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!