Closing out the month

Today was beautiful...sunny and hot, but not too hot. It was actually in the upper 70's but the sun is so strong here that it felt like it was in the 80's. I can't believe it, it was AMAZING! I couldn't help but be in good spirits. I skipped tutoria this morning (I've been a slacker this week, I know), but still went to the gym around 11:30. When I got home I found Maria del Mar using my computer. I've always let her use my computer to check her email, but she always asks me first and I like to be in the room with her because she's a bit computer illiterate and I fear her downloading some virus or doing something stupid. I had left my computer out on the desk planning on putting it away upon returning it from the gym and I think that she thought that I wasn't coming back. When she saw me come back she said guiltily that she had been using it and hoped it wasn't a problem. I shrugged it off and told myself to always keep it hidden unless I'm home. I took a shower and got ready for the day. Maria del Mar was still in my room on the computer while I was putting on my eye makeup and she was watching intensely like a little girl watching her mom put on makeup. She told me that she never wears makeup on her eyes (which she doesn't need, anyways, she's naturally very pretty) so she loves watching people do their eye makeup. It was kind of creepy. It's funny, Maria del Mar is 28 but sometimes she reminds me of a teenager. Hehe. Anyways, I headed out around 1 for the center not without stopping for some fruit at SuperSol, which was quite a confusion. You have to weigh your own fruit there and I could not figure out the machine for the life of me. Alls I wanted were some bananas and an orange, is that so much to ask?? Finally somebody noticed my helplessness and showed me what to do. I'm a such a dumb American sometimes, I swear. I got to the center by 1:45 where I met up with Stacey and walked to class. We had Lope 2-3 and it was excrutiatingly long and boring. I ended up spending the whole class drawing a portrait of my professor. Yeah, that's what I resorted to. I'm actually kind of proud of it, hehe. I don't know, our prof. never talks about anything concrete, she just rambles on and on about Lope de Vega without any sort of structure. It's annoying and a waste of time. After class the sun had come out completely so Stacey and I sat outside of McDonalds (they have seating outside right in the sun facing the river) and ate our bocadillos. I also ate one of my bananas and a package of 70 cent aceitunas (olives) that I bought from OpenCor. The sun was so strong that I got sunburnt on my left arm just by sitting outside for 40 minutes. I was sweating, too, because the sun was so strong and it was so hot out. However, as we walked towards class around 4 I noticed that in the shade it was quite mild and pleasent. Dude, it's summer! It really feels like the midwest in June...hot, but not too hot. Just the perfect summer weather. You know, bbq weather. Oh! Due to the weather we all made plans today to take an hour and a half bus ride down to the beach for the day tomorrow! Yessssssss. Teatro from 4-5 was fine, more scene readings and lecture about the play. Then Camacho had one of our classmates go up and do a poetry reading. I guess this guy did a reading at the filologia poetry slam and Camacho loved his stuff and wanted him to share it with the class. He read for awhile and the poetry had nothing to do with Hispanic American theatre. Haha, oh Spanish University. It was so random, I think that his poetry was good, hard to tell. Pretty dense and romantic, basically. After class Stacey adn I walked back to los Remedios so that she could meet up with Katie to go to the gym (now she was going to sign up, too) and I was walking home to do some major blogging and webshots posting. It's the end of the month, so it's about that time. Well my comp was going insanely slow so I didn't really get anything done. Ugh. Then Stacey came home, we waited around going online, went to the grocery store to buy snacks for the beach and such until dinner at 9:30 which was amazing (except for one little incident). The food itself was AMAZING: a tuna and tomato empanada (oh man, unbelievable), and green beans, potatoes, and onions cooked in olive oil. For dessert, a flan cup. Perfect dinner, sooooo good. Except it came up that Stacey and I were going to the beach the next day and Maruja literally yelled at us for not giving her enough warning. The thing is, whenever we don't eat at home she told us to leave a note the night before, which we had been doing without a problem. She suddenly decides to get on our case about it? She was pissed because she had already gone to the grocery store. Whatever, as Maria del Mar said, she's cheap. I also blame it on the fact that she had worked really hard preparing the empanada so she was all pissy. She tends to get in pissy moods sometimes. Maruja got up at one point and Marta told lus not to worry about it, just smile and nod. It's what Maria del Mar deemed one of Maruja's "tonterias" (stupidities). Also, Maruja has been going to the doctor the past couple of days because she has high blood pressure. No wonder. It was really annoying, though, and kind of spoiled our meal. Oy vey. After dinner Stacey and I quickly retreated to our room where I worked on the blog and Stacey passed out. She had a frustrating day: she woke up not feeling well, then had issues all day trying to book a trip to Paris that's scheduled to happen in 2 weeks (and the price keeps rising), and Maruja yelled at us. It was just a combination of it all that just made her want to give up on the day and sleep. I don't blame her, I've been there. It's the last day of March and I can't believe how fast time is flying. Also, I'm kind of happy March is over. This was definitely my worst month here. Now, that's not saying much because I'm always loving it here, but so many things went wrong for me this month: UPS, overdrawing, money issues, bad hangovers, getting the worst of Maruja's moods, losing my cell phone, getting sick again, it never seemed to end, I tell ya. But things are looking up. And no worries, March was awesome: I went to Paris, celebrated St. Patty's, threw a birthday party, had some great nights out, started actually learning in my classes, enjoyed the warm weather, sigh. So life is good. I guess March just had more bad things happen in it than any other month...but just as many good things, so yay! I love my life here in Sevilla, life is better than great.

A sign that it's time to buy a phone

Stacey and I had decided to wake up early on Thursday morning to go to the gym together. I should explain quickly. We both feel like fatasses here so Stacey went on a mad search and found a small gym in los Remedios. She signed up for it a few days earlier, and I hadn't had the chance until Thursday. So we got up around 8:30 and headed over there. We were greeted by the owner, a former body builder who's super friendly and silly. I paid the 30 euro membership fee for one month (so worth it) and got to work. It's a very modest gym with old equipment, but it does the trick. Oh, it's also about the size of a small dance studio. It has a big screen TV that ironically plays cooking shows a lot, 2 old school ellipticals, a bunch of treadmills, a bunch of bikes, lots of weights and benches, some leg and arm weight machines. This would work. I did 20 minutes on the elliptical which felt great. I then spent an hour doing weights and abs. Meanwhile the owner walks around and talks to the people at the gym, sometimes does some lifting himself. He's so funny. Everytime he walked by me he'd say "Lisa!". Btw, I have to thank my parents for giving me a name that is pronounced phonetically and is Spanish-friendly. My name is actually a Spanish word, it means "smooth". Oh yeah. So it was obvious that he kept saying my name because it was probably the easiest American name he'd ever pronounced. He's great. I was loving this gym hard core. At around 11 Stacey and I headed home, we showered, I ate some toast, we packed our lunches and headed to the center of town. We wanted to read by the river and get some sun but it was really overcast and gross out (although very warm). We were strangely hungry so we walked down to a cafeteria by the Cathedral where we split a tapa of espinacas con garbanzos (which were DELICIOUS and less expensive than at Rafael Ochoa). We sat on the steps of the Cathedral to eat, which is a high traffic area, so, as per usual in Spain we got an annoying amount of cat calls and whistles. Suddenly this weird middle-aged man on a bike pulls up right in front of us, stares us up and down (literally, right in front of us) asks us where we're from (we pretended not to understand Spanish) and then he asked me to marry him. I'm not kidding. But it was creepy. I just started to ignore him until he went away. WTF??? Ugh, Spanish men. And they're getting worse now that it's getting warm out and I don't wear jackets anymore. Somebody even had the guts to yell "Big tits! Very good!" (in English) at me! I hate that more than anything, I was honestly upset about it. I mean, am I not aloud to wear tank tops when it gets warm out?? Ugh. I hate it so much. We walked back to the center, hung out a bit, and then went to Lope 2-3. Class was actually kind of interesting because the prof. discussed the Enlightenment (I took an art history class on that last semester) and how it affected Spanish theatre. Really interesting (for me and my art history dorkiness, at least). Then Stacey and I walked back to the center where we met up with Melissa to book our flights to Ireland! Yay! I finally booked my last big vacation, and we found really cheap tickets through RyanAir for about 120euro. So great! We're going the second weekend of May. I am so overly excited you don't even know. I'm going to Ireland! It also felt really great to make my last large purchase of my time here. Sigh, no worries, no worries. Then we had Teatro 4-5 which was fine...we've started talking about "300 millones" so Camacho has students come up and do live readings which are always a treat and a good way to make the hour fly by. My 6-8 class was cancelled, as was Stacey and Katie's, so we all decided to go read by the river...and drink 40's. The weather had drastically improved, it was in the upper 70's and sunny. How could we resist? So Stacey, Katie, Courtney, and I went to OpenCor and bought 40's of Cruzcampo and then headed towards the river. We got a great seat under the lilac canopy along the river. We ended up getting drunk so we didn't do our homework. Melissa was on a run and ran by us so we convinced her to buy one also and meet up with us when she finished. And she did. Then everyone bought another 40 but I was spent for the time being. We just sat around for hours along the river watching the sunset and laughing and giggling and just being awesome. It was so fun! I love it here so much. Then at around 9 we all went our separate ways and planned on meeting up at 11:30 in the Plaza de Cuba for a botellon. We then planned to hit up Antique (the swanky club) since I ran into that guy from Cleveland who I had met weeks earlier (the one opening up an int'l cocktail bar) who was walking with and introduced us to the DJ at Antique, Jorge. Jorge is really cute, and they both told us that we should go. Um, yes! So we had our plan for the night. Stacey and I rushed home, made a quick stop at OpenCor for cheap vodka and a bathroom (Stacey's second 40 was taking its toll on her bladder), and got home just in time for dinner. Dinner was pretty good but small. We had thin slices of grilled eggplant, a plain egg omelette, and endive salad with raisins, walnuts, and homemade blue cheese dressing (that turned out to be the best part of the meal). After dinner, although tired as hell I got ready to go out. Stacey had a pounding headache, so she bailed and passed out right after dinner. At around 11:15 I headed out to the Plaza de Cuba with my water bottle of cheap vodka and diet coke. This is how I avoid spending money in Spain, mind you. I got to the Plaza at exactly 11:30, but nobody was there. This wasn't the first time this had happened, all of us tend to run on the late side. At around 11:45 they still hadn't shown up so I walked over to Melissa and Katie's apt. building to see if they were on their way, but no luck. So I walked back to the Plaza...still nobody. I took this as a sign that I should give in and buy a freaking cell phone. I decided then to just wait there until midnight and then walk home and go to bed. I wasn't upset or frustrated, just feeling silly for going 2 weeks sans phone. I figured that there was either a miscommunication or they tried to call Stacey and give new info or say they were going to stay in or something...and Stacey was back at our piso. So at midnight I began walking home. I decided to take the route that goes right by Melissa and Katie's building in case I should run into them, but no luck. I was nearing my street when all of a sudden there's Melissa and Katie! They were freaking out, so happy to see me yelling "Where have you been??" and such. Turns out that they had sent Stacey a text message saying to meet up at Cadillac to pre-game since it would be easier for us and we could then walk to Plaza de Cuba together. But I wasn't with Stacey. Haha. Katie and Melissa were all concerned and apologetic, but I kept saying not to worry about it and that it really was my fault. What irony, I tell ya. And what luck running into them there! Wow. I love how things just work out sometimes. We then walked to Plaza de Cuba where we met up with Courtney and Jessica. It was such a nice night that we didn't mind just hanging out there and drinking for awhile (besides, people don't start showing up to Antique until about 2 or 3). While there we ran into Lizzy and Elena who also live in los Remedios and were walking back from dinner with Rachael's parents. We all talked for awhile, made great conversation talking about anything and everything. Soon they went back home and at around 1:30 we decided to move our little party over to Madigan's for car bombs or beer or something. Madigan's was pretty empty, but we just took over. Well, not really. We just hung out at the bar and watched music videos and talked. Courtney, Melissa, and Katie ordered cider while Jessica ordered a SoCo with lime. I didn't order anything because a) I didn't want to spend any money and b) I was already drunk enough off of the vodka I had brought. So we stayed there for awhile while everyone got progressively wasted. By 2:30 Courtney, Melissa, and Katie were all pretty wasted and just wanted to go home. It was actually pretty hilarious. I was drunk, yes, but not as much as they were, so it is always good entertainment to witness others and their shenanigans. Melissa, Katie, and I walked home together and I was passed out by 3:30am. A very fun, chill night preceded by a fun, chill day. I love my Spanish life!

