More than ready for "El puente"

"El puente"=the term for a long weekend here in Spain.

Woke up Friday morning extremely exhausted from a crazy couple of days. I woke up at noon but had only gotten about 6 hours of sleep. It was ok, though, because at midnight that night I was scheduled to take a 7 hr bus ride to Portugal, and I needed to be tired to be able to get some sleep on the bus. I just don't do well sleeping outside of beds. Oh me. For breakfast I ate a small piece of my leftover bday cake. Yummy. Marta passed by and told me that both she and Maria del Mar had tried the cake and that it was "buenisimo". Hehe. Then I got dressed--put on my comfiest clothes for Spain's standards. So you know those days when you just wanna wear your pajamas all day? Yeah, we have many of those at UofM. However, in Sevilla, walking around in sweats is extremely taboo. It really makes you pop out as a lazy American. So I settled for a hooded sweater and stretch black pants. It's a start. Before heading to class I logged on thefacebook and read all of my lovely birthday wall posts and messages. Thanks to all, if you're reading this! Made some toast and walked to Teatro Lope de Vega. The weather really turned around, it was much warmer and very pretty out! Usually I'd be all pissed that it gets nice out the day after me bday, but in Spain my birthday is actually the 24th cuz, as I've said, I was born at 5:30am on the 24th Spain time. So the Spanish sun shone for my real birthday, gotta love it. Class was fine, it's getting a bit redundant. In fact, both of my lit. classes are really redundant and pretty useless right now. They're both just giving intros on the theatre arts (very redundant for me) and some little history briefs. I guess we'll really start doing useful things in class once we start reading the material. After class Stacey and I went to the center for our hour break. We ran into Courtney and Jessica and discussed the puente. Everyone had separate travel/visitor plans. Since it's UofM's spring break a lot of boyfriends and families were coming up to visit: Stacey's dad and sister, Melissa's mom, Katie's bf, and Jessica was meeting her bf in Barcelona to do some traveling around Spain and Italy for a week (she's taking the rest of the week off of class). There were huge plans in store since we had Sat, Sun, Mon, and Tue off. Since everyone had separate plans, Courtney and I, with nothing to do, planned a trip to Lisbon (Lisboa), Portugal for the entire puente. Our bus was scheduled to leave at midnight, so we arranged to meet up in front of the center that night at 11pm. Then Stacey and I headed to the center, I had a brief mandatory conference with Eva to finalize my class schedule and make any arrangements for tutors. I asked for a tutor for Art History and Iconografia since I struggle with understanding the profs in those classes, and they don't have any other people from my program in them. Then we all had Teatro hispanoamericano 4-5, which again, was redundant. My class is full of people from my program, so I said my weekend farewells to everyone. Then I sat outside of the University by myself and ate a bocadillo. Then I had iconografia 6-8, which made me a bit nervous since I would only have an hour after class to pack before dinner then catching the bus. So for the first quarter of the class I made a really dorky diagram of all of the outfits I planned to wear and what I had to bring in general. Yes, I am a huge dork, but I was nervous! I'm so terrible when it comes to packing, it really flusters me. For the remainder of class I really paid attention which, ya know, is always a good idea. I did learn some, who knew? During class the prof. then made a reference to a painting that is hanging in the Art Institute Chicago (some big Jesus that's "magnifico") and he asked who it was that was from Chicago. Thank god once again that I was paying attention! I immediately raised my hand and said "yo." Yeah for being on top of my game! Class got out at 7, thankfully, so I hurried home and began packing. Upon arrival I found a note on our small table from Maruja (she never writes notes...). It said that I had left the space heater on again (dammit) and if that happened again she'd have to remove it from the room. I swear, I've failed her way too many times this week. Ugh. Anyways, thanks to the list and diagram I made during class packing was a pretty smooth process...I actually finished early! Stacey then burst through the door all flustered because she had gotten extremely lost while trying to purchase futbol tickets at the stadium. She was lost for 3 hours in a really run-down barrio, I guess, and she got so frustrated and freake out that she took a cab home. Oh that girl. The funny thing is that, despite her frustration and worry, she was in good spirits. She had her moment, and got over it. I love people who don't sweat the small stuff, and that's Miss Stacey Hahn. Then dinner. We had grilled eggplant and croquetas. Very basic, simply because it was just the two of us and Maruja at dinner. Right when we sat down Maruja asked if I had accidentally tossed the napkin over the balcony when shaking out the tablecloth because one was missing. I definitely didn't because everytime I shake out the tablecloth I look over the edge to make sure that I don't. I tried explaining that to her. And if I had dropped it, I would have noticed and gone to get it. She then told me that before shaking out the tablecloth I have to count the napkins, etc. etc. She seemed angry. But this made me angry because although I shook out the tablecloth the previous night, I didn't eat lunch at home. So there's a very good chance that if it fell at all it was one of the Spanish girls. But, ya know, since we fuck up so much here it couldn't be anyone but me. I was so upset about her absurd accusation. Then, she asked if I got her note, I said yes, and she proceeded to sternly reiterate it. Then she turned to Stacey and got all up on her about how she had taken a shower today and didn't turn the water off to soap up. She ranted about that for a good while. Then, in her elevating anger, she started to get on our case about the laundry situation! I don't know if I discussed this in a blog, but I guess that we've been giving her too much laundry, and she told us only 2 pants and 2 shirts each for each load, which is a bit ridiculous, especially when it starts getting hot out. But anyways, she had told us about the laundry thing as early as Tuesday, she hadn't done laundry since, but for some reason she brought it up again! It's like she was digging for things to complain about us. It was really terrible and made us feel like shit. I mean, real dirt. We don't try to be a burden. For the rest of dinner it was really silent, not just because of how awkward it was, but also because Maruja doesn't really talk to us too much unless we talk to her. If she explains something to us and we don't understand, she doesn't take the time to explain it more clearly, she just looks to Maria del Mar or Marta to explain it to us. She only talks to us when we do something wrong. It's getting quite irritating. I was already pretty sensitized, so when the meal was over and we folded the tablecloth she blatantly counted the napkins while looking me in the eye. It was really insulting. I know for a fact that I didn't do it. I just can't really defend myself in Spanish. I was so frustrated and annoyed with her, I just couldn't wait to get away for the puente. After dinner I finished packing and was out the door by 10:30. Maruja was in her room doing something and I didn't even say goodbye, I was just so angry and needed to get out of the apartment. Walking with my bag all the way to the center wasn't as bad as usual since Stacey lent me her small rolling suitcase (gotta love that girl). As I approached the center some creepy bum started talking to me and being all creepy. With all of my bags I definitely looked like a victim so I just kept on walking past the center in the direction of the bus station. Then Courtney called me and I told her to just meet me across the street. Then we walked the 20 min to the bus station, boarded the bus a little before midnight, settled in, Courtney took some Nyquil and I took some nighttime Sudafed (I was still a bit sniffly anyways) and we left for Lisboa around 12:15. The bus was packed, there were actually a lot of Americans on it. It was a nice bus, but kind of tight. Luckily I was extremely tired and the cold medicine was kicking in. I turned on the iPod, blew up the airplane pillow, draped a blankie over me, and drifted off. I slept pretty lightly, waking up periodically, but I slept nonetheless. That's a definite success for me. I was so needing this vacation. Portugal, here I come!