It was my mom's birthday and I was bipolar

Monday was a messed up day. It started out as the most stressful day ever and then turned out great. Let me tell ya about it. I woke up an hour and a half before my alarm went off because of all of the banging and construction. This was getting ridiculous. I made toast, and while it was cooking I began to think about all of the money I had spent over the weekend and how my only real funds left were about $70 in my account and a 50euro traveler's check. I then started thinking about all of the errands to run and responsibilities to take care of this week which all require money, which I really didn't have. So I made a list, which actually stressed me out more because it made me aware of all that I had to do and the money that I had to spend. Why is it so much more expensive to live here than Ann Arbor? I don't even grocery shop here nor eat out! I then spent some time online and found a really awesome online birthday card to send to my mom. Yay for birthdays! I got ready and walked to the center. Fortunately it was another gorgeous day, about 25 degs celsius (about 74) and sunny. At the center I noticed that my package STILL hadn't arrived from UPS. I then checked my mailbox and noticed a letter. It was from UPS. I opened it and it was an invoice saying that I still owed $60 to customs which had been paid by my dad weeks ago. Ugh. Pepe wasn't there so I showed it to Luisa who said that it was an outrage and that they would call UPS that afternoon just in case it showed up that morning. I then walked to Historia del cine where the prof. gave a fairly interesting lecture on surrealism and Buneal and Dali. Then we watched Buneal and Dali's famous 20 minute silent film "El perro andaluz" (a.k.a. Un chien andalou). It was a crazy surrealist Dali-esque experimental movie with crazy images such as dead cows on pianos and ambiguosly gendered people getting hit by cars and ants coming out of cuts in peoples' hands. It was really crazy and I loved it...I mean, I'm a huge surrealism fan. I was sitting in an area surrounded by Spanish students. Remember how I said that they act like middle schoolers in class? Well, the group I was sitting next to was the worst. Throughout the first 5 min they were talking full voice, giggling at the images on film, and at certain parts exclaiming, "Ewwww que asco!" ("Ew! Gross!"). Um, how old are we?? I was getting really angry and frustrated since they were so immature, distracting, and add the fact that this was one of the movies I was most looking forward to watching. Ugh. I wanted to scream at them to grow up I was so angry. So, right in the middle of class I slammed my hands down on the desk, stood up dramatically and stormed to the back of the class where I sat by myself in silence. I think that the message was clear enough. After the film the prof talked a bit more about the movie saying that it was the manifestation of dreams that Dali and Buneal had had. Of course, I'm definitely not surprised. Very cool stuff, I could talk about it even more but I won't bore you with my little modernism obsession. We got out of class a little less than an hour early so I walked back to the center to check on my package. Pepe was there, and the package wasn't. I showed Pepe my letter from UPS. He called and got no answer. He said he'd try again later. I felt like crying I was so frustrated and upset with the whole ordeal. I mean, my dad had expediated this package and it had been a month and it still hadn't arrived. What the fuck. I walked home for lunch which is always exciting since lunch is always the best meal. I was flustered and already on the brink of crying from all of my morning frustrations. AND I was still preoccupied about the whole money situation. It was my mom's birthday, and I planned on calling her after lunch, but I was so nervous that I'd end up crying from upset the whole call and upset her in turn on her bday. Lunch was both really amazing and really crappy. For our first course we had this amazing stew which is literally one of the best things that Maruja has made. It's a basic broth with chick peas, boiled potatoes, and some sort of collared greens or spinach. INCREDIBLE!!! I don't know, something about the broth. It had a sweetness to it or something. It even tasted incredible with bread dipped in it. Ugh, I miss it just thinking about it. For a main course we had a green salad and huge grilled fish filets. Ugh. Now, I loooove fish, but I have a really hard time eating huge quantities of it when cooked. In the past, to alleviate the overwhelming fish taste I'd use more mayonnaise (btw, they use mayo as a dipping sauce here for all seafood. Guess they never got the memo about the wonders of tartar sauce). But I'm trying to be good about what I eat which meant little to no mayo. So I had to suck it up and eat the huge lump of fish on my plate. For