My Day Off

Well Wednesday was a...unique...day. Yeah. So I woke up at 1:30pm on Wednesday afternoon with a pounding headache and terrible nausea. Yeah, basically the worst hangover I've had in ages. The pounding construction from above wasn't helping, either. I got out of bed to force some food and water down my throat and found my clothes flung all about. I don't know what happened Tuesday night when I got back. I sat at the toaster wanting to shoot myself in the head, forced 2 pieces of toast and multiple glasses of water down my throat. I also took some Ibuprofen. I then went back to bed hoping I'd improve...but it didn't. I was so nauseous I couldn't fall back asleep. I was just miserable. Finally I gave in and told myself that I should just suck it up and see if my nausea would...well...materialize. I sat in the bathroom for what seemed like forever, but nothing happened. And I was tired. So I just went back to bed and actually fell asleep. Yeah, so much for going to class. Stacey did the same, although she wasn't too hungover, more like recovering and lazy. We both then woke up again at 4:30pm. I felt a lot better but still tired for some reason. She went to the gym and I fell back asleep for another 20 minutes. Finally I realized that I was incapable of sleeping any longer, and that I had defeated my hangover (also thanks to some more water, a juicebox, and two bocadillos) and got up. I took a nice hot shower (Maruja wasn't home so I kept the water on the whole time, mwa ha ha), and then retreated to my room. I finally opened my shades to see that it was a gorgeous afternoon. I was getting ansy, so finally around 6 (yeah, I skipped all of my classes) I grabbed the iPod and took a walk. I walked on the far east side of los Remedios which I had never seen before. It was crazy; I found a Vodafone, a Blockbuster (going out of business, btw, weird), and a huge grocery store...all right near my place all along! Then I found the best discovery: el parque (park). I found a huge park just minutes away from my apartment! It's enormous and gorgeous. It was such a beautiful day, the sun was shining just perfectly making everything almost glow. The trees are gorgeous, there are grapevines, flowers, and plenty of benches and grass to sit/lay on. I'm definitely doing my hw there from now on. I was so moved by the beauty of all the nature that I took a bunch of pictures while slowly walking around. Everything was just so beautiful, and the Dave Matthews playing on my iPod was aiding the whole experience. At one point I started tearing up because it was so beautiful. I'm a dork, yes, but I was just so present to nature for the first time in ages. The lawn area also looks a lot like the Diag at UofM, so it was so comforting. Mmmmm. There were some fountains, a bunch of fun playgrounds (filled with children!), and even a soccer court (yes, a court) with adjacent stadium seating. Wow. After walking for about an hour I found a bench next to a little fountain on which a ton of children were playing. I just sat, listened to my iPod, took in the gorgeous weather, watched the cutel, precocious children play, watched male doves trying to mate with the females (they're twitterpated!), and just being completely present to everything. It was one of the happiest moments that I have had here. At around 7:30 the sun was starting to set so I decided to do some more walking. I was hungry so I walked down towards Vips. I ran into Melissa at Starbucks (adjacent to Vips) so we walked and wandered together. She poked fun at our not showing up to class, haha. So yeah, Melissa and I walked around los Remedios exploring together. She showed me this cute shop that reminds me of the stores in Granada; it's got a lot of cheap jangly jewelry and awesome tapestries. Yeah, must return. I was really loving los Remedios on Wednesday! After about an hour Melissa walked herself home and I walked a bit more. I stopped at the Rafael Ochoa cafeteria and bought some espinacas con garbanzos (spinach with garbanzos) to go; espinacas con garbanzos is one of my favorite Spanish foods--it's extremely simple and tastey--I plan on making it in the States for sure. I then walked home to find Stacey lying in bed watching Pretty Woman on her laptop. We chatted, talked about our days. It was so weird, it didn't feel like Wednesday at all...it felt like Sunday. Haha, what a great day off. We then ate dinner at 9:30: shellfish croquetas, green salad, and fruit salad for dessert. Not bad. After dinner we just hung out in the room and then went to bed pretty early. It was such a great day off...I need to do that more often, haha. Thanks, hangover!

FELIZ CUMPLEANOS A DOS CHICAS ESTUPENDAS!

TODAY IS STACEY AND JESSICA'S BIRTHDAY!!! YAYYYY!!!!!! They both turned 20 today, craaaazy! 2 of the only sophomores on the program who just so happen to be my good friends have the exact same 20th...talk about your coincidences!

Stacey and I woke up really early. Stacey had work at the center at 9 and we made plans to get up early and go to the little cafe down the street for our first experience of churros con chocolate for breakfast. Churros con chocolate is a Spanish staple as a breakfast and snack. There's a chocolateria (chocolate shop)/cafe that we literally pass everyday that always has people in the windown eating churros con chocolate. Since coming to Spain I've intended to give the authentic Spanish gluttonous tradition a try, and this chocolateria looked like it probably specialized in them. However, we have never gone! So we made concrete plans and went. Oh man, I was one tired kid this morning. We got there and ordered 2 raciones de churros con chocolate. First came the two little tazas (mugs) of authentic Spanish chocolate caliente (hot chocolate) which is basically the thickest hot chocolate you will ever encounter (tastes/looks like chocolate fondue...or a melted chocolate bar). Then came the silver platter of churros...there were so many! Churros con chocolate, let me preamble, is probably one of the most unhealthiest things that I've ever eaten in my life. That being said, I shall explain. It's rolled sweet dough deep fried. That's it. And then you dip it in your thick, hot chocolate. Oh man, it was very good, but so overwhelming. It was like eating the thickest, most fired, greasiest, chocolatiest doughnut(s) ever. We couldn't finish our platter it was so rich and overwhelming. Well, it's Stacey's birthday, I'll let the sweets and fried food slide for one day. Then Stacey left for work and I walked home where I proceeded to sleep for another hour and a half. There was banging from construction, but it was much more muffled and quiet now. They must have switched walls or something because I was able to sleep through it fine. I then woke up again at 10:15 and got ready for the day. It was a beautiful day out! about 72 degrees, sunny, and clear. A perfect day for a double birthday! I got to the center in a great mood where I hung out and went on the computer. I got to do one thing that I've been meaning to do forever: edit Stacey's facebook profile! She has not touched her facebook profile since 2004...I mean, it still has her senior picture up and says that she lives in the dorms. Not cool in my book, me, the facebook fiend. So she let me make her profile a bit more thorough and change her picture. FINALLY. Not gonna lie, it was starting to get to me. Due to the editing I was a bit late to historia del cine, but so was my prof. so I ended up being early although late. The prof. finally started lecturing about movies with sound and American cinema. We talked about the bigtime directors and production companies fromt he 20's and 30's. What I found most interesting was the Hays scale which is what caused so much censorship in American media and popular culture. Interesting. Everyone was restless in class and by 1 everyone was chatty, so around 1:20 she asked us if we were growing sick of lecture, everyone said yes, and so she let us out. So then I walked home in the even warmer weather, randomly ran into Diego on the street (he's a silly bartender, I tell ya) then got home starving and ready for Stacey's birthday lunch!! I was so excited because Stacey asked for her favorite dish which I think is Maruja's specialty: bacalao empanada. She also asked for the chocolate tarta de galletas that we had for both Maria del Mar's and my birthday. Lunch was served, and luckily everyone was home! This was the first time that we had all had a meal together as a unit(family?) since I can't even remember. And Maruja made sooooo much food! She even made extra empanada in a small glass casserole dish. We let Stacey have that one...it was like her own bacalao pot pie! There was even some leftover empanada so I got some seconds. We also had vegetable puree soup which was deeeeelish. The empanada, backtracking, was amazing today becasue there was less sugar on top and more fish and onion in the center. That's what makes the empanada so good: the perfect balance between sweet and salty. For dessert the tarta was served...and there was so much...there are still leftovers even after Stacey took seconds!! Oh man, amaaaaaaazing meal. I'm still stuffed from it. After dinner I finished editing my Granada story for that contest, submitted it, and blogged while Stacey napped. Jessica called her which woke her up and they wished each other enthused happy birthdays. We got ready for the night (we'd be gone until late) and left around 5pm...not before giving Stacey her birthday presents! She loved them, she even teared up when she got the soaps! She was so touched and happy, she LOVES her gifts! I love giving presents, yay! We stopped by the Ochoa confiteria (confectionary) where Stacey bought this pastrey that's in the window that she's been waiting to try for her bday. I had some, it was DELCIOUS...probably best Spanish pastrey that I've had. It's gluten-free, actually, so it's thin and not very bready, it's got yema (egg yolk), nata (cream), and nuts in it, covered in creamy milk chocolate and toffee chips. Mmmmm. I then walked to class which was pretty boring. More about Ancient Rome...this time we learned about foros (forums). We got out of class at about 7:10 (NOW he lets us out early) so I walked to one of the copisterias across the street and bought some cute birthday cards for Jessica and Stacey. I then went to Starbucks to meet up with Jessica and Stacey to go out for bday dinner. Jessica showed up around 7:45 while I was mid card-signing so I made her look the other way. It was so good to see her, finally, and wish her a happy birthday! She was having a really good day: the weather was gorgeous, she bought herself shoes, she wore her favorite dress, life was good for Miss Jessica Sapick on her 20th birthday. She then went to use the bathroom and Stacey showed up. While I was in class Stacey bought Jessica some small birthday gifts: some palmeras, a Sevilla shot glass, and a vintage poster advertising the Spring Fairs. Perfect. We then all walked towards Nervion, the barrio in which Jessica lives that is quite a hike. We took the scenic route since it was so gorgeous out. We walked through a park and passed the Plaza de Espana, the famous grandiose plaza in Sevilla which I ironically had not yet visited. It's HUUUUGE and beautiful! Yay for living in Sevilla for 2.5 months and not seeing its major landmark. I'm terrible. We then got into Nervion and found an outdoor tapas de marisco (shellfish tapas) bar with a good view and a good, large menu. We all ordered 3 tapas each; I got tuna sirloin and red pepper salads, one montadito (small tapas sandwich) with smoked salmon (mmmm lox) and burgos cheese, and then I got pulpo a la gallego which is a grilled octopus dish with oil and cayenne. Very good, that was really quality octopus. It's a specialty in Spain, and it was quite obvious why. We gave Jessica her gifts which she loved. Yay! I then gave both of them their cards which they both loved because they were cards with funny animals in costumes and on the inside of the cards I drew funny cartoons of them. Hehe. After dinner we booked it over to SuperSol to buy beer because since Jessica's senora was out of town we wanted to have a pre-game piso party involving a rousing game of Kings. SuperSol closes at 10 and it was about 9:45 when we left. We got there at 5 to ten to find it closed...turns out closes at 9:30. Uuuugh. So we went to the gas station next store. We were in line behind this group of Spanish kids who bought some forties. We got to the front of the line at two minutes to ten...and he wouldn't sell us beer because he said that it was past 10! There's a law in Spain that you can't sell liquor at stores after 10pm. He said that his watch says 10:02. He just served some Sevillanos and it definitely didn't take 2 minutes! Fucking Spanish workers discriminating against the americanas. Hate that sometimes. Luckily we all had our own pre-game liquor with us so we weren't lacking in the liquor dept...we just couldn't play Kings. Boo. We then walked back and quietly snuck up to Jessica and Courtney's piso. Their place is SO NICE! They have always thought that their senora had money, and it was pretty obvious. All appliances and such were new. They have a dishwasher, a dryer, 2 tv's (one is a big screen), marble finishings, and a nice room. They also have 2 cats that nibble each other in a manner that makes it look like they're having sex. It's kind of funny. Jessica's mom had sent Jessica a cake with candles and frosting in the mail, and Jessica had frosted it. So now we had 2 cakes. Jessica has a webcam and her mom wanted Jessica and all of her friends to record ourselves with the cake lit and singing happy bday and then send it to her. Hehe, awkward. Finally Katie and Melissa showed up and we could officially begin the piso party. We lit the candles which turned out to be a whole ordeal because I had brought candles, too, which turned out to be sparkler candles. We sang happy bday in Spanish and it was awkward, of course. Then the two of them blew out the candles which took forever since they also turned out to be trick candles. It made the whole piso fill up with smoke and we got all nervous about the alarm going off. Luckily we aired the place out in time. Then we dug in! SOOOO much cake. The cake from Campana that I brought was, well, FREAKING AMAZING. It is seriously one of the best cakes that I have ever eaten because they use ingredients differently. It was a white cake that obviously had a lot of egg in it, with a creamy light chocolate frosting and white chocolate candies on top. The cake wasn't overwhelmingly sweet like most American cakes (think Deerfield Bakery) and it tasted like there may have a been cinnamon or some sort of liquer in the frosting. Ugh, so good. Jessica's cake was so good and tasted very American. It was an exceedingly dense double chocolate cake which was basically a brownie with frosting. Yum. We all felt sick after eating so much cake! Hehe. Stacey, however, really felt sick. After eating so much sugar all day she had developed a bad stomach ache! Oh no! Stacey is such a trooper, though, and refuses to let that ruin her big night, so she took every ant-acid in the piso and chilled out. Then we retreated to Jessica and Courtney's bedroom where we played music and drank. It was so fun--just like being back in Ann Arbor! I love piso parties. I'm excited for my piso next year (hint hint Nicole and Amanda)! Jessica even wore a wig. It was great. Stacey was feeling pretty crappy, but she knew that it was just really bad acid and that it would pass soon, she just needed to wait it out. She is such a trooper, really! I love that girl. At around midnight we hailed down some cabs and headed to Isbiliyya for the birthday party. We got to the club which was pretty empty at the time. Some of us ordered drinks and some sat outside in the warm night air waiting for the place to really start getting crowded and for guests. The club is really cool--it's large, but not too large, and it has a big stage with great lighting. I ordered a vodka tonic which turned out to be mostly vodka and a bit of tonic...so it was worth the 6euros. Hehe. Also, my drank glowed in the blacklight, so cool! Stacey sat outside with Katie drinking the vodka she had packed herself...her stomach had died down so she decided that it was a good time to drink and hope that it would get her mind off of her pains (and it did). People started showing up, a lot of people from our program, actually. It was so nice and great! I went out to the floor to do some dancing, they were playing awesome music--they were playing Jock Jams! It was awesome. Meanwhile, on the big screen TV they played Madonna videos. It felt good to go to a club where I didn't have to worry about being groped or pestered by creepy Spanish men...mmmm gay clubs. Soon I felt a tug on my arm...it was Stacey urging me to take a shot with her. Somehow she got a large group together to take a shot...I hadn't even finished my drink! I guzzled it down and took a shot with everyone. That's when things got fuzzy. From that point forward my memory is in bits and pieces...I'll do my best for you. At one point Melissa and Courtney were pushing Katie out the door...I guess that she got really wasted and they had to send her home. The drag show started around 1:30 which involved a lot of talking and joking on stage (I can't understand Spanish that well when I'm drunk, however), and then lip-synching to 80's music. Awesome! At some point Jessica and Stacey ended up on stage and everyone sang happy birthday to them! I don't really know what else happened, I know that I drank more, though. I know that I took a shot with Alissa in remembrance of the memory of our joint birthday. I just remember things getting fuzzy and wobbley and watching drag queens and being outside and who knows. I have a ton of pictures from the night and I probably remember taking 3 of them. Oh man. At some point we all decided to go home. Melissa, Stacey, and I shared a cab. I remember looking out the window and thinking that everything looked like a cartoon. We got off at the Plaza de Cuba and then walked Melissa home, and then walked ourselves home. I remember the walk: I was so drunk that I couldn't form sentences and it frustrated me. Haha. We got home and I literally threw on my pajamas and passed out. I have no conception of what time it was. It was the drunkest that I've been here...it was insanity. Never again. But it was worth it--it was Stacey and Jessica's birthdays!!! I had sooooo much fun and was so happy that their birthday party was a complete success. Yayyy!!!

