they're great.

When we got back to the residencia, Jim and I went and smoked hash in Victor's room with him, where they told us several times that smoking in a circle and taking one hit before you pass is called "Americana" (two is "Polka") and to tell all my friends. The rest of them don't smoke but came and hung out with us, and we learned about how much more paranoid the Spaniards are about getting caught. For a while I thought it was Kiko's room and they were taking advantage of his semi-loserness because he kept coming out to the balcony - shirt unbuttoned, showing of his chest hair - complaining and telling us to go to sleep, but by the time we left he had gone back to his room. For a while I was worried something bad had happened to him, but when I got home from the Farmacia today, he was sitting by the Comedor waiting for it to open (first in line, by himself for mediocre food), so I guess he made it to bed okay.

Residencia

There are plenty of reasons the Residencia is great. I've started to adopt our cook, Lola, as my replacement mother figure, I count down the days until the cleaning ladies come and give me fresh towels, and I get my own shower (even if it floods). However, there are a few things that are, as Ben put it, "so shitty about this place." The internet only works about fifty percent of the time, and we're not allowed to drink in the building because they don't want us to get drunk and lose all self-respect, running through the halls yelling and disturbing the other guests.

Lately, there has been a really large group of extremely rude locals staying here who like to be loud ALL THE TIME, even when they're sober, and speak to us in broken English since they write us off as stupid, unilingual Americans. Today, I was crawling in bed for my siesta, when I heard an exteremly loud brass band playing outside my window (my window faces inward, toward the courtyard of the residencia). That's right, the obnoxious Spaniards are a travelling brass band. I assumed they would only be playing for several minutes, maybe getting some last-minute practicing in before an important performace, but they played all the way up until dinner. I ended up resorting to curling up under my covers with my pillow, holding my hands over my ears and waking up every 3 minutes, startled by the obnoxious noise. I eventually caved when it was dinner time and they were STILL PLAYING, and decided to go get some food.

I went and waited behind them in the dinner line, shooting angry glares at them and their loud children. By the time I got to the front of the line, Lola looked distraught. That's the last straw, if they're going to mess with my new mom, they're going to have to deal with me.

The only good thing about them: a couple 8 year old girls in the elevator were convinced I was a model from an ad they looked at. That was the biggest compliment I've ever gotten, even if it was possibly an ad for hemorrhoid creme for all I know.

"Odette, Una Comedia Sobre La Felicidad"

This weekend I went and saw a really cute French movie dubbed in Spanish ("Odette") which makes me want to drop everything here and run off to France, even though I hate it there. Like all great movies, there is plenty of lip-sincing, but unlike many bad movies, they are lip-sincing to Josephine Baker doing French Jazz from the 1920s (instead of to bands like Smash Mouth). Odette works in the make-up department in the French version of Macy's, and has a regular customer who is obviously being beaten by her husband and is trying to purchase make-up to cover it up. At one point, she comes in with a really bad black eye and tells Odette she ran into a door, and Odette tells her, "You're pretty, you should find a better door."

I assumed this was just an obscure situation, only today at school we talked about spousal abuse in Spain and apparently it's really common here. There are around 100 cases per year of a man murdering his wife and then killing himself, according to my culture professor. Today we read about a guy who stabbed his wife and then drove to a warehouse to hang himself a couple weeks ago. Usually they don't even get very much publicity for this kind of thing since it's so common (even among teenage couples). Maybe I don't want a Spanish "door" anymore.

Soy Euro

Reasons I'm getting to be legitimately Euro:

1. I can sleep through cathedral bells.
2. I am a regular at a tapas bar and they recognize me and know what I will order (minus a couple points though because I usually get crepes and sushi which are not too Spanish).
3. I accidentally say "con vodka" when I order soda, then have to correct myself because it's 10AM.
4. I feel unnaturally drawn toward neon-colored things.
5. I take multiple siestas a day.
6. I felt guilty about leaving a discoteca at 4:30AM because it was so early.
7. I enjoy room temperature beverages.
8. I can eat mass amounts of deep fried food and still be hungry.
9. Naked people in public seem totally normal.
10.I had FLAN-flavored ice-cream yesterday.

Why am I so good at mornings?

Yesterday I woke up to doors slamming in my Residencia. I glanced at the clock to note the time, so I could later relay how outrageous this early-morning slamming really was. But it wasn't early. I was supposed to be downstairs eating breakfast. My alarm was still set to "on," but it hadn't gone off. I checked to see if it was set to the right time, and realized that, due to my new relationship with military time, I had completely forgotten the concept of 12 hour clocks, and set my alarm for 8 PM. Luckily, I made it on time.