dessert we had oranges which were really good, nonetheless. After lunch Stacey went to the center. Although I had to go, too, I didn't want to go for another hour or so so I could call my mom while it was morning in Chicago and wish her a happy birthday. I pulled out my phone card and dialed the code numbers...but my phone was out of minutes! I had recharged my minutes last Thursday and barely made one call! I figured that it was due to my not locking my keys in France which probably led to my phone making various random calls on its own. Ugh. This was frustrating since I wanted to call my mom at home because the voice volume on my phone is so low that home's the only place that's quiet enough for me to talk on the phone. So I had to walk to Vips since it was the closest place open during siesta that charges phones. On the way I had to withdraw another 50euro so that I could pay for more minutes on my phone. I charged the phone and walked to the center assuming that that'd be the second quietest place, although not private. I got there and noticed that on Paseo de las delicias, one of the main streets and more beautiful streets that runs along the river that is home to my program center was blocked off in the middle because they were starting construction to build the Metro. Now, throughout los Remedios and right in front of the University there has been construction for building the Metro ever since we got here. It's a huge shame because we miss out on a lot of the beauty of Sevilla due to it's huge barricades and loud noise. It also causes transportation inconveniences. Now, right in front of my center on one of the prettiest roads in Sevilla, they were about to demolish the street and ruin it for the rest of the time that I'm in Sevilla. The Metro construction takes forever, it has been an on-going project for the past couple of years which has been slowed due to many reasons, although I assume the principal reason to be money. Ugh. So, it's loud noises, dust, inconvenience, and ugliness to the extreme everywhere I go from now on...I mean, the Metro is being built in the 3 places I go on a daily basis: los Remedios, the University, and now right in front of the center. That sucks. I went up to the center and the package still hadn't arrived. My aggravation was rising. I then tried calling my mom in the center to find out that my phone card was exhausted! That meant that I had to fork over 6euros for a phone card. I was not a happy camper. I felt like crying again. And I was being really pissy and short with everyone...definitely not normal, happy Lisa. Luckily the kiosk across the street sells EuroDirect cards (the best phone cards), so I stormed out of the center and walked across the street to the kiosk. When I got there it was closed due to the Metro construction happening all around it! I wanted to tear my hair out. All I wanted to do was call my mom on her birthday...and not spend anymore more fucking money. In desperation I crossed the street and went to 2 more kiosks in hopes that they'd have phone cards. No luck. Dejected, I dragged myself back upstairs to the center where I sat next to Alyssa at a computer feeling the tears welling up. I fought them back. Alyssa was asking me about Paris and stuff, I felt bad cuz I told her that I was in the worst mood and I would tell her about it later. I was very overt about my bad mood cuz everyone in the computer room was encouraging me to feel better and stuff. Despite my mood it felt good to get such positive support from the people on my program, we're a good group. I then went out to the office area to fill my water bottle where Pepe got my attention and told me that he was going to call UPS then. I sat at his desk while he called them. He finally got through to someone who put him on hold a couple of times. By the time he got through I had to leave to get to class. I still don't know what happened with that call. Walking to class I was going over in my head how I hadn't gotten any errands done, only spent money on stupid things that I shouldn't have to spend money on, and all of the money that I still needed to spend, my package and whether or not it would ever arrive, and about how I needed to call my mom and I had no way of getting through to her. I got to art history at 6 and that's when things began to look up. Our art history prof., you know, the one with the heavy andalusian accent who I have a hard time understanding, was on leave for 2 weeks starting Monday since he was getting married. Our substitute walked in, a guy in his thirties. He was great. He spoke very clearly and actually engaged us in the material. My real prof. just sits leaning against the projector spitting out facts in a very boring manner. This guy walked around the class, asked questions, really showed interest in the material, and gave us lots of cool factoids to latch onto. He presented a lot