I'm a party planner, watch me go!

Woke up to banging again...earlier than expected...I hate this so much. Oh man, I was fuming this morning. Seriously, I was about to march right upstairs and tell them to shut the hell up. UUUUGGGGGHHHH. I made some toast, complained to Marta about the construction, got ready, and headed out to run a ton of errands...I had to prepare for Stacey's bday festivities! It was really warm out, however muggy and humid. Gross, my least favorite kind of weather. I walked down to calle Asuncion to stop at the homemade soap store that Stacey LOVES. She eyes it every time we pass it and comments on how she wants to buy herself some nice soap. I bought her a gift pack sampler with a new, nice sponge (when we first got to Spain she could not find a sponge and was forced to buy a crappy washcloth). I know she's going to love it. I then walked to Historia del cine where we watched a silent Russian avant-garde film called The Battleship Pomtemkin. It was pretty good, kind of disturbing at times, and surprisingly ahead of its time. It's a heart-wrenching depiction of the Russian Revolution. Whoa, do I sound like a movie blurb or what? After the movie I walked home for lunch, stopped at Vips to buy some wrapping paper and this fancy box of Swiss chocolates that are supposed to taste like mini desserts. Stacey had been eyeing this box, but it's expensive so she never went for it. I, however, did, mwa ha ha. Then I got home and had lunch; it was just Maruja, Marta, and me, and lunch was pretty good. A basic broth soup with garbanzos, potatoes, and some sort of red meat mixed in it. Then we had a seafood salad with hearts-of-palm, crabmeat, shrimp, and tuna. Quite good, I dare say. After lunch I planned to wrap Stacey's presents when she suddenly came home. Uh-oh. At least they were hidden...but when would I wrap them? Stacey then hopped in the shower. I quickly fumbled around doing the worst wrapping job of my life and finished and stashed them in time for Stacey to get back from her shower. I mean, I had just hidden them in my side of the closet just seconds before she walked in. Then she decided to blowdry her hair which requires the mirror which is on the inner side of the door to my side of the closet. Therefore she had to open my closet. I hid the gifts well enugh, but the leftover wrapping paper was sticking out a bit. Oof. When she wasn't looking I pretended to mess around with my scarves so as to conceal the evidence. At 3:40 we both left for the center because Stacey had class at 5 and I had my first art history tutoria at 4. I met my tutor who's a really nice guy, although his name has escaped me. We went over my notes and talked about the profs. This man knows the art history dept. like none other, he knew my profs and their accents and what to expect from the exams. He told me that my historia del arte exam should be easy. He also told me that my Iconografia professor would allow me to do an independent project as a final rather than take the exam. NICE!! He also told me that he knows all of the stuff that I'm studying like the back of his hand so our tutorias will run smoothly. Then he pulled out some textbooks from the center library that he said would help me out; one was a very well-done overview of History of Art and its movements with illustrations that I had seen in my hist. del arte as well as iconografia class. Sweet. He then flipped over the book to reveal that the book was written by none other than my Iconografia professor! I guess that my icon. professor is, like, the man when it comes to art history in Spain. He's published, travels and speaks, goes to conferences...basically he knows it all. Wow, I mean, I could tell that my prof. was intelligent and really knew his stuff, but I had know idea that he was a celebrity in the Spanish art history world! Craaaaaziness. All in all, this tutor is going to pay off tenfold and I am so grateful and feel much more at ease about my courses. After tutoria I had to walk to Campana because I was scheduled to pick up Stacey and Jessica's bday cake at 5:30. It was hot and humid and foggy out, blaaaah. I was sweaty and gross. I got there a bit after 5:30, the man who had helped me on Friday remembered me. He showed me the cake--which looks awesome--and then packed it up for me. It was warm out, and since it was a truffle cake I realized that I'd have to keep it in a colder place. I had originally asked to get the cake on Monday because I thought that'd we'd all go out for birthday dinner Monday night, but Jessica realized that she couldn't. Her senora was going out of town on Tuesday so we considered having a piso party there so I thought to hang onto it until then. So here was the dilemma: I couldn't carry this cake around with me all day and evening. I had class 6-7:30 and then was to meet up with Katie, Stacey, and Melissa at Starbucks at 8 to go out for a pre-bday dinner. I could just meet them at the restaurant, but I don't have a cell phone. So I considered skipping class and running the cake home, but missing class would be rough since I'm the only American in this class. So I decided that that evening would be the perfect opportunity to figure out the bus system. I planned on checking the bus schedules at the stop by the U. after class to see if a bus went by my place and quickly. If so, then I'd go for it. If not, then I'd just have to deal with the cake all night. Walking back to class with the cake was a hassle; it took me longer, and since it was wide it was an effort to get it down the narrow sidewalks of Sevilla without bumping it into people. I got to class late, felt kind of like an idiot for it...and I was more sweaty and gross from the weather. My old prof. was back which didn't only suck because he has such a strong accent and is so boring, but also because he talks for the entire hour and a half (the sub always let us out early). I sat there listening to him ramble on and on about coliseums and ancient roman theaters praying that he'd just let us out at 7. My prayers went unanswered and we got out at 7:30. I bolted as fast as I could to the bus stop which is about 2 blocks from the U. I waited at the crosswalk at a red light which takes forever to change. I saw a bus pull up, and right as I had crossed the street it left. I caught that it was route 41. I then looked up the routes on the bus sched. and realized that the next 41 wouldn't come for 8 minutes (they have electronic signs that get signals from the buses saying when they're coming and how far they are...pretty nifty system). OK, I could still do this. The bus finally came, I paid the 1 euro fee and was on my way. Damn traffic slowing it down, though! The bus was nice, though, not crowded, modern, comfortable, and it had a tv that showed a map of where we were and where the next stop is located. Pretty high-tech. The bus dropped me off at a stop about a block from my place at about five to eight. I'd still be in good shape because they all have class until 8 so they wouldn't be at Starbucks until about 10 or 15 after. I walked as fast as I could without damaging the cake. Luckily the elevator was waiting for me right there. Got to the seventh floor, luckily got the cake to fit in the fridge, wrote Maruja a note about it, and then ran out the door down the street to another bus stop a couple blocks from my place that I know goes back to the U. I looked at the schedule and it said that the bus that I wanted was also route 41. Luckily the bus came merely a minute after I got there. I paid another euro and was off again. It was now a little past 8. I could make OK timing as long as traffic wasn't too terrible. It wasn't, we got to the U. area around 8:12, but the stop is a block down. As we turned the corner to head to the stop, we passed the Starbucks where I spotted Katie, Melissa, and Stacey standing outside looking around all confused. I knocked on the window to them but they couldn't hear me. Don't leave! Don't leave! I kept thinking. Damn me for no cell phone. I got off the bus and literally ran over to them. They asked where I had been and I told them that I was on the bus and had been in los Remedios because I forgot money. I think the excuse worked. They told me that they were starting to assume that I had gotten mixed-up and went to the Starbucks in Remedios and they were about to leave and walk there. TALK ABOUT LUCKY TIMING. We planned on going out to sushi, but everyone wanted to try this cheap Thai restaurant somebody had told us about. So we walked back towards los Remedios (oh my life is silly), stopped quickly at Melissa and Katie's place so they could get sweaters and money, then we walked down calle Betis (the restaurant is right off of it) to the restaurant. It actually turned out to be a Chinese and Thai restuarant...and it coincidentally looks just like Yummy Bowl in Highland Park. The menu is just as cheap, too. It's also so long, everything just looked so good! We all ordered noodle dishes (pad thais, glass noodles) and spring rolls. While waiting for the food we got some entertainment out of the big fish tank next to which we sat. Then our spring rolls came which actually turned out to look like overly-sized egg rolls...the biggest egg roll you could ever see. And it tasted like one. How silly. Then our food came. I got glass noodles with shrimp which was pretty good. The highlight of our meals were the sculptures that came with them carved out of carrots. Craaaazy! While eating Jenny, a girl on our program from Cornell, walked in with a group of people who I didn't recognize and they sat at a table right next to ours'. Of course the American students take over the cheap Asian restaurant. We then got the bill and a free dessert shot of some sort of honey liquor which was quite tastey. We all paid for Stacey's meal, and even with that and each of us getting an appetizer we only paid about 7 euro each...that's a 4-5 euro complete meal each...and we got so much food! Yeah, definitely coming back there. Stuffed and ready to bust we left. Stacey and I walked Melissa and Katie home and then walked home ourselves. I did some blogging and edited one of my blogs because I'm submitting it to this book called "Spain from a Backpack". We got an email about it a few weeks ago from our program director asking for stories from students studying abroad or backpacking through Spain and/or Italy. Since people have been giving me compliments on my story details and some have suggested publishing my blog (ummmm no, btw) I thought that it wouldn't hurt. So I'm submitting the entry about my first day in Granada, but I've had to do some major editing on it to make it more autonomous and whatnot. I'm pretty proud of it, I don't know. If it gets selected I'll get a hundred bucks and bragging rights for being a published author, haha. Wish me luck, I just submitted it today! So all of that ended up taking awhile. I went to sleep, finally, at a quarter to 2. It was a pretty hectic day, but all worth it for Miss Stacey Hahn.

