Life's too short/party with the North Shore

Friday was, well, an interesting day to put it best. We stayed out till 5am Thursday night (who knows where the time went) so I slept until about 1 on Friday morning. Did some reading, did some showering, a lil bit of this, a lil bit of that, needless to say my day started around lunchtime. Lunch was good, yet strange. We started with this thick, white soup that seemed to be scallops. It was delicious, but was a bit overwhelming after awhile. It was served with a tomato salad that had some egg, cheese, and tuna in it. It was pretty good. For dessert we had canned pineapple slices which, admittedly, was a bit disappointing. After lunch Stacey and I ate the strawberries that I had bought the day before and they were DELICIOUS. Then I did some more reading for lit. while Stacey went for a run. Around 5ish we decided to go to the center to take care of some things, got there, and learned that it closes at 5 on Friday. Nooooo! However, we met up with Katie and Melissa there and we decided to wander around the center of town for a bit and run some errands. We looked at a hotel at which Katie's considering having her boyfriend stay over Michigan's spring break...it seemed pretty nice. Then we hit up the Corte Ingles so I could buy a cheap digital camera to replace my poor Nikon as I send it back to the sates. It was fun to shop for a camera! I bought a cute little Hewlitt Packard for 139euro...not too shabby. It's exciting to have a new toy! It fits in my camera case, and also fits my memory card, and comse with batteries and charger, so all I had to pay for was the camera itself. Word. Then we went to the basement which is the supermarket because we heard that they sell peanut butter there. You see, they don't have peanut butter here, it's an American sort of thing. I loves my PB and wanted some badly...as did Stacey. They had imported Peter Pan crunchy peanut butter, which is actually pretty expensive, but worth it. So we all bought some munchies and headed out. Suddenly, my stomach really started to get angry with me. I think that it may have been that soup. Oh man, was my stomach angry. Long story short, I had eaten something that my stomach didn't like, and it wanted out. So we wandered a bit more, the rest of the girls went to check out another potential hotel while I scurried off to find a bathroom. It was quite a feat, but it turned out successful to say the least. Anyhoo, I started feeling a lot better as we walked home along the river (it was a pretty nice night). We were all kind of hungry and of course had awhile before dinner, so we made a VIPS stop where Katie and I split a pavo wrap, Melissa got her Coca-Cola light fix, and Stacey got a muffin. Good times at VIPS. The security guard who stands next to the door was dancing to the music in VIPS. We love VIPS, it's our place now, haha. Then we all went home for dinner and made plans to meet up later. On the way I got a text message from Rebecca Paradiso, who is studying right outside of Madrid, saying that she was in Sevilla for the weekend. Yay! Highland Park like whoa in Spain, weeeeird! I told her that I'd call when I was heading out so that we could meet up. When I got back home I checked my email. That's when I got the email. It was from Al Duncan, the producer of the play that I directed with the Rude Mechanicals last winter, saying that Jeff, the guy who played the lead in that play, had died of an apparent suicide. Yeah, that was a shocker. I was literally speechless, unable to react in any other way but complete and utter shock. I'm still shocked about it and feel extremely weird about it. He is somebody who I considered a friend, although not a close friend, but a friend nonetheless. It's just very, very surreal, and it feels even more surreal since I am so far removed from it all. I was talking to Zach about it and he told me that there was an article in the daily about a law student who jumped off of one of the parking structures in Ann Arbor that week. That was definitely him. I couldn't, and still cannot even believe it. I want to be sad, but I don't really know how to be sad about it. It seriously doesn't seem real. As the news began to soak in, everyone was sitting down for dinner. I decided to put it aside and have a nice meal. Dinner actually sucked, it was huge hunks of fish with mayo for dipping. Now, I like fish, but I can't handle THAT much fish, especially with so much mayo...and after my scallop incident, the last thing that I wanted was fish. I sucked it up and ate. What compensated for the fish was the awesome salad, another one with mango and pomegranate, but now with cheese. Very, very tastey. Still a bit shocked, I went back into my room to talk to people, cuz I needed some regular ole interaction to snap out of it. I got an email saying that one of our parakeets died, and then an IM from Jon about a family friend of his dying, so everything seems to be crumbling back home in a way. Nah, I'm OK, it's all just a bit strange. I got an email about organizing people to go to Jeff's funeral. I'm upset that I can't be there. He has played a pretty crucial role in my life, he was the first lead of the first main stage play that I've ever directed. He was amazing to work with. He will always be remembered and referred to in my mind in every subsequent show that I direct. He's seriously a pioneer for me, no joke. I can't believe what has happened, I seriously can't. I think that that's why I still can't grieve it--it just doesn't seem real at all. As I was coping, Maria del Mar came in asking to borrow a bag for a weekend trip. Then she kept talking and talking which I appreciate, of course, I love her to death, but it was just bad timing. I was having a hard time keeping up good conversation, especially in Spanish since my English mind was going a mile a minute. She then asked if we would come hang out with them in the living room. We unfortunately didn't have time nor was I in the mood then. But I felt bad, I think that she was insinuating that we spend too much time in our room. Perhaps we do, I just don't notice. I made a mental note to spend more time with Maria and Marta.
