El "recuerdo de Granada" verdadero

="The real memory of Granada"
So, here comes our messed up night in Granada.
We get back to the hotel after hookah...we all go to our respective rooms. Stacey and I decide to host the pre-game in our room since the hotel hooked us up. Then Courtney called, back from skiing (which she very much enjoyed, btw), saying that we should pregame in her room since she wouldn't be ready for awhile. Otay. Stacey then called her bf to check up on him; I don't know if I've mentioned this already, but he broke his leg and ankle the other day falling on ice in Ann Arbor about a weekish ago. He went in for surgery the other day. So they're phone call actually turned out to be pretty long, so Stacey sat at our coffee table and took multiple vodka shots and ate peanut m&m's while on the phone with him. It was so funny, and quite a sight to see. Soon we headed down to Courtney&Jessica's room where we took shots, chatted, and watched Cheaper by the Dozen (in Spanish, yeah, random). We actually pre-gamed for awhile, getting all wrapped up in convo and all, and didn't leave the hotel until after 1am. No biggy, our hotel was right next store to some bars and a club, so we were set. We first went to an Irish pub literally right next to the hotel. It was packed but really fun. We all had an Irish car bomb, which was actually quite intense. Then we stood to the side and danced to the AWESOME music that the bar was playing...B-52's, Michael Jackson, etc....oh it was fantastic. Around 2ish Courtney decided that she was tired from skiing so she went back to the hotel. It's funny, before we entered the bar we ran into a bunch of people from our program who had decided to go to bed as we were leaving. We gave them crap for not living up their one night in Granada...we also gave Courtney some crap for leaving. Little did we know how right on their intuition was...
We then decided to find a discoteca (club) to do some dancing. Granada 10, a discoteca, was right next store to the pub, but we decided to see what we could find and then hit up that one on the way back. We were walking down the main street chatting and laughing and whatnot. We stopped for a split second so Melissa could get something out of her purse. A second later I see Melissa sprinting away and yelling. I was so confused, I didn't know what had happened. Stacey looked at me and said, "Some kid just grabbed her purse!" Yeah, so Melissa had been holding her bag securely next to her all night, and for the one split second that she took it off of her arm, 2 teenagers (about 16 or 17) ran up from behind her and yanked the purse right out of her hands and ran away! Melissa had run after them screaming but couldn't catch them. We stood there shocked and dumbfounded. I think that Melissa was yellling and screaming loud enough that suddenly this brigade of approx. 20 Spanish men came out, trapped one of the friends (not the one with the purse) and started interrogating him, helping Melissa out! It was amazing. Random acts of kindness like whoa. Jessica, Stacey and I ran over. Melissa was crying and freaking out, so Stacey and Jessica stood there calming her down. The men trapped the one guy up in an alley, but didn't stand around on the other side, so I swooped up around and trapped him on the other side with my hand in my pocket grasping the trigger of my mace. The kid was not answering the men's questions about his friend with the purse, so one of the men slapped him across the face. It was crazy! Then Stacey held her phone out and started yelling, "Cual es el numero de la policia??" ("what's the number for the police?"), and one of the men called the police for us. This was such a relief because Evan had told me that a friend of his got robbed in Madrid, and when they went to the police they were not helpful at all saying things like, "You're not in America so you can't just leave your things sitting out." Having the Spanish men do the talking ensured that we were helped. Meanwhile, Melissa is yelling and swearing at this boy in English because, let's face it, Spanish just won't suffice when you're that traumatized and angry. The police showed up pretty fast. They got the boy in the car (they don't use handcuffs...weird) and asked some questions. Luckily, when I'm empassioned, my Spanish just flows, and I was able to communicate pretty clearly. They asked us if we knew where the station is so we could go give info and file a report. We said no, but two of the men offered to walk us there. We got there in about 10 minutes with all of us trying to calm Melissa down the whole way. Luckily, she only had her camera, cell, and 5 euro in the purse...she had followed the advice of our program directors and carried her credit card in her pocket and kept her ID in the hotel. It was just the trauma of the whole thing. We got to the station and answered questions about what the friend who had the purse looked like (I saw him run away). It was mostly me and the two men answering questions because Melissa was so flustered, and suddenly my Spanish was coming naturally. Who knew? We sat for awhile, and the two men sat with us to make sure that we were OK. Melissa was feeling crappy, blaming herself for being a blonde American speaking English and looking like a victim. The men told us that it doesn't have too much to do with being American nor female, that the same thing had happened to them before, it's just part of being in Spain. But they also pointed out that that's the worst that it gets, that, for example, in the U.S., if you are robbed, it's typically armed robbery. In Spain, it's just, well, clever robbery, but almost never with weapons. It's usually just stupid kids, like the two that got her purse, looking to get extra cash for who knows why. We waited in the station then for about 3 hours. The men left after about 2 cuz they saw that everything was alright. That was so nice of them. While we were waiting the cops dragged in this beligerantly drunk man who was screaming, lashing out, and crying. It was weird, because only one cop carried him in, holding him by the elbows as this guy was kicking and screaming...no handcuffs. And, the drunk man was bigger than the cop. Yet the cop stayed perfectly calm. Finally two more cops approached, grabbed the drunk guys legs, and they carried him upstairs into a cell. For the next hour and a half we heard him screaming and crying. A little before 5 one of the cops grabbed Melissa for questioning, they then asked me to come too because I knew Spanish really well. It's so strange, cuz my level of Spanish is equal to that of Melissa's, I was just so full of adrenaline that the Spanish just rolled off my tongue like it was my native language. Crazy. Once we got to the top of the steps they told us to wait a second, they went to the end of the hall where the drunk man was locked. We don't know what they did with him. Jessica and Stacey, who were waiting downstairs, told us that the cops were beating him up right before we got up there. I had no idea. I guess that they heard hits, then cries, kicks, then screams, etc. etc. etc. Oh man, this night was the true "recuerdo de Granada" for sure. They asked us questions about appearance of the kids, where it occurred, where we were from, etc. etc. Melissa answered the questions because she was definitely calmed down at this point. The cop was typing up the report and Melissa, who always has an eye for the absurd (hence why I enjoy her so very much) chuckled upon noticing the cop's misspelling of Sevilla, and then his usage of spell check! Ha. Despite the detail of the police report, we got the sense that we weren't getting the purse back. Melissa was not in low spirits, though, because she didn't have anything of large value (besides the camera, but that's easily replaceable) in it, nor was the purse valuable. As we were giving more info, we told the cop about our program and that we could call Pepe, the only program director who came to Granada with us. I called Jessica downstairs to get Pepe's number, she answered and told me that she had already called Pepe, and he was downstairs! Nice. The cop said to bring him up. So I went downstairs and got him, the cop then told me to stay. Pepe gave him program info, his cell, etc. Pepe looked so tired, I felt so badly. We finally finished and left the station at 6:15 am, walking home in the rain. What a night, I tell ya. We then got back to the hotel and I literally passed out at 6:45. We had to be up in 2 hours for our trip to the Alhambra the next day. Great, just what I needed after the previous night's unsatisfying 4 hours. Well, the bright side is that I learned that I really can speak Spanish, and that I should always keep my purse inside my jacket if I decide to carry one. It's funny, also, how intuitively Courtney knew to go back to the hotel early, as did everyone else. Moral of the story: we should have followed the group, and/or we should have just gone to Granada 10.