Daylight Savings? In Spain?? Where have I been...?

Finally a morning sans construction! Sigh. I woke up around noon with Stacey gone...she had woken up early to go to the Arab baths for some major spa time with Jessica (their birthday gifts to themselves). It was sunny and 79 degrees outside so I made some toast, poured some water, got dressed and sat out on the porch to sunbathe and read. I finished Harry Potter 2, yayyy!!! Oh man, I love J.K. Rowling for her literary genius. I'm so excited to start the 3rd! At around 1:30 Marta called me in for lunch which confused me...why were we eating so early? When I got inside I looked at the clock and it actually said 2:30. Oooohhhhhhh yeeeah; I forgot that there was a time change Saturday night. Yup, they practice Daylight Savings in Spain, and it was March 25th at night. What was I thinking? Lunch was soooo amazing: we had veggie and shellfish paella (I love Maruja's paella!) and a really good salad with corn and hearts-of-palm and some really large capers on the side (I think that that's what they were...). Found out while watching TV that Raquel Moscura, one of the most famous singers in Spain who has been fighting terminal Cancer since I had arrived here (it's been all over the news) had died the night before. So sad. It was all over TV, everyone was talking about it...kind of like how it was when Princess Diana died. After lunch I went back outside and did a tad more reading. Marta came outside and told me that she was getting ready to watch How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days. Oh, by the way, I'm writing this on Monday night at midnight, and Stacey JUST TURNED 20!!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, STACEYYY!!!!!!!!!!! Anyways. So I went to charge my iPod, watched some of the movie with Marta (gotta love those movies sometimes...and Matthew Mcauneghey...), then packed up and headed to the river to do some reading. It was soooo warm out, I was even sweating! I took a long route to the seating area because it was so nice out and I just like walking...and my iPod. I then found an open seat in the outdoor bar area and started reading the next play for Teatro, "300 millones" which is really crazy, weird, and amazing so far. It's very psychoanalytic and depicts figures in human dreams. Craaaaazy. After an hour and a half I hear my name being called--it was Stacey! She and Jessica had gone out to lunch together after the Arab baths and then went to the river to sit out and do some reading. She and Jessica were sitting merely feet away from me! I joined them, we chatted, they had had a nice "date". They were late to their appointments at the baths due to the time change (again, who knew?), but they still got in and really enjoyed themselves. They went into all of these baths with different salts and got massages...I gotta get myself over there! They also had a nice lunch. We all sat together reading, people watching (which is always a treat in that seating area by the river). You get a good dose of children in their silly church outfits (think boys wearing tights and suspenders...yeah, the Spanish are kind of crazy). I also spotted a woman in an electric wheelchair holding a yorkshire terrier with a bow in its hair in her lap. Is that what she considers taking a dog for a walk? Oh Spain. Stacey left around 6:30 because she didn't have any hw with her (she had been reading Jessica's copy of "300 millones") so she could head home and grab more work and then go to Starbucks for the night (she had a lot of hw so she decided to skip dinner at home and lock herself in Starbucks until closing). I then read for another couple hours with Jessica and watched a pretty awesome sunset over the Guadilquivir river. At around 8:20 I left. I met up with Stacey at Starbucks, chatted with her a bit at her table to allow her a homework break, and then walked home. For dinner that night we had cooked green beans, potatoes, and onions with olive oil, and then the breaded lightly fried chicken filets that I had eaten with Stacey that past week when we made our own lunch. After dinner I showered (I was gross, sweaty, and dirty), got ready for bed, did some blogging and emails, Stacey came home around 11, etc. Maria del Mar used my comp to do some online hw exercises which was kind of annoying because Stacey was exhausted and passed out around 11:30, and since my comp needed to charge Maria del Mar had to do hw in our room. I felt kind of badly, but luckily Stacey's a pretty deep sleeper. I finally finished up my online errands and went to bed around 1:45am.

PISO PARTY!

When I passed out so late on Friday night I wasn't too worried about not sleeping because the construction above my unit never occurs on the weekends. Well I was dead wrong. At 10am, like clockwork, I was woken up halfway between drunk and hungover with a pounding headache aided by the incessant, loud pounding of hammers from above. I was angrier than angry and I could not sleep for the life of me. So I decided to just screw it all, get up for the day, and then take a nap around siesta time--when they usually stop working for the day. I got up and went to the bathroom and felt so tired and half drunk/half hungover that I just needed to lie down. So I went back into my room and, despite all of the banging, fell right back asleep and slept until 1ish. Hehe. Woke up with a hangover so I ate 2 pieces of toast and drank a copious amount of water. You know, before passing out Friday night I drank 2 glasses of water, took a multi-vitamin, and ate a piece of bread...and yet despite my best efforts I still woke up with a hangover. I think that it was the sugary Tom Cruise shot that did me in. I take it as a sign from the pop culture gods...never go for the Tom Cruise, he's bad news. Maruja was at a wedding all day so she left food for Maria del Mar, Stacey, and I to make ourselves. Maria del Mar also had bought a six pack of her favorite beer--lemon flavored Cruzcampo--and shared them with us. I at first hesitated, but my hangover really was not a bad one and was fading so I said why not. It was actually pretty good; tastes like Mike's Hard Lemonade meets Cruzcampo. But I was not having the whole liquor thing, so I took small sips and later ended up pouring the rest of it down the sink in secret. Oopsy. Maruja left us the ingredients to make a Cuban rice dish which at first looked pretty lame (just white rice and tomato sauce) but in the end turned out to be delicious, easy, and something that I plan to recreate in the States. It's white rice, tomato sauce, sausage, and an egg fried in olive oil all mixed together. We also had a green salad and strawberry batido for dessert...a lot of batido since it was only the 3 of us. While eating we watched "The Simpsons"! Yay for watching what we want to watch! After lunch I was still tired and a bit hungover, but the sun was coming out and I needed to get out of the house and get myself back in the swing of life. So I walked down to the river to get some sun and do some reading. I finished "Barranca Abajo" for Teatro. Wooooooo. Oh yeah, I also brought my camera with me to the river so I got some great pictures of random, everyday things in Sevilla that are worth capturing for posterity. It was also a gorgeous sunset. I walked back home around 8:30, bummed around, showered and got ready for the night. We then ate dinner around 9ish--the three of us again--grilled ham n cheese sandwiches and a raisin/walnut/endive salad with homemade blue cheese dressing (literally skim milk and crumbled blue cheese). After dinner Stacey and I received a text message from Melissa about the night...we planned on just hitting up the bar strip on calle Betis. We then gave them a call and they told us that their Senora was out of town for the weekend, so we were more than welcome to come up to their apartment, chill out, pre-game, and actually see their piso (literally means "floor", but that's what they call apartments, basically). PISO PARTY! This was so exciting because one thing that I miss more than anything here is just being able to go to our friends' places, chill out and drink. It's frustrating that we can't do this especially since we all live so close to each other. Yayyy! So we got ready and walked the 5 mins over to their place, headed up the stairs and finally saw their piso! It's so crazy...it's so different than ours! I never realize how nice our apartment is until seeing theirs': it's a 3 bedroom 1 bath (while ours is 5 bedroom 2 bath). They don't have a porch like we do nor a dining room. Their living room is teeny and very cluttered, as is their kitchen. In fact, the whole apartment was pretty cluttered. It was also very colorful and more young looking. Honestly, it looks like a college apartment, I kid you not! Their Senora is younger, in her mid-30's and lives alone except for housing American students (Melissa and Katie have 2 other roommates who are Americans studying abroad in another program). So it was so cool to finally see where they live...and it really made me feel so happy about our living situation. Our bedroom is even bigger than theirs', and our closet is sooo much larger. Huh. We hung out there for a good hour and a half having our PISO PARTY! Hehe, it really wasn't that exciting, but yet it was. We chatted and drank. I actually got pretty good and drunk there. Melissa is a poet and just got accepted into the UofM creative writing sub-concentration of the English Dept. (very competitive, so proud!). But I had never read her stuff, so we had a little poetry reading. Hehe. It sounds kind of corny, but it was so fun. Her poetry is amazing--very post-modern and creative. That girl is seriously going places, no joke. Her poetry reminds me a lot of Fiona Apple and Ani DiFranco lyrics...ya know, making the mundane into lyrical beauty. Excellent. At around 1am we ended the piso party and headed over to Betis. We first hit up the Long Island bar which is the American bar on Betis. It's so funny in there: they have Big Ten penants, team mascots, etc. etc. So silly. They have a huge shot menu, 50 shots for each of the 50 states. They're also cheap. What does that say about America? Haha, juuuust kidding. The liquor combos in each shot really don't make too much sense for each state. For example, the Michigan shot is just straight Jim Bean. We all wanted to do a Michigan shot, but Stacey and I were not feeling the whiskey...however Melissa and Katie were. Stacey and I just looked for a combo we liked not caring about what state it represented. I got a Rhode Island shot which I find really funny in retrospect since Rhode Island is pretty frickin random of a state. It had Bacardi and Malibu, which doesn't seem like it should go with Rhode Island but rather Hawaii. Oh well. Stacey randomly chose Colorado...I think it was vodka and Grenadine or something, I don't know. Well, we all took our U.S. shots, and did not enjoy them. Yep, they were doozies. To wash it back we all ordered Cruzcampos to sip on. After awhile we had had it with Long Island and headed over to our Betis standby, Big Ben (the British bar). Big Ben, although we frequent it, was crowded and smokey as usual. Boys were being creepy and strange. Ugh. We took some tequila shots there and then left. We drunkenly stumbled over to some random bar whose name I cannot recall which was full of Spanish people who stared at us. We were too drunk to care. We ordered beers and just chilled out next to the bar. They were playing such good music. I remember them playing Britney Spears and me freaking out...I mean, this was a novelty...this was old school Britney, so hearing it at a trendy bar was pretty awesome. I think that I went to town and sang really loudly and obnoxiously. I don't know if everyone else sang with me...I can't remember...knowing me, it's very possible that I sang all alone. Then some Spanish dude struck up a convo with me. He was actually pretty cute, not gonna lie. He kept asking for a kiss and I kept hesitating. Well, I'll throw it right out there, somehow we end up making out in the bar. Sorry to anyone who finds that shocking (parents, grandparents) but that's just my generation, I guess. The end. He actually was not a bad kisser, he redeemed the bad kisser image I had maintained after Marcos. Hehe. After that I knocked my beer off the bar. It didn't break at all which seemed like a miracle. I took it, however, as a sign to leave. So I pulled everyone out of the bar and we were spent. We walked with Melissa and Katie back to their apartment and went back up to their piso to raid their fridge. It IS like being back at college...late night drunken munchies in the friends' apt.! Oh I had missed those random occurrences. It's so crazy because Maruja never has snack food, and she doesn't have food that we can prepare on her own. Her fridge is usually pretty empty except for what she uses to prepare meals...so we have to buy our own munchies. At Melissa's and Katie's, however, the fridge was theirs' for the raiding. We ate some french bread, potato chips, and they even heated up a whole Spanish tortilla de patatas and we ate the whole thing. OMG, Spanish late night munchies, haha. I never thought that I'd be eating a Spanish tortilla drunkenly at 4am here. Hahaha. Somehow, also, I ended up juggling (or attempting to juggle) manderinas (tangerines) because we got on the topic of my circus past which everyone finds quite humorous. Juggling when intoxicated, however, does not really work and is honestly kind of frustrating. Finally at around 4:30 we called it a night and left our second piso party of the night. Hehe. It made me miss Ann Arbor because it was like being back in college! Pregaming, going out, then returning for drunken munchies. I miss the old routines. Gotta love the PISO PARTY!