Last night, I checked my alarm four times. I made Joanna promise to call me if I wasn't downstairs by breakfast, even though she hates using her minutes. This morning, my room phone rang around 7:40. I rushed over, picked it up, but no-one was there. Obviously, they were trying to contact me for holding up the buses. Still guilty for being late when the program started a couple weeks ago, I threw on the first thing I could find, grabbed my towel and my purse and sprinted downstairs. After 4 flights, I realized that my alarm hadn't gone off because it was set to 8. And my alarm was set to 8 because we were meeting at 9. And my room key was still in my room. I walked down the last flight, to the front desk. According to the sign, they open at 9. I gave myself a quick once-over: my mouth tasted disgusting, I had to pee, I had managed to select a shirt that had grease stains on it, and I really wanted to get back in bed. I walked into the Comedor, and Inma, our program director/mom was sitting there eating by herself. Now, I have no idea why this woman woke up so early, but I explained to her in broken Spanish what had happened and she told me the maids should be here soon and they could let me into my room, but I should eat while I wait. In the long run, it all worked out. Joanna even called me at 8:30 when I was upstairs picking out clothes that weren't covered in grease, and I got to go back to sleep on the bus. Too bad I don't have anything to wake up for tomorrow morning and get to sleep all day.

Woodstock

Tonight we tried to go to a bar called "Woodstock's" but everytime we would ask indígenos for directions, they would be extremely confused. We would repeat Woodstocks several times each, drawing out the oooo sound, emphasizing every possible syllable, until they would say "OH! Woodstocks!" in the exact accent we had just used. I will never fit in. No matter what I do. I give up, I'm going to just be a stupid American.

This Just In: The Biggest Areolas Ever

Today at the beach, there was an extremely pale woman several feet to the left of me. She spent hours (HOURS) rubbing oil onto her bosom (something I have not yet witnessed). She definitely has the biggest (AND WHITEST) areolas I have seen thus far. Think whale+oil+specialty porn no one understands and you'll understand what I was going through.

There was also a creepy man who was in his 60s that liked to stand 2 feet away from me and stare at me and Joanna. Joanna looked directly at him a couple times (I was busy reading and utilizing him as a sun-shield) to try to create an awkward situation, but he didn't catch on. How did areola-woman not distract him? This is one of the many life-mysteries I'm trying to solve.

Laundry

Today I decided to cave and wash my clothes for the first time since I got here. I went and broke a 50 by buying a 2 liter bottle of Fanta Limon (my favorite thing in the entire world), packed my suitcase full of dirty clothes and hauled it up to the 6th (really the 9th) floor where the washers and driers are. It was so hot up there (since it was 104 at ground level) that I couldn't figure out what was going on, and managed to put all my change in the machine the wrong way and have to go downstairs, break my 20 by buying a bunch of water (same store). I recruited Matt, the guy who lost his luggage and has done laundry billions of times, to come show me how it's done. Of course, this time, the machine just magically starts without me pushing ANYTHING. I blame the heat for making me delirious.

I took a couple hours off from the laundry scene after getting my clothes in the drier and went to a really cool Sherry Tavern. Then, when I got back some loud, stupid Americans were putting my clothes on top of the drier which I really don't mind, but they apologized A LOT. I was trying to figure out if I should be mad, since they seemed so upset, but I'm pretty sure I'm okay with it.

Los Simpson

I saw "Los Simpson: La película" last night at the local movie theater. Movies are way cheaper here AND they have a candy shop inside where you can buy candy by the pound AND they sell beer. That's right, beer. Be jealous.

The Hillary

I'm trying to figure out how many people actually read my blog, so if you do read it, can you post a comment or send me an e-mail or something? Right now I'm pretty sure it's just:



Zoe.

Price

Price came to visit me!

The Club

The other night was a girl in our program's birthday so we all went out to dinner. Only we arrived a little late and they couldn't make room for us so we sat at the next table over and got drunk/loud/obnoxious instead. We then went and drank more in the residencia to save money on drinks at the club. This later backfired, since I ended up drinking just as much as I would usually at the club, and was way too drunk. After dinner, we decided to go to the new part of town where the clubs are (after we had been drinking at a bar closer to our residencia where I went in the men's bathroom accidentally and was so confused by the urinal). We got to the club and were immediately turned away so we went to a bar (brothel) across the street instead to wait it out.

At this bar, a couple creepy guys bought Joanna and me drinks that probably had date-rape drugs in them since it took the guy about an hour to go get them and then he kept mixing up which one to give us. So, since I didn't want to waste the drink but also didn't want him around when I passed out, I started talking about my fake boyfriend and how I need to go find him. I sounded really full of shit though because I kept adding on random facts about him (e.g. "And he has a name, too, he's great.").