Well, despite the mental chaos, I went out. Lucia from the CIU program texted me asking about what was going on and I told her to meet up with us at Plaza de Cuba to botellon. Stacey and I got there to meet Melissa and Katie, but Lucia took awhile...not a good first impression. Then we walked to meet up with Courtney and some of her friends from her sorority in the center of town. I called Rebecca to tell her to meet us there, and she was drunk! I guess she went out to dinner and had one too many rum&cokes. So silly. Lucia was being weird the whole way, telling stories about having a suicidal boyfriend, how she got maced by a cab driver, and how she got GHB'd one time. Ummm, we just met you, girl. Who tells these stories? Did she think that she was impressing us? Yeah, not to judge or anything, but we decided that we weren't a fan. So the 5 of us met up with Courtney and 4 of her sorority sisters who were here for the weekend, but study in England. Then, a few confusing phone calls later, Rebecca and 5 other people from her program met up with us. Rebecca was WASTED! It's so funny, I've never seen this girl under the influence before, and I was sober as I could be. It was a riot. She talked about sex a lot. Ohhhhhh Becca! She also told me about this Spanish dude that she's been dating, and that he has a mullet, which I said is terrible. No matter how well she spoke of him the mullet just completely ruined it all for me. Sorry, mullets are a definite no-go under any circumstance. It took awhile to gather everyone and figure out what we were doing. I hate dealing with big groups, I really do, and it was stressing me out. Rebecca wanted to dance, I don't really know of any good dance clubs, though. So we just decided to go to Alfalfa. Alfalfa was a freakin zoo...I've never seen it on a Friday, and honestly, I don't think that I'd want to see it again. You could barely walk. Since we were in a big group half of us went one way, and half the other. Stacey and I had made a pact to do some major chupitos together since we didn't get to really pre-game, but she went a separate way than Rebecca's people. So she told them to call her and she came along. We entered a bar that was so crowded it was unreal...it seemed almost impossible to get a drink. As we were waiting Rebecca's friend started calling her telling her to go get her. She sounded overwhelmed and drunk. We didn't know what to do...it was freaking chaos...if Rebecca left we'd definitely lose each other. So I walked her out, told Stacey I'd meet her back in there. We met with her friend, and they decided to go clubbing. Oh man, I was sad that Rebecca was leaving, but it was such chaos that I couldn't even process what was going on. It was very stressful, and I was in dire need of being loosened up. I met back up with Stacey in the bar and we forced our way to the front and took our first chupitos of tequila. Sigh. Then we went outside and socialized with Melissa, Katie, and Courtney for a bit. Then Melissa, who is in a sorority and sometimes likes to pretend to be like a stereotypical sorority girl (it's quite funny, actually, because she's really not like that), decided that Stacey and I weren't drunk enough and that she was going to "haze" us. So we all went into another bar and took two more chupitos. Then we went into this other bar that sold these huuuuuuge cups of beer for 3euro. I mean, these things were gigantic, like as big as a pitcher. I'll have pics up soon, it's quite a sight. Alfalfa was teeming with Americans that night, and in this bar we started talking to some, one of which I found out is from Buffalo Grove! I tell ya, it was a party with the North Shore that night. Suddenly we got a bad case of drunken munchies, and the pizza place next door had closed. So, huge cups of beer in hand, we started to journey towards home and hopefully find some food along the way. In front of McDonalds we ran into Kelly and Sam with some of the academic year kids. It was Stacey, Melissa, Katie, and me, and we were all pretty damn drunk. I ended up tossing my beer, having only gotten maybe a fifth of the way through it, way back near Alfalfa. So, Melissa and I had a really silly drunk convo with Sam about Koala Yummies. It was an intense convo. We left them, and walking the whole bridge into los Remedios Melissa and I had a long discussion about Koala Yummies which was the funniest thing ever, I'm just so freakin weird/random sometimes. Upon crossing into los Remedios we ran into Maggie and Sara who were walking out of Betis with a Spaniard on each arm. Those pimps! We asked them where we could get food at that hour (2:45am) and they directed us towards a Mexican restaurant called TexMex that was open till 6. Oh man, we were so there! TexMex was, what you'd expect, I guess. We were very, very drunk upon arrival. I couldn't focus on the menu unless I held it really still and close to my face and concentrated really hard. Yeah, I think I got hazed, haha. A couple sketchy men kept coming and sitting in our booth and trying to flirt with us. Ugh, I'm really fed up with Spanish men, honestly. They have this tainted perception of American women, they think that we eat up their cat calls and their intrusive attempts to flirt and pick us up. I really hate it, actually, it's pretty insulting. I was blatantly mean to these men, my drunkenness would not stand for sleaziness one bit. Ugh. I ordered a chicken sandwich, which I honestly don't remember eating because it was gone so fast. Melissa got some sort of quesadilla which was literally two very small tortillas with a bit of cheese. Stacey got chicken nachos, which looked fantastic, so Melissa and I then ordered nachos for us to split. After that and a glass of water, I had sobered up a bit. My stomach was not too happy either, it had gotten used to eating a higher fat diet, but the fats eaten here are easy to metabolize and are only used for fuel instead of festering in the body and causing one to feel gross and fat. This was the gross, American fat that I rarely eat in the U.S. My body was quite confused. Gross. We definitely needed to walk. We walked Melissa home, got back even more sobered up, and I was passed out by 6am. What a weird day/night. Who knows, I still don't know what to think about it. It just was what it was, I guess. Oh yeah, and this was a long entry. A lot actually happened on Friday, as you can see. Well, I do apologize for the length. I promise, Saturday will be an "easier-to-swallow" post.