A very eventful day to break my tired streak

Woke up early Friday morning (7:30) because Stacey and I had our weekly tutoria session for our lit. classes. I had a packed day ahead of me so it took me a little longer to get ready. I was also nauceous because I passed out so early the previous night before giving my food a chance to settle. I hate the Spanish eating schedule sometimes...why do we have to eat dinner so damn late?? We then walked to the center in the gloom, although it was warm out and the sun was breaking a bit. We got there by 9:10 in time for 2 wonderful hours of Jorge. This week the tutorias actually had students in them so it wasn't nearly as exciting as last week's private session. 9-10 was Teatro and 10-11 was Lope which were both very informative and helpful. Jorge is actually a really good tutor--he's very clear and easy to comprehend and helpful. And sexy. Yeah I said it. After tutoria I was starving and planned to eat my bocadillos. However, when I walked into the computer room I noticed a huge box full of Otis Spunkenmeyer muffins and cookies with a sign saying that they were for us. They had been sent by a guy from Cornell who was here last semester whose father just happens to be the CEO of Otis Spunkmeyer. Yeah, for real. So I got a muffin to hold me over until later...yay! The sugar from the muffin was definitely starting to help my tired streak and calmed my nausea a bit. I had a break from 11-2 in which I planned to walk to Campana (the famous bakery) to order Stacey and Jessica a birthday cake. The sun had begun to peek out so I told Stacey that I was just going to take a walk and enjoy the sun. To many that may sound like a pretty lame cover-up, but I've taken many random walks here simply because it is nice out, so this wouldn't seem like a rare occasion to Stacey. I walked down calle Sierpes, the main shopping district/street to Campana where the nice older man behind the counter gave me info on how to order a cake. For some reason my Spanish speaking and listening were not working and it was a struggle of a conversation. He told me to order it either Friday or Saturday and it'd be ready for me Monday night, just to know what size and flavor and to write it down. I should have ordered it right then and there but I was just all off and confused so I just left. I'm weird sometimes. So that meant that I'd have to come back...why do I space out and make illogical choices sometimes? I still had time to spare so I walked down Sierpes and went into a couple of stores such as H&M and stuff. Ugh, I wish I had money, I could use some better Spring apparel. I had to literally pull myself out of H&M before getting even halfway into the store because I just love all of the clothing that they carry and it was starting to depress me. Haha, oh me. There's also a plaza near Sierpes that has these little cheap market stands, mostly hippie/bohemian stuff is sold there. I found this headband that I want and it was cheap. But I'm being extremely cheap because I anticipated spending a lot of money the next week for Stacey's bday. After a good hour and a half of walking I returned to the center and went online and such. Then I had Lope 2-3 which, as always, was boring though not as excrutiating as the previous day. There was barely anyone in class that day because the big end-of-studies botellon (outdoor drinking party) for Spanish students had been moved to this Friday since it had rained so much the week before. Our Lope prof. gave this whole rant on how stupid the botellon is and how it is a terrible idea. Haha, oh generational gaps. Then during the hour break before Teatro we returned to the center where I just sat and did some reading and ate some of my lunch. Then we had Teatro 4-5 which was cool, the author of the next play we're reading, Arlt, sounds like a really cool guy. Camacho presented all of his works and what they depict and such. So crazy and avant-garde, very surrealist and psychoanalytic...I was honestly getting excited to read his work. Camacho also made a comment about the big botellon--he said he hope that people were enjoying themselves and sometimes it's a good idea to let loose. Gotta love the Camacho! I then had another hour break while everyone else went back to their homes. Damn 6-8. On the break I walked around the barrio Santa Cruz which is the older district of Sevilla that has the most history and character. I went over there because I had looked up fun things to do for the night online since it was one of our first weekends that we'd all be in Sevilla at once...so we wanted to do something fun and Sevilla-like. I found a teteria (tea house) that has live bellydancing on Friday nights and it's located in Santa Cruz. I spent a long time searching for it to no avail. I'd just have to look it up on Mapquest later or something. However, it had turned into a gorgeous afternoon, and I had never explored Santa Cruz...it's really awesome there! I need to return and just have a tapa or a drink outside because it's a pretty perfect area for that, AND it's right in the view of the Cathedral and the Alcazar. Cool, dude. I then walked back to the University for my 6-8 Iconografia. All day the U. had been pretty quiet since most students were at the big botellon. Come 6 o'clock the U. was basically deserted. So weird! Everyone was in Iconografia, however, since the majority of the class is adults. Class went well, he actually lectured longer (we started at 6:15 which is early for him and went until 7:30. Crazy). He lectured for longer because we were learning about what he said is "the most important iconography in all of art history" and that would be the crucifix. I learned about different depictions of the cross and Christ's positions on the cross and how those indicate something about where they were made or something. I don't know. On Friday during one of my breaks I talked to Pepe about my art history tutors since I hadn't heard anything and we set up Monday tutoring sessions. Good. I'm a bit lost in my art history courses, honestly. Oof. After class I headed straight back towards Sierpes to order a cake from Campana. Sierpes was PACKED. I mean, it took me twice as long to get there because not only were there a buttload of people, but there were all of these street performers that people kept stopping to watch. There was one really creepy street performer who had weird carnival music and trippy marionette shows. I was not a fan, creeeeeeepy. I finally got to Campana which was loud and crowded at this point. The nice man who I had talked to earlier was so good and helpful, he actually walked out from behind the counter so we could interact closer and clearer. He really helped out a lot, he gave me lots of info and ideas. I ordered a cake of trufa (truffle) which will basically be a chocolate overload. And it's going to have writing saying "Feliz Cumpleanos". He offered to put names on it, but Stacey's name is the most challenging thing for people to pronounce and spell here that I just said it wasn't worth it. Here's what's funny about people saying Stacey's name here, they all call her "Eh-Stacey" because there are no Spanish words that start with "ST". For example, the Spanish word for "station" is "ESTacion" and the word for "stupid" is "ESTupido", etc. So they don't have the actual capacity to say words that start with "ST" without adding an "Eh" sound in front of it. How weird is that? It's just like how when I speak Spanish I can't roll my "rr" because we don't have that sound in English so I'm pretty incapable of doing it. It's just so funny here because it seems so easy and mindless to say words that start with an "ST". Anyways, I ordered the cake and it would be ready for me to pick up at 5:30 on Monday. Yay! I then walked through the crowded street of Sierpes. I was starving so I picked up a manzana at McDonalds...the line was so long it took forever just to get one apple. Ugh. I finally got home at 8:30. Stacey suspected that I was up to something since I always get out of Iconografia early. I told her that my prof. actually lectured for the first time since we were learning about "the most important iconography of art history", and that there was a line at McDonalds. All true, except I just omitted one little detail, hehe. This is why it's taken me awhile to publish this post because I didn't want to give away my secret errands. Before dinner Stacey and I got ready for the night since we had made plans to meet up with Melissa and Sarah at 10:15 to go to the teteria. I looked on my Sevilla map and found it...it's right near Alfalfa, so that would be perfect: teteria for bellydancing, then cheap drinking and shenanigans at Alfalfa later. Dinner was SOOOOOO good that night! It also helped kick my tiredness because it was full of none other than sugar. We had an amaaaaaazing empanada de bacalao (literally the best one she's made) that had lots of sugar on top and lots of raisins. Mmmmm. It was served with a simple green salad, and then for dessert we had the trufos!! How perfect of a dinner. We then got ready and headed out at 10. We met up with Sarah a block from our apt. since she lives just down the street. Her senora was out of town for the weekend so she had Leah (from Cornell) over for dinner that night. They were both drunk since they had gone to the big botellon that day. Haha. We then walked and met up with Melissa, Katie, Alyssa, and Alexi in Plaza de Cuba. This was turning into a major groupo event! We then walked to the Starbucks next to the Cathedral and met up with Jessica. THEN we ran into Kate (from Penn) and her boyfriend and mom who were out celebrating her bday (which actually wasn't until midnight). We talked for awhile and invited Kate and her bf out with us. It really WAS becoming a group event! It was a struggle finding the teteria on the small windy medieval streets, and the big group of people was not helping the situation. After some frustration we finally found it. It was really cute! We figured out that the basement was where the action was. We got down there and it's like straight out of Aladdin...so cool! Great decoration...lots of close-to-ground seating and couches, and ambient lighting. There were a lot of Americans there, go figure. We found this large couch area that was inhabited by a small group of Spanish people so we sat down, squished, and shared. Jessica knocked over and shattered one of their beers. She felt so terrible and offered to buy another one, but they were so cool about it and said that it was no big deal and not to worry about it. It was actually kind of funny. It was very crowded so it took awhile to be served. Finally we all ordered beers and Alexi ordered a shisha (hookah). The hookah came, and it was great--Alexi chose apple mango which was a very good choice, I must say. Only Alexi, Alyssa, Sarah, Katie (it was her first hookah!), and I smoked it. Finally at around midnight the first belly dancer performed. She was not too great, actually, but it was really fun to be in such an awesome environment watching bellydancing in general. I had never seen bellydancing live before! She only performed one song and then disappeared into the bathroom forever. The lights came back on. We all thought that she was changing costumes, but she was gone for almost a half an hour. By then I was loopy from the hookah and a bit drunk from the beer and the water bottle of vodka that I had packed (my being cheap and avoiding paying money for liquor, gotta love the budget). Soon she performed another number with some sort of vase and a new costume. It was cool. Then another bellydancer performed who was a bit better and looked more authentic (she was taller and chubbier, the first dancer was really short and skinny). All in all it was a lot of fun and a great cultural experience. I really enjoyed that teteria a lot and would LOVE to return. Yay for taking advantage of Sevilla! After the teteria we walked 5 minutes over to Alfalfa where I proceeded to get, well, pretty effing drunk. What can I say, it had been awhile, hehe. First we went to Robotica, the bar that serves the huge 3euro beers. I didn't want to drink all that beer, so Melissa and I opted for shots. Robotica has a humongous shot menu, and they're all pretty cheap. We decided on the "Tom Cruise" shot because, well, it's called Tom Cruise. And Tom Cruise sucks...so what better way to commemorate his suckiness than taking a chupito (which literally means a little thing to suck when translated into English). I can't remember what's in it, but I do remember it being citrusy. Soon we ended up across the street taking tequila shots. Then we ran into this kid who Melissa knows. His name is Joey and he goes to Michigan but is here on another program. I found out that he and his friends are all living in my apartment building next year! Awesome, yayyyy apartment friends! He seems like really cool, fun kid so I was now developing a nice community for next year already. Niiiiiice. Stacey, Jessica, and Katie all went and bought pizzas for themselves and then left around 3ish. Melissa and I decided to stay and hang out a bit longer. Then we went and got 2 more shots of tequila. Yeah, I was a gonner. We just hung out and talked the 3 of us, at points other people in Joey's program, and then, at like 4am, to his program director who is 26. Haha. At around 4:30 Melissa and I walked back to los Remedios. On the walk home all of these Spanish men kept riding by on their motos yelling and whistling and hooting at us. When I get drunk I practice no discresion and I would angrily yell back at them to shut the hell up and that they suck and stuff like that. One guy drove right up alongside me and kept pestering me to give him a kiss. WTF???? I kept saying no, very firmly and honestly rudely. He kept asking why and I just kept saying "No tengo ganas!" ("I don't want to!"). Then he drives up on the sidewalk, cuts me off and asks me for a kiss and I said no and tried to push past him. Then he grabbed my boob. Like, groped me right there. I was ready to slap him across the face when Melissa whips out her mace that she had been gripping and puts it right in his face. Before she could even consider pulling the trigger he sped away. I was so fucking angry I couldn't believe it. I was violated. You see why I can't handle Spanish men??? Honestly. Pissed off and drunk we got ready to cross the bridge when I see some guy ride by on a bike and hiss at us. I yelled "Fuck off!!!" when the biker got off and was like, "Whoa there..." It was Sam from our program! Haha. I didn't even noticed I was so phased by the previous incident. I apologized profusely and we stood there and talked for a bit. It was now 5am and he was drunkenly biking home from the big botellon which is literally a 20 minute at least ride from where we were standing...and he still had another 20 to go before getting home. He told us that he had to wake up at 6:30am the next morning to go to Morrocco. What?? Sam, you idiot, haha. Then Melissa and I walked home. I don't really remember much about the walk or what we talked about...alls I know is I was in bed and passed out a little before 6am that night. Crazy Spanish nights out! It felt so good to finally be back out on the Sevilla scene again. It had been way too long! I think that my incessant tiredness that week was due to excessive boredom. I really wasn't tired at this point...I was actually out and doing things! Now I had an explanation. Thank god for eventful days/nights!