After we left the brothel bar, we went across the street to try again at getting into the club. We walked to the front of the line and started trying to chat up the security guard. He was not amused. We didn't understand why he wouldn't let us in since it seemed like old men and small children had priority over us, and eventually we gave up and got in line. By the time we got to the front of the line, instead of letting us in, they deferred us to another line, then a separate security guard came and started yelling at us about how he was going to call the police. Joanna was immediately terrified and kept saying "Don't call the police, somos amigos, somos amigos." Meanwhile, I was so confused about what he would tell the police ("These two girls are trying to get into a CLUB, arrest them immediately!") so I told him to go ahead and call them because it sounded amusing. Eventually, we just gave up and decided to take a cab home. The police couldn't make it.

We got in a cab that was parked nearby, and told him where we needed to go. Turns out, he was just a random cab in the middle of a line of cabs and you're supposed to go to the front of the line (who knew!?), but we ended up eventually figuring this out (after we had been lying in the back of the cab asking why he wasn't moving) and somehow made it home safely.

Goth Bar

Last night we went to a bar called "Ula Ula" to see our "buddies" that are trying to learn English. Sadly, the majority of the people in this bar weren't our "buddies" but obnoxious, loud, fat chicks from Texas. So, after about fifteen minutes of frying in there since it was so hot (probably because it was so packed with fat chicks) and realizing that the cute bartender probably has herpes because he's a cute bartender, we decided to leave to go to a bar we had heard of called Woodstocks - named after the music festival and totally decked out in paraphenilia from that era. On our way out we asked one of our friends where it was, but he was interrupted by a fat, Texan chick who really wanted to practice her English and give us directions. The entire time she was speaking I was thinking about funny, rude, snarky things I can snap back with but shouldn't say so I totally missed her directions.

We went outside anyway, and asked one of the people (the guy who had been circling like a hawk, grabbing people's almost empty glasses and bottles and putting them behind the bar to be "helpful) where Woodstocks is. He told us a couple blocks on the corner. So, we walked a couple blocks but there was just some other bar with an older couple in it. We stopped another man and he told us the same thing. So we walked back to the corner and across from the old-people's bar there was a Goth Bar. Now, I am by no means goth, I probably own 4 black articles of clothing and 2 of them are underwear but we figured the drinks would probably be pretty cheap and we would get GREAT service since it was literally empty, so we went in. They used more expensive/larger quantities of vodka, so we knocked back a drink each, posed for some pictures with the creepy wall art of Zena executing a large worm, Jesus being crucified next to a lava-dragon, etc. chatted up the less-attractive but probably equally STD-ridden bartender with long nails for a while, and then left.

By the time we got to Woodstock's it was pretty late, and I was pretty drunk (couldn't stop hiccuping enough to effectively consume my drink). I went to the bathroom - where they sold condoms for a Euro, panties for 2 Euro (come in all shapes and sizes, over 200! and you can't pick which ones you get, and vibrating cock ring for 3 Euro - and on the way back saw a girl in Crocs, which brought me back to reality that I need to just go home. So we walked home, and I continued to play online for several hours. Overall, getting really trashed to come home and play online alone: totally worth it.

Excursions

Today we went on another excursion - as we do every Friday. First we walked around Cadiz at about 9 in the morning to find this really tiny museum, and when we got there all they really had was a wood model of what the city looked like back in the day. We just looked at the model for about an hour, then got over an hour of free time - so waking up that early was completely pointless.

Then, we got on a bus (which I was very okay with) and got lost on our way to the docks to go to our next "museum." We went to the "dock museum" which just consisted of a bunch of pictures of people building boats and they made us run around and fill out a worksheet that involved figuring out what a tool was called and what it did/who used it. Then we walked through some bugs and brush but I don't really understand why we were out there. Mostly, the excursions totally suck and I'm really sick of waking up early on Fridays to go wander around with my hungover peers and look at really boring museums. Did someone really sit down, plan all these excursions out, and think we would have lots of fun on them? The best part was when we almost left five people behind since we don't make sure we have everyone. Being stuck at the dock museum forever would not be fun. I think the know that we drink in the Residencia to save money and are trying to punish us all.

Musica de Chicas

The other night, I was in an Irish Pub (still in Spain) with several other loud, obnoxious Americans (speaking English since we felt untouchable in a bar so similar to our motherland of America) and we were discussing our awkward plane rides over where our neighbors would glance at our iPods and we would tilt them away, hiding the blatant chick music we were using to pass the 10 hours over the Atlantic. I asked the boys what their favorite chick songs were, and luckily they had already (HAPPY ELLA!??! - everyone else ignore this) had several beers and were willing to name their favorite songs:

1. "A Thousand Miles" by Vanessa Carlton - I don't even like this song, but this was the first one that came to their heads. They immediately were pointing at each other and quoting it as though they had held secret meetings in the past to discuss this song and its greatness.