of Roman art and showed us statues that I had just seen in the Louvre a mere 2 days earlier (Winged Victory and Venus deMilo)! He also talked about naturalism and movement in Roman art and sculpture, escpecially illustrated by the famous sculpture Laocoon which was a subject and piece studied extensively last semester in Willette's class! Yay for understanding. Plus, I understood so much of this new profs lecture since he spoke so clearly and was so dynamic. I paid attention the whole time. We also ended class early. I then went to the bathroom. This may seem like a useless detail, but it's proof of how my luck began to change a bit. The University has very few bathrooms since, ya know, water is scarce and expensive in Sevilla. So the girls' bathroom stalls are always out of toilet paper. Therefore, I always carry around spare toilet paper with me. I was down to my last square which really was not going to suffice. However, the bathroom stall I went in had plenty of toilet paper! It was a huge rarity, let me tell you. So that was refreshing. I then walked out of the University at 7 on a beautiful warm spring night to see a gorgeous sunset. I felt pretty rejuvinated. So I walked across the street to the nearest internet cafe to see if they had EuroDirect cards, and they did! So I bought one righ there, easy as that. Next store to the cafe was a copisteria that had a big sign advertising "Fotos de carnet en 90 segundos" (wallet-sized photos in 90 seconds). Now, one of the errands on my list was to get wallet photos of myself for the fichas (grade sheets) that we were required to hand into our profs for attendance and grading purposes...they include photo and contact info. I had been putting off making my fichas forever, hesitant to spend money on photos and whatnot. But I just walked in, got the pictures really fast, and also bought a postcard to send to Mary Sue Coleman (UofM president) that the OIP requested we do to talk about the importance of study abroad. The photos and postcard were also pretty cheap. That knocked those off the list. Then I walked a few doors down the the University bookstore where Jessica told me I could order the book we needed for Teatro that I couldn't find anywhere. I put my name on the list, and the woman said that she'd call me when the book came in. That then knocked that off the list, too. Wow, I had gotten so much done in less than a half an hour, most of my list, actually. I felt relieved. I walked home slowly taking in the sunset and the warmth of the late evening. I got back home around 8, cleaned up a bit, and then called my mom. The call got through perfectly without a single problem. I talked to my mom for a good 45 min. We talked about so much and it was so good to catch up. She told me that she was having a really great birthday which made me so happy since I was sad that I couldn't be there. She then gave me a really good talk about money, assuring me that everything would work out and that I shouldn't let myself stress about it and just make the most of study abroad...ya know, not let it put a damper on what could be the greatest experience of my life. She didn't exactly put it in those words, but that was the gyst of what she was saying. Oh man, that was a huuuuuge relief. A lot of my stress from money was primarily this huge guilty feeling of letting my parents down. I just hate to disappoint them. So talking to her really brightened my mood and since then nothing has gotten me down. She really made me feel good...that's what moms are for, right? So true. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AGAIN, MOM! I LOVE YOU SO MUCH! Feeling great and revived once again, dinner came about. Dinner was really good: we had salad and Spanish tortilla with potatoes...I'm really growing to love Spanish tortilla, I want to learn to make it in the states. Then we had the best dessert ever: macedonia de frutas (mixed fruit, a.k.a. fruit salad). Stacey had told me that while I was in Paris Maruja made a fruit salad which was amazing, and I was sad that I had missed it. Turns out that this was the same fruit salad! It was so good: apples, pears, bananas, and strawberries all marinated in a bit of fresh-squeezed orange juice. AMAZING. Literally, best dessert ever. After dinner I sat at the computer FOREVER blogging about Paris. One other stress from earlier that day was all of the blogging I had to do. Well, after a happy evening I was motivated to write about Paris. Although the day started out terribly, it turned out very well in the end. All in all, it was a great day--the highlight was definitely talking to my mom. It was great to hear from her and hear about how great her birthday was going. It was also fun to start talking about when the family is coming up to visit. We're going to start planning soon! I can't wait. So, I love my mom, I love Sevilla, and I am happy. What a day, indeed.