Still tired...what is my deal?

I woke up earlier than I wanted on Thursday morning due to the godforsaken construction. I swear I'm going to kill somebody soon. While making toast I encountered Maruja in the kitchen making TRUFAS (truffles)! Remember those?? Oh man, this was exciting. I asked if she was making them for the wedding or what and she said, "No, para comer," ("No, to eat"). I expressed my excitement. She said that we would eat them for dessert the next day for dinner. What luck!! Oh wow. I then asked her what was for dinner that night and she said a tortilla de patatas (the typical spanish tortilla--basically egg omelette with potatoes) which I'm really growing to like a lot. So that was exciting, too. I then walked to the center, did some class searching and emailing. Went to Lope 2-3 which is getting excrutiating. I'm so sick of lectures! How do these LSA kids do it? Oh the RC, how I miss thee. Then went back to the center, ate my bocadillos, wrote emails, etc. Then Teatro 4-5 which was semi-eventful since we had to switch classrooms due to some book signing going on. It was a pretty big deal, I guess, since the hall was wayyy crowded with students. In class Camacho (our prof.) started talking about the next play we're to read. Damn, I still have to finish "Barranca Abajo". Oh, on Wednesday I bought the next plays we have to read. Luckily I don't have to hunt them down at bookstores since they're photocopied and on sale in the copisteria for a mere 3 euro. Woot. Camacho gave an overview of the playwright and some leftist radical literary group in which he involved himself. Hehe, I'm liking this playwright already. Class ended. Jessica and I walked to Starbucks where she got a frappuccino then we both walked to OpenCor where I bought a 70 cent package of aceitunas (olives) to snack on since I was staaaarving for some reason. Went back to the center, did more class searching, ate my aceitunas and the huge navel orange I had bought that morning before class at a random grocery store in los Remedios. Then I walked to the University with very little motivation to attend my 6-8 Iconografia. Nevertheless, class was really interesting! The prof. discussed the first icons of Christianity that appeared in these underground crypts that were built during the Roman Empire so as to escape persecution. There are old painted depictions of what is believed to be Jesus Christ down there...he's a stocky, dark-skinned man with short, black coarse hair. Nice! This is what Jesus really would have looked like since he is supposedly Syrian (?). Well, if he's Middle Eastern he's not supposed to be a white dude with long flowing brown hair, but a stocky dark skinned man with coarse hair. This was really cool to see! Our prof. then said that in Spain the depiction of Christ, him as a baby, and Mary changed more to what it is today in the 7th century, I believe, because there was a huge plague in Spain which killed many people. Christianity was pretty new, and people began losing their faith/belief. So artists made Jesus look more "pure" and inspirational. Pretty interesting, eh? We got out of class at 7 which was so funny since he didn't even show up to start class until 6:30. I love this guy; the class is scheduled to go from 6-8, however he shows up late and ends early all the time. Gotta love it. After class I walked home, showered and waited for dinner. I was so tired that I even started getting ready for bed before dinner. Before dinner I was sitting in my room and I heard a herd (hehe, homonyms) of people walk into the apartment. Maria del Mar came in our room sort of taking refuge. I guess Maruja's family was there to pick her up and take her to dinner...it's her grand-nephew's wedding this weekend or something so she's had all of these big events leading up to it. Maruja made us dinner, but wouldn't be eating with us. The whole herd then left around 9:30 and the three of us jumped up to heat up the Spanish tortilla she had prepared us and toss the salad. We served the food, Marta came home around 9:45, we all ate the tortilla, salad, and then the macedonia for dessert. Mmmmm good! It was also fun to have a meal sans Maruja, it honestly felt a bit more relaxed. During dinner we didn't have to watch the news either--we watched "Mujeres desesperadas" ("Desperate Housewives") which was interesting. After dinner I would have stayed up to watch it but I was just so damn tired! What is my deal lately? I just need the sun to start coming out to fix my circadian rhythms. I must have some serious Seasonal Affective Disorder or something right now. I passed out at 11:45pm.

I love going on dates

Yeah, so I haven't blogged in awhile. I've had a really lazy week...I mean, I've just been so tired. I think it's the weather, it's just been so gloomy out. So where have I left off. Ah yes, Wednesday.
Woke up to construction banging again. Maybe that's why I'm so tired, my sleep is consistently disrupted by perpetual banging every morning. I don't know what they're doing upstairs but it's getting on my last nerve. Anyways, I made toast and walked to the center around noon. I didn't have class until 2 so I had a lot of time to hang out there. This was actually a good thing because appointments were up for class registration, so I needed to backback some classes and email professors. I can't believe that this is my second-to-last time picking classes. So weird. And sad. Yes, I enjoy picking class. Yes, I'm a nerd. Then I had Lope 2-3 which was boring. Then on my hour break I did more class searching, then had Teatro 4-5. My 6-7 Historia del arte had been cancelled so I had the evening to myself. You see, Stacey, Katie, and I had made plans to meet up when their last class got out at 8 and then walk to Plaza de Armas to see Volver. So I went to the center and did more class searching, I also looked up fun bars and clubs in Sevilla because I'm planning Stacey and Jessica's joint 20th bday party which is this coming Tuesday (yep, they have the same bday!). I found this awesome club called Isbiliyya which is a gay bar that plays 80's music and has drag shows every Thursday and Sunday. Maybe I'd move their bday party to Thursday because this was just too damn perfect. AND it's really closeby. I decided to stop by on our way to Plaza de Armas since it's on the same street. The center then closed at 7 so I went to the Starbucks by the University to do some reading before meeting up with the girls. I read the rest of Act II of "Barranca Abajo" for Teatro and then read Harry Potter. It's at the climax already, I'm almost finished with the book. It's soooooo good, omg!!! Hehe, anyways. At 8:15 I met the girls and we walked the 15 min walk down Paseo de Colon to Plaza de Armas. On the way I stopped in Isbiliyya which looks awesome. I asked the bartender about the espectaculos (shows) and he said that they do have the drag shows, and that they perform Thur., Sun., AND Tuesday! How perfect! They start at 1am. Sooooo perfect. It's a deal. We got to Plaza de Armas around 8:30ish. We ate dinner at the Cien Montaditos there. I decided to try some new sandwiches this time: I got a pate with fresh cheese, a tomato with fresh cheese, spanish tortilla with some sort of spread (I was being very adventurous), and my favorite (I couldn't give it up) smoked tuna with grilled red pepper. I also got a side order of aceitunas (olives). SOOO good! I freaking love Cien Montaditos. After the movie the girls were craving something sweet so we went downstairs to find a candy store. I tell ya, Plaza de Armas is awesome. It's a little indoor mall that's an old converted train station. Way cool. They got some gummy candies. Then we went to the grocery store there where they got cheap soft drinks. Then we went to the movie which started at 10. Volver, again, is the new Almodovar movie starring Penelope Cruz. It was really good, very introspective and required some thinking especially with the language barrier. The visuals were really awesome. Oh, there were also a lot of Americans at the movie, haha. The word "volver" means "return" so the entire film was about the people that we love most going away and then returning...although we may not think that we want them to return, when they return we realize how much we needed them. Penelope Cruz plays a lowerclass mom who is involved with some crazy love triangle thing with parents and whatnot. Hard to explain, and to explain it in detail would give away too much of the movie. For ages her family had thought that her mom was dead, but suddenly she shows up again in their lives. Once she comes back Penelope's character's life suddenly improves although she hasn't encountered her mother (her mother comes and lives with Penelope's sister secretly). It gets a bit complicated. If you want to know more about it just ask me. Write me a comment or something. It's really good, though, Almodovar wrote it as well as directed it. It's also centered around women, which is always a plus. Love ya, Almodovar. So I really enjoyed the movie. Afterwards I was tired! Why am I always so tired? We had planned on going out afterwards, perhaps meeting up with Jessica, but we were dead. So we walked back to los Remedios and grabbed a drink at Madigan's. It was pretty empty except for some loud, drunk, obnoxious European people about our age (Norwegian? Swedish? Finnish? We're not sure.) who were being extremely rowdey. The bartenders that night were really nice and attentive to us which was good since oftentimes the bartenders kind of suck there. We then called it a night around 1:30 and walked home. I was so tired! That's why I didn't blog for that night. I just passed out. But I had such a fun date! Dinner and a movie Spanish style.