2. Anything by NSync - Not surprising, especially since it recently became not-gay to like Justin Timberlake.

3. "Beatiful Girls" by Sean Kingston - I kind of like this song too, but I'm still going to be embarrassed for them. I asked if they though about a particular girl when they listened to this song but they claim they just like it for it's catchiness.

4. "These Words (I love you)" and "Unwritten" by Natasha Bettingfield - I was embarrassed to hear that my roommate freshman year liked these songs. I can't even imagine how Ben's girlfriend must feel...

5. "Umbrella" by Rihanna - Enough said.

I've never had certain songs that I've really liked that identifies with a group outside of my own, so I'm not sure what these guys are going through and almost feel bad for exposing them while revealing their names (Ben, Travis, David) on the internet. I can't help but think back to my time in "the states" or as the Spaniards call it "AMERICA," when my neighbor (see: hillaryswoolley.blogspot.com it's funnier than my blog and it's in my honor even though she never writes about me) had a freakish obsession with "Tiny Dancer" by Elton John which is targeted at absolutely no one because no one should like that song. So I guess I should ask her what she was going through with that whole liking a song where she wasn't the target audience.

Topless Beach-goers

Although I have seen plenty of topless women (and men!) at the beach since I've been here, for some reason today was especially disturbing. First of all, there was a group of carnies - all topless - with their children - also topless and apparently practicing to become hookers or something of that vein since they were standing on top of rocks whistling at strangers - sitting in front of me at the beach.

To my right, there was a woman with the biggest aereolas I have ever seen in my life, who also had incredible saggy boobs even though she appeared to be in her early twenties (ah, the drawbacks of never owning a bra). She was spending some quality time with her boyfriend who appeared to be around fifteen years old. They enjoy activities like: her lying on top of him (note: topless) while he's lying on his stomach like a beached whale, him shoving her head in the sand and then forcing sand in her hair, her rolling in the sand once she gets wet so she can be wearing a sand t-shirt, etc.

Behind me there was a man who was trying to change out of his speedo and into some clean, tighty-whities to go to work after taking his siesta on the beach. This process somehow required multiple attempts, and a towel that was wrapped "around him" but was really just kind of resting on the ground next to him. He kept clutching his genetalia during these various attempts but it wasn't helping much to conceal it. Meanwhile, a two year old girl was running around him, clearly working on becoming a lesbian and being traumatized by this seemingly old man, but now that I think about it he's probably just 20 and aging really quickly from sleeping on the beach every day.

There was also a family wearing matching speedos taking creepy, sexual pictures of each other. I've noticed that ass-tan levels are very important here. If a guy isn't wearing a speedo, he pulls up his shorts so his upper thighs can still get as tan as possible. I'm just waiting for my first man-thong and then my life will be complete.

Sfera

When I thought my luggage was never going to get here and bought a bunch of clothes, I just threw them in a drawer when I got home and didn't look at some of them until a couple days ago. I realized that one of the shirts still had the "I will break your clothes and set of detectors" device attached which is probably why the alarm went off when I left the store. I decided to go back to Sfera today and have them remove it.

On the way there, I stopped by the SuperSol, which is basically a really small market that has a plethora of olives and limited amounts of everything else. There's a security guard who works there whom I was chatting up a couple days ago when my friend Joanna was walking around touching everything while I waited outside. (Only me "chatting him up" sounded more like I was just practicing Spanish I had just learned - asking riveting questions like "Where is the nearest bookstore?" "Where can I buy a towel," etc.) As I walked into the SuperSol, my shirt (which I had just been stuffing in my purse) set off their security detectors. I took the shirt out and showed it to the guard who forced me to put it in a locker after explaining that I have to take it back to the store where I bought it, that they don't take them off here. I kept trying to tell him I was on my way to Sfera anyway but he kept saying really slowly and deliberately what it was. On my way out of the store, I went to get the shirt out of the locker and couldn't get it to open, so he had to come help me. As he was turning the key with absolutely no effort whatsoever, I said "Soy muy inteligente" to myself and he laughed at me.

I walked down the street to Sfera, and the second I walked in the door, it set off the alarm and the saleswoman came running up to me. I pulled the shirt out of my bag (shopping back that I bought it in, not my purse) and said "I bought this here - " and she grabbed it from me and showed me the detector and started explaining it to me. As though I have no idea why this shirt I'm carrying around - for no apparent reason - keeps setting off detectors everywhere I go. So she quickly ran to take the detector off, and as I followed her, Joanna was falling down in the doorway slipping on water that had been dripping from the ceiling. We probably can't go back there anymore, but it doesn't matter because becoming best friends with the security guard at SuperSol is really time consuming anyway.