Bad karma

Tis a cloudy Tuesday here in Sevilla. The news says that the precipitation is crazy this week in Western Europe. It´s supposed to rain all over Spain tomorrow...but I´m sure that it will stay mainly in the plain.
Oh come on, you know you loved that one.
Aaaaaaaanyways, today has been quite strange, and I blame it on the weather. Bad weather=bad karma. Woke up at 10am to the cleaning lady, which was weird in itself because I think that the cleaning lady thang is pretty rare here. I burned my toast this morning. That kind of sucked. Left for the center at 11:30 just as the cleaning lady came into our room to clean. It was a cold and cloudy walk. Not terrible, however. Got to the center early, so grabbed a manzana from McDonald´s, as per usual, and waited until we left for el Alcazar. We left around noonish and took a short walk to el Alcazar, which is an old palace and the current quarters to the king of Sevilla. We entered into this old, vast garden with small buildings and structures that looked basically ancient. The palace is extremely large and hard to navigate, but the architecture, gardens, and artwork within it is absolutely stunning. Parts of the palace are still in existence since their construction in the 1200´s. Most of it is leftover from when the Arab population was large and in charge over here. Most of Spain´s old structures have a heavy Arab influence since Sevilla was a Muslim nation until San Fernando (I believe) drove them out (a.k.a. massacred) in the 1200´s (I believe, once again). San Fernando´s a hero here, I don´t know how I feel about that one. Anyways, this palace is crazy big and crazy beautiful, I took lots and lots of pictures which I plan on posting asap.
Afterwards we walked back home. My legs were killing me, they were so sore from the Catedral visit yesterday, and walking for 2 more hours in el Alcazar was no help at all. Our lunch was probably my least favorite meal we had because, well, it was pretty standard and American-like. We had spaghetti with cubed ham and a spicy tomato sauce with bread and a piece of pork. The pork was not great. You know, I started eating meat here, but I´m not at the point of my meat-eating where I can eat a big hunk of meat rather than meat within/mixed in something else. Blah. Lunch was also awkward because of the following: when Stacey and I arrived home for lunch we noticed her red suitcase, a.k.a. our food/liquor stash, standing upright against the wall. We figured that the cleaning lady had moved it to vacuum since a lot of our stuff had been moved around. At lunch, Maruja said that she had a storage place for the suitcases under our bed since they obstruct the cleaning of our room. Then she said "You don´t need to keep anything in them, anyways," which to me seemed very suspicious. Then, she commented on Stacey not eating a lot. Since I have a few more years of Spanish on Stacey, I told Maruja that Stacey had a smaller stomach, which she does. Then Maruja asked me if I do too, and I said not really and took a second helping of spaghetti. I think that she was testing us, especially Stacey, which is nerve-wracking since this means that perhaps the cleaning lady showed Maruja the suitcase and its contents. This could have insulted her because it makes her feel like her food is not good enough that Stacey needs to eat other things to satisfy herself. This is definitely not the case--Stacey LOVES her food, but she´s a huuuuuuge snacker and needs little things to hold her over between meals, especially since meals are spaced so far apart. Here´s the other thing that makes me nervous: the one rule that Luisa gave us before moving in was no liquor in the house under any circumstances. There was a half-full bottle of vodka in there. That´s baaaad. Now, Maruja didn´t seem angry, just a little suspicious. She was not being mean to us at all, just sort of conniving, I guess. Stacey didn´t catch on to Maruja´s hints. Later, thankfully, María del Mar showed up and made the meal a bit less awkward for me because I felt like a punished dog. I really felt terrible, we never meant to disrespect her, we love Maruja. After lunch I told Stacey about my suspicions. Now here´s the kicker: I had been keeping a suitcase and a duffel under my bed. The housekeeper had put my duffel inside of my suitcase, and my suitcase was under the bed still and not upright like Stacey´s was. This means that the housekeeper also looked inside my suitcase, saw nothing, and put it back under my bed. I mean, if she moved Stacey´s just for cleaning purposes, shouldn´t she have moved mine as well? Oy vey. Stacey and I really felt like crap at that point and kind of moped about. We wanted to get out of there, and hoped that Maruja wouldn´t tell Luisa. I hid the vodka in my laundry hamper and we took the snacks outside with us to throw out. Ugh, I hope that this doesn´t turn into anything. We just have to be supergood the rest of the time here! Well, we learned our lesson, that´s for sure. We´re really counting on the fact that this has happened before, probably even worse, especially since Maruja has hosted students for awhile now. Oh man.
So we took another cloudy, cold walk back to the center. Stopped at Starbucks (I´m pretty sure that it´s the only place that gives drinks to go) for some tea and hot cocoa, and got to the center around 4. At 4:30 we walked down the street to meet the bus for our bus tour. Now it was really getting cloudy out, bad karma I tell you! It was a double-decker bus, and we got to ride up top! I´ve never gotten to ride on the top of a double-decker bus, and I always wanted to when I was a kid and would see them in Chicago. I was quite pumped, and actually so was everyone else. We got headphones to plug in at our seats and listen to a taped tour. The English channel (haha, pun) was not working at our station (bad karma!). So Stacey and I listened to the tour in Spanish, of which, admittedly, we only caught half. The tour was really fun! It´s so fun to just ride the bus up top, not to mention look at some of the most impressive architecture I´ve ever seen. We went all around Sevilla, and I got to see so many places that I had not seen before...and from the best perspective! Near the end of the trip it began to get quite cold, and I was soooo tired from walking so much and stressing so much. Nevertheless, I had a great time. Then I came to the center and started this blog (they take awhile, as you could have guessed). Once the center closed, Stacey, Katie, Melissa and I walked back to los Remedios together. We had awhile for dinner, so we decided to salir de copas (go for a drink) for a bit. Every bar/cafe we walked into was either too crowded, too smokey, or too limited of a menu, haha. We finally decided on Cadillac, a sports' bar right next door to my building where the always play the futbol games. Stacey and I always talk about how much we want to go there every day when we walk by, and finally we were going! We all got a glass of wine, sat at a table and chatted. It was really fun and chill, and Cadillac is a really good scene/atmosphere. We must return, make it our Cheers! Feeling tipsy, we came back home. Maruja was watching TV, so I joined her hoping to make nice, and also to spend some time with her just she and myself. We watched "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" in Spanish, which was great, and we chatted, which was equally great. I guess everything's alright, then! Then we had dinner which was so delicious, a very Lisa-ish dinner: grilled calamari with garlic parsley sauce and a tomato anchovie salad with some sort of white cheese. Sooooo good! So Lisa-ish, and therefore so perfect. Now my breath reeks of garlic, it's terrible. But it was so good at the time. It was such a cold night, that after dinner I immediately cuddled up next to the TV over the space heater, with my lap top. We've been watching some sort of interview program, think "Inside the Actor's Studio," on which the host interviewed Las Ketchup. They sang "Asereje" accoustically! It's great. And here I am. We were thinking about going out tonight, but we're all so tired and it is way too cold. I'm thinking I may just keep warm, watch some Spanish TV, and call it an early night. This day was full of bad karma, but turned out pretty great. That's Sevilla for ya, it never disappoints!