Alls I want to do is SLEEEEP

I woke up around 9am after a good 8 hours of sleep, although extremely tired. Despite the satisfying night of sleep, I just wanted to sleep throughout the entire day. I didn't really know why. Got out of bed to smoke-filled apartment. The maid was here. Ugh. And Maruja was gone for the day--Maruja usually yells at her to not smoke so much in the house--so she was basically chain smoking. There was even a cigarette butt in my toilet. Love it. Made toast and drank my free OJ from Vips (which was weird, it has egg in it...) and walked to the center before heading to class. It was so gross out. Gloomy and a chilly. The weather was definitely weighing down on me. I got to the center and basically collapsed into a chair because I was so damn tired and the weather was not helping out. At 12 I carried my lazy ass to Historia del cine where the prof. gave a semi-interesting lecture on Russian Avant-Garde cinema. We were let out at 1:45 and I was hungry so I sat outside in the gloom that was turning into a drizzle and ate one of my cangrejo wrap which made me nauceous! It's so weird, I just suddenly got nauceous, and my stomach was a bit irritated by it. Well, so much for my cangrejo love. I then struggled my nauceous, tired self home where I met up with Stacey to make lunch again (Maruja wasn't home again for lunch...turns out she was at church doing some special Saints week thing). Maruja left us marinated chicken wings to heat up and a simple green salad. The previous day we weren't sure whether or not Marta would be home for lunch, so we left her a portion. Turned out that she didn't come home at all so there were a lot of leftovers. So today we assumed that she wouldn't be home again. So we split the salad between us (I made the dressing, yay!) and then ate about 2/3 of the chicken wings. The sauce was good, but the chicken itself was extremely dry, probably since we had to zap it. Right as we were eating our oranges for dessert who should walk in but Marta. Oops! Well, there was chicken left, but no salad. We felt terrible. She said "No pasa nada!" ("Don't worry about it") and made herself her own salad. I felt so badly! After lunch we quickly washed dishes and laid in bed for a bit deciding whether or not to nap (Stacey was equally as inexplicably tired...when I came home for lunch I found her in bed under the covers!) or go to Starbucks and be productive. Ultimately we chose the latter and headed off to the 'bucks. It was cold, gross, and rainy outside. All I really wanted to do was chill out, sip hot cocoa, and watch a movie over the space heater in our apt. Unfortunately it wasn't an option. So at Starbucks I got a white chocolate mocha which was crazy cuz it's been ages since I've drunk one of those. It tasted sweet and comforting after such a blah day. It also woke me up a bit. I then started to get a stomach ache. I thought that it was due to the coffee, but it was definitely due to the cangrejo wrap. Never again, Vips, never again. I sat with Stacey at Starbucks being productive and whatnot (I'm almost done with Act II of Barranca Abajo) until I left for class at 5:30. I left Stacey at Starbucks and was off. Luckily the rain had let up and the sun was peeking out a bit. I got to class and one of the girls in my class struck up a convo with me asking about taking the final exam early for the class. She's an exchange student, too (!!!), however Spanish is her native language. She's literally from Puerto Rico, she even goes to college there. Our prof. showed up and told us that we'd have class in a different room upstairs. So I walked upstairs with this girl chatting and such...she's not only a native speaker, but also an art history major back in Puerto Rico, so she knows all of the class material already. When we got to the overly-sized lecture hall for our 15-person class she suggested we study together for the exam and such. YES! What an asset because not only does she know the language, she knows the course material. Her name is Themus. We exchanged emails, she gave me her number (I still have no number to give...oh man, stupid missing cell phone). This is especially nice because Cristina, the Spanish student who I was friendly with in the class ended up dropping it. So now I have a new friend to mooch notes off of and study with, hehe. Class actually went pretty well, we learned about Arc de triumphs. The sad part was that our prof. who has been subbing for my real prof. who took time off to get married would be leaving us. It was his last class. How sad, he was such a good prof., much better than my real prof.! Boo. After class I walked back to los Remedios in better spirits, although still pretty tired. I passed by the Starbucks and glanced in the window to see none other than Stacey sitting in the same seat as I had left her, reading. She was supposed to be in class at the University 7-8! Haha. I walked in and she started laughing guiltily. She told me that she was on a roll with her reading, and she glanced at her watch once and saw that it was 7:15...yeah, she had lost track of time. At least it wasn't intentional...that girl's a bad influence! Haha, nah. Then we walked home together. I showered, sat around a bit and talked to Maria del Mar until dinner at 9:30. I was still a bit nauceous, damn cangrejo. Thankfully dinner was light and easy, marinated/cooked peas with small strips of ham, and a revuelto (plain egg omelette), and then an AMAZING macedonia for dessert--this time it did have pear in it, and it also had kiwi! Mmmmm. After dinner I came back to the room, wrote/am writing this blog, talked to some people online, listened to music, and now I plan on passing out ASAP. Alls I want to do is sleep, and now I can! Goodnight, dammit!

I'm (kind of) domestic!

Woke up well rested at around 10:30 very well rested, made some toast and discovered pan integral! Yayyy, Maruja had bought us wheat bread! Went to town on the wheat toast, got ready, and was out the door by 11. The construction workers were hogging the elevator (I've discovered that the banging every morning is coming from upstairs...I think they're renovating one of the units) so I walked down 7 flights. I then walked to the center. It was sunny out, but as I walked down the bridge I noticed heavy rain clouds to the left while the sun beat down on me. Soon a sun shower began. By the time I was inside the center it had begun to llover a cantaros (rain cats and dogs). I checked my email quickly, opened up the paraguas (umbrella) and was out the door to walk to class in the pouring rain. Got to Historia del cine hearing my name called; Courtney was there! She's in the same course, but in the class that meets at a different time--she had decided to attend the earlier movie screenings. It was good to have a friend in the class, hehe. We watched a German Impressionist silent film called El gabinete de Dr. Oligari which was really awesome. The class actually stayed quiet for this one because despite its age, it was very intense...it's the first suspense movie and the filmmaker served as the primary inspiration for Hitchcock and Welles. Way cool. The story was equally as intriguing as the cinematography, it threw you for loops and was extremely psychological...a real thinking movie, just how I like it. I'm loving this class. I then walked home for lunch. Maruja had told us the night before that she wouldn't be home for lunch, but that she would pre-prepare everything for us in the morning so all that we'd have to do was heat the stove, fry the chicken, and do the dishes. I was excited to cook! And it felt good to know that she trusted us in what Luisa deemed "the Spanish woman's sacred space." I got home and we went to work. I mostly helped heat the stew and set the table while Stacey fried the chicken breasts since, well, I don't know how to cook meat. Well who am I kidding, I don't really know how to cook. After about 20 min we sat down for our own little meal at home made (kind of) by us! It was really fun. It was a good time to watch "El corazon del invierno," the pop culture show that we watch during every lunch, and actually comment on it in English. It was also really nice to be able to eat at our own pace and really savor every bite of Maruja's excellent cooking. Maruja and our housemates just eat so damn fast we don't get a moment to enjoy the food, and Stacey and I are slow eaters. So that was good. We ate a spinach, endive, and garbanzo stew (yummmm) and lightly breaded fried chicken breasts and an orange for dessert. We thought that, since nobody else was around, we'd test our skills at peeling our oranges with a knife like Maruja and our housemates do. After awhile we gave up. Although it's not too hard, you just waste so much orange cutting off the peel! And the citrus is so good here we want to savor every bite. After lunch we did the dishes...well, Stacey washed and I rinsed and dried. Stacey laughed at me when I told her that I didn't really know much about really doing dishes...you know, minus a dishwasher. She also laughed when I told her that I didn't know how to use a dishwasher until I moved into my apartment last semester and Marcie tought me. Sometimes my Highland Parkiness comes back to haunt me in the worst ways possible. Soon after we got ready and were off again to the center (Stacey had class at 5). I bummed around the center for awhile before Historia del arte 6-7:30. Class went fairly well, I had a harder time in class understanding our prof. I think that he was sick, he seemed restless and lazy about clarification. He also ended class 40 min. early, and he frequently checked his watch during class, so I'm assuming he was not feeling at the top of his game. We mostly looked at Ancient Roman bridges and Acueducts from Italy and the Iberian Peninsula (a.k.a. Spain). Woot. After class I walked back to los Remedios and went to Starbucks to do some reading for Teatro. I bought out the rest of the cangrejo wraps from Vips (a.k.a. 2) to last me for the week, and with 2 wraps I got a free bottle of orange juice. Woohoo! Now I have juice for my breakfast tomorrow. So yeah, I read and drank tea until Stacey showed up to meet me at 8:30. We chilled for a bit and looked up movie times for Volver...we decided to go see it on Wednesday. Then we came back home for dinner which was pretty simple: a green salad and shrimp croquetas with strawberry batido for dessert. The batido tasted kind of funny, perhaps the strawberries were weird or the milk was going bad. Who knows. We all ate dinner together, so it was good to have everyone together again. I think that Maruja went to the eye doctor today and that's why she missed lunch. Maria del Mar said that she's developing cataracts which has become more and more apparent since she looks at us with one eye squinted now. It's weird, I feel like in the past 2 months her aging has really become apparent. She has suddenly developed cataracts, and she's becoming clumsy. Like, the other day she was staring at the TV holding onto the dinner cart full of dishes and she accidentally overturned it. Dishes and food fell everywhere, glasses broke, food splattered, water and olive oil spilled, it was a mess and Maruja was really distressed about it. I felt so terrible. Also, she hasn't been able to serve us fruit salad and batido because she has a hard time balancing the ladle and seeing if our cups and bowls have an even amount of food/drink in them. So now she has Maria del Mar do it. This has all started occurring in the past month. Very sad to see, and very surprising with how sudden it is. Oh man. Anyways, after dinner Stacey and I came back to the room, did some internet stuff and such. Stacey has just gotten into bed and here I am blogging it up as per usual. Life is pretty damn good, no stress, etc. I'm right now beginning to plan out what to do for Stacey and Jessica's birthday (they are both turning 20 the same day!) which is a week from tomorrow. I'm thinking about going to this gay bar that plays 80's music and has drag shows every Thursday and Sunday. Awwww yeah! So that's that. Life rules. Spain rocks my socks.

Wow, my life is exciting

Do you ever sleep so much that you get exhausted of sleeping? I had one of those mornings. I woke up every hour from 9 to 12:30 feeling like I could wake up, but then feeling tired and falling back asleep. Come 12:30 I felt like I could have slept more, but I was sick of sleeping, it was becoming a daunting task at that point. You know when that happens? Crazy. Well, so I woke up and found Stacey, who had woken up earlier than I, in the living room sleeping! Haha. I made some toast and took a shower. I then went online and blogged a bit then we had lunch at 2:30. It was just Stacey, Maruja, and myself once again. Lunch was SO good. It was white rice with garlic with a homemade clam broth with the clams still in it, and a fried egg mixed in. Very interesting, we didn't know how to eat it at first. You mix the rice with the broth and then eat the meat out of the shells of the clams. Very, very, very tastey. For awhile Maruja had been slacking on her food preparation (which really isn't saying much), and now she was getting creative again. I think that since she was a bit sick before her culinary skills decreased. On the side we had a green salad with leftover beets and onions from the day before, and then an orange for dessert. Right after lunch Stacey and I embarked on our crazy homework spree. So we walked to the Starbucks in los Remedios where we ran into Emily from Cornell and the three of us read/chatted together. After a couple hours Melissa then showed up, so we all hung out and read/studied/homeworked together. We sat next to the window and all of these little children and babies in their matching church outfits walked by, stopped and stared at us, giggled, played, etc. I felt like I was in a museum, haha! I had never seen so many little kids at once, it was crazy. I read all of Act 1 of Barranca Abajo in about 2 hours, so for the next 2 hours until we left for dinner I read Harry Potter. I'm almost finished, and oh man, is it getting good! I'm telling you, that book just sucks you in...J.K. Rowling, you're a genius. I felt like the kid from The Neverending Story just completely pulled into the story. I'm freaking loving it. I also ate a cangrejo wrap from Vips. My favorite thing from Vips is the imitation crabmeat wraps and they only make them about once a month, and they just so happened to have them that day. It was an exciting little appetizer for me. At around 8 Stacey and I left Starbucks for home. We bummed around until dinner. It was the 3 of us, and Maria del Mar who had returned from her weekend at home. Good to see her again! We had garlic marinated chicken breast and some really good pureed potatoes. For dessert we had macedonia (fruit salad) which was soooo exciting, but not as good as in the past (she didn't put pears in it this time). Right after dinner I tried putting up some webshots but my computer froze halfway through uploading which was annoying since I had spent over an hour making captions and organizing. Bah. So I just talked to people on AIM and facebooked until going to bed at 1. What a day, woooooowey!

Gloominess can't even ruin Cordoba

Oh lord, what a morning. St. Patrick's Day caught up with me early; I had set my alarm the night before for 7:15am and woke up on my own at 6am unable to fall asleep due to a pounding headache. I was officially hungover. I struggled through light, unsatisfying, painful sleep until my alarm went of at 7:15. I forced myself out of bed and into the kitchen for sustenance. I was nauceous, in pain, and tired. I popped two Ibuprofen and forced myself to drink glass after glass of water while my toast cooked. I had to pull up a stool to the counter because I was too weak and in pain to stand up. My body was literally shaking that's how dehydrated I was. I felt like passing out, NOW I was tired. Oy vey. I forced 2 pieces of toast with marmalade down my throat, drank more water, and dragged myself into my room to make my bed and get dressed. This was all a huge struggle until about 15 min later when the Ibuprofen began to kick in and the bread started to absorb with the water. I was still quite hungover, but feeling functional. I was seriously considering ditching out on Cordoba, that's how terrible I felt. Oh well, it was worth it. Stacey and I then left the house around 8:15 to meet everyone at the bus at 8:45. When we got there we saw that everyone was hungover and tired, it was kind of funny. Oh us American girls. Oh yeah, a little less than half of the program decided to come to Cordoba, and it was all girls. Hehe. It started raining again. It was a gloomy, hungover, early Saturday morning. The bus hadn't shown up by 9:15, so we were just standing out in the rain miserable. Pepe was on the phone, angrily, for a long time to find out what the deal is. At around 9:30 the bus finally showed up. We boarded, and since so few of us came we all got our own rows of seats to spread out and sleep. Yeah, we all slept on the hour and a half bus ride. We arrived in Cordoba then around 11am. I was still hungover and a bit nauceous from the swervy bus ride. It was raining, too. Cordoba wasn't looking too great so far. We first went to the Mezquita (mosque) which is the most famous landmark in Cordoba. Before our tour we were given 10 min to use the bathroom and such. I bought a huge bottle of water which I chugged during our tour and made me feel a thousand times better. The tour of the Mezquita was actually really, really great. We split up into 2 tour groups, Stacey and Katie were on mine. Our tour guide was awesome--she spoke really slowly and clearly and had a great spunk about her...she seemed very enthusiastic about the Mezquita. She also rolled her "rr" really beautifully...haha, it was like music to my ears. The Mezquita is really interesting, it used to be a Muslim mosque and then it just kept getting added onto as the population of Cordoba grew. Then the Christians came in and drove the Muslims out and converted it into a Cathedral banning any Muslim presence. They destroyed some of the Muslim-inspired interiors and built big areas for services and prayer. It's very fascinating because some areas of it are still very Muslim-inspired with intermittent Christian corridors and rooms. So cool! The inside of the Mezquita is really, really impressive; it's hard to describe its decor but I'll have pictures up soon so you can see for yourself. After the Mezquita our guide took us on a walking tour through the off-and-on rain of the small, quaint streets of Cordoba. Cordoba is really awesome! I loved its architecture and the streets and the laid back authentic untainted old Spanish feeling it has. The small streets are decked out in potted plants and flowers hanging everywhere, and on May 3 they have a big flower festival where everyone decks out their patios and the winner gets a prize. Can you imagine what that'd look like? Just a little city COVERED in flowers. I saw it when the flowers weren't in bloom and it was very pretty, so just imagine. I'm definitely bringing the family there in June. We also went into one of the many Jewish quarters. We went to the old, preserved synagogue there which was actually really amazing for me. It's tiny and very modest, but the walls are peeling and there's a small bima with alcoves in the wall where the Ark would have been for the Torah. There's also a small mound with one little menorah resting upon it. On the opposite wall is a big, red, painted cross chipping away to the point that you can only see the top of it. Our guide told us that during the Inquisition all of the synagogues were destroyed but this one was allowed to remain as long as it became a place of Christian influence (although Jews still practiced Judaism despite the cross). It then became used as a Christian hospital holding room. Now it's just a little landmark hidden in the small, labyrinth streets of Cordoba. So awe-inspiring. We also saw a statue of a famous scientist/philosopher of the 1400's from Cordoba. His name was Gaffou or something and he was one of the inventors of eyeglasses, so they are therefore named after him (eyeglasses are "gafas" in Spanish)! I thought that that was really cool. This guy was very Arabian looking, he was a gold statue that had feet that jutted out that were those stereotypical Middle Eastern Aladdin-like shoes that curl up at the toe. Our guide told us that there's a belief that you will receive good luck if you rub his left shoe, which was very, very brilliantly golden due to being rubbed so much. I was all over that, I rubbed his shoe...it felt like I was rubbing Aladdin's lamp since it's gold and shaped like it. I liked that statue...I mean, Gaffou...Gafas...so cool! I'm a dork. After that we all walked back. The streets are so narrow and crowded we had to walk in a single-file line which was challenging since everyone was carrying an umbrella. We got cut off and half of us consequently lost the group. About six of us were completely lost. I was lost with all of the Cornell girls. We retraced our steps and found our way back to the Mezquita, but we weren't sure if the rest of the group was actually going back to the Mezquita. One of the girls then called someone in the group who we had lost and they said that they were at the entrance. We had a hard time finding the entrance, and them, and it had started to POUR. I mean, violently pour. I was worrying a lot since I didn't know if Stacey and Katie would wait for me, and I didn't have my phone on me. Thankfully we found them across the street from where we entered, and Stacey and Katie were there waiting. We were all kind of disillusioned by the weather and all, so we wallowed in the rain over to find a restaurant. We were starving. We found this really awesome tapas restaurant that's in a courtyard of a residence. It was perfect, it reminded me of the restaurants I went to in the haciendas of San Cristobol in Chiapas last Summer. Our seating feels like the outdoors but they had put a large, clear roof over the courtyard. There was also a running fountain in the middle. So peaceful. Stacey ordered pasta (hehe), I got paella (which, by the way, is turning out to be my favorite hangover food. Refer to my Madrid trip for evidence) and Katie got some tapas. The food was pretty good, came out really fast (great service!) and extremely satisfying. Because we were so tired, wet, and hungover, we had no motivation to see any more touristy places. So we decided to just chill out at the restaurant, perhaps have some cafe, do some walking around and look at the shops, and just waste time before we had to leave. We sat for another half hour, drank some cafes to give us some perk to get us through the rest of the day, then got up to walk around. We walked along that narrow block and looked at souvenir shops which were all the same. Nothing special. Actually, a lot of the souvenirs said "Sevilla" on them, which confused us. I mean, do they want their tourists to leave and go visit Sevilla? Speaking of tourists, that's all that I saw. I mean, Cordoba was teeming with tourists that day. I wonder what the natives are like, haha. Then we ran into a bunch of girls on our program who invited us to go to a teteria (an Arabic tea house, like the one I went to in Granada) with Pepe and them. Sure, why not? We got there and it was so nice inside! Great decor (again, I have pictures) and really comfy, couch-like seating. Some people ordered tea, I ordered a batido de platano (banana milkshake...literally bananas blended with milk and a touch of sugar). Btw, Spanish milkshakes are much better than America's because they are just blended with milk like a smoothey, no heavy creamy ice cream. And usually made with fresh fruit. The batido was pretty good. It was around 3:45, and we were to meet the bus at 4:30. We wanted some more time to do touristy shopping, so we paid early and left. We walked around, went to some more stores, I bought a silly bright orange souvenir t-shirt that says, "Someone who loves me went to Cordoba and bought me this t-shirt" in Spanish. Hehe. Then we walked back to the bus. It was still gross out, drizzling off and on. We boarded, and then passed out again for another hour and a half. When we got back to Sevilla the sun had just started peaking through the clouds...it was warm and sunny! I tell ya, everytime I travel Sevilla always welcomes me home. It was a bit windy, however. We felt like having a chill night, so Stacey, Jessica, Melissa, Courtney and I decided to walk to Plaza de Armas (the indoor mall across from the bus station) to see when the movie Volver was playing. Volver is the new Almodovar movie starring Penelope Cruz that came out on Friday. I reeeeeeally want to see it because I love Almodovar, and to see a film of his in Spain is just perfect. I mean, in the States we don't get all of Almodovar's movies in the theater, and they also come late. Unfortunately, the next showing wasn't until 7:30 (it was about 6:20) which was cutting it way too close to dinner. So we decided to just walk home and see it another time. Whatever, it was a nice evening for a walk...there was even a pretty sunset. So happy to be back home! We got home, Stacey watched a movie on her laptop and I went online. I booked a hostel in Amsterdam! The best deal I found was 26euro a night in this hostel called the Bulldog which is right on the river and next to the Red Light District. Nice! The only thing is that we're sleeping it an 8 bed mixed dorm the first 2 nights, then we have to move to a 12 bed, and then for the last night we'll be in a 10 bed. Whatever, it's all good. It's actually rated the no. 4 hostel in Europe! It includes breakfast and has a bar in it. Not bad. I'm so excited...it's all worked out. I'm going to Amsterdam!!! Then we had dinner at 9:30 just Maruja, Stacey, and myself since both Maria del Mar and Marta went home for the weekend. Dinner was SO good! We had a vegetable noodle soup, a beet and onion salad, grilled zucchini, and a grilled onion/grilled mushroom mixture. Then an orange for dessert. It was absolutely perfect because in Cordoba I had eaten so many carbs and felt gross about it, so as we were walking home from Plaza de Armas I actually told Stacey that all I wanted for breakfast were just some grilled vegetables. Now, Maruja makes us vegetables very often, but usually it's served with egg or a meat. All I wanted were grilled vegetables and that's what we got, coincidentally! It was quite an exciting moment. What an amaaaaaaazingly perfect meal. After dinner I went online, searched through the LS&A course guide which took ages (I get crazy when the course guide comes out). I don't know, I'm picking courses for my penultimate semester at UofM so I am putting a lot of thought into my course choices. I want to make sure I take everything that I've wanted to take before I graduate. Holy shit, I'm graduating next year. WHAT?? Anyhoo, I was up until about 2. I passed out and slept like a rock...I was EXHAUSTED.