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.