Everything in Spain is just weird

Woke up well-rested on Saturday morning around 10:30am. I was feeling lazy and had a ton of blogging to do (Amsterdam is now the bain of my existence) so I headed into the living room, switched on the TV, and went to work. I had no other choice than to work on my Amsterdam blog, actually, because all weekend our internet was out. Or, rather, the wireless network we steal from was down. Hehe. So that sucked. My Amsterdam blog was taking awhile and I decided to first write it out on Microsoft Word and then paste it into Blogspot. Good times. Stacey had a ton of postcards to write so she headed to the river to work on that. At 2:30 Stacey returned and we ate a delicious lunch: some heated up frozen lasagna-like thing (which was actually good...and interesting), then the typical Spanish fried fish: one large filet for each of us and then a pile of small, whole fish that you eat like french fries. On the side we got a good sized portion of grilled red peppers...so good! We also had a simple green salad and a whole kiwi for dessert. The kiwis were absolutely delicious, but the aftertaste always kills me. Blech. The meal was very good and very Spanish: fried fish and vegetables of all sorts is very typical of Spain. And Maruja does a damn good job with it, I must say. After lunch Stacey and I walked to the river. It was a gorgeous, warm day with a bunch of cool cumulous clouds. I took some great pics. On the way we stopped at Plus (budget grocery store) to buy snacks for the river. I bought some coconut, hazlenut, raisin granola for 95 cents which really intrigued me. At the river I gave it a try and, holy crap, it's the best granola I've ever eaten. That stuff was dangerously good and addicting. It was a small box, but I ate a good half of it throughout our time at the river. The whole time I read "Castigo sin venganza", one of the plays for Lope class. I got through more than half of it so that was an accomplishment. Oh, and I also got some good sun...always an accomplishment. We finally walked back home around 8ish and on the way home we stopped at the bakery Nova Roma to get torrijas. Torrijas are one of the main pastries served exclusively during Semana Santa. You can get them anywhere, even frozen in grocery stores. While I was in Amsterdam Maruja served some for dessert and Stacey told me that they were great and that I had to try one. I wasn't hungry, but since it was basically the last day of Semana Santa this would be my only chance. So we stopped there and I got a small one (they come in 2 sizes, the smalls are pretty freaking small). Then we headed home and hung around the apartment until dinner at 9:30. Well, first I ate my mini torrija...and it was soooo good! A torrija is basically the Spanish answer to French toast: it's bread marinated in honey (maybe sugar, too? not sure). It's literally drenched in honey--it's been sitting in pans of honey for weeks. The bread is sopping wet and just tastes like honey goodness. I like Semana Santa. Then we had dinner which was great...it was veggies galore! We had a lot of grilled eggplant (yummmm), a lot of cooked, sliced carrots marinated in garlic, cumin, and rosemary, and served cold (sooooooo GOOD!), one of those lightly fried chicken filets (always good), a simple green salad, and bananas for dessert (which are really good right now). Yup, everything was pretty good, I'd say. It has been kind of challenging to eat lately because it's just us two and Maruja and Maruja's a vacuum when she eats. I don't know how she eats so fast, but she does. And since it's only the 3 of us we get more food so it's even harder to keep up. Ah well. After dinner Stacey and I headed back to the room and got ready to go out. We were meeting up with Melissa and Katie in the Plaza de Cuba at 10:45 and then heading out to check out the Semana Santa bar, Garlochi, that we tried and failed to find on Thursday night. On the way Stacey and I stopped at OpenCor to buy chasers cuz we've been doing the poor man's drinking by buying cheap vodka and bringing it out with us in water bottles. We then met up with Katie and Melissa and headed out. We were to meet up with Courtney and Jessica in front of the Starbucks by the University, but they called to say that they were sick to their stomachs. Turns out that they were dry heaving all night because of the churros from Thursday. That's funny because when Stacey and I got churros on her birthday Stacey also got really sick to her stomach. Our stomachs just can't handle food that is so deeply fried, I guess. I definitely got a stomach ache from them on Stacey's bday, but it was short-lived and didn't involve any sort of vomiting. Oh Spain. In front of Starbucks we ran into Lizzy and Elena and Lizzy's French roommate. They had just come back from a procession because it was the last day of processions so all of the Jesus floats come out (the other days they're just Virgins). Lizzy's very religious so it was a big deal for her to find the Jesus. We talked for awhile and shared all of our Semana Santa trips with each other. Lizzy and Elena went to Morocco and loved it. I'm excited to go with the family! Soon we parted ways and the four of us walked towards the Alfalfa area which is where Garlochi is located. On the way we ran into this gaggle of high school-age Americans. We kind of giggled about how funny they were--being all high school-like and walking in the biggest groups ever to go out. Then these 18-year-old or so Spanish guys were walking behind us and started hissing and whistling at us. We've gotten to the point where we just do it right back to pester them, so we started hissing back and laughing at them. Then one of them starts huffing and grunting then walks straight towards my direction with a look of complete anger and aggression, barely passes me and violently kicks a garage right next to me and yells. It was so scary...and weird. We immediately sped walked as fast as possible and joined the big high school crowd. Haha. Serves us right. I don't think our making fun of him set him off, I think that he was just drunk and angry about something, I don't know. But it was so weird. Spain is just so weird sometimes. Then, we saw the funniest looking dog...it was little and fuzzy and looked like a stuffed animal. Its fur covered its eyes. It went up to a tree, dug a hole, lifted its leg, and took a crap. I've never seen a dog think to dig a hole for itself to poop in. Also, the dog lifted its leg as if it was peeing, but instead poo came out. How weird is that? I swear, Spain is just backwards. What a silly country I live in. Since we were pretty sober that night we successfully found Boteros, the street on which Garlochi was located. We walked down the small side street that was actually crowded with older people in bars and cafeterias (people stay out late during Semana Santa) and eventually found Garlochi. It's located in an old church, and when you walk in you're immediately greeted by a pretty altar with a Mary statue surrounded by flowers of all colors. The walls are draped with royal blue and maroon tapestries with baroque print on them. Gold chandeliers hang all around and candles burn everywhere. There are even more statues and altars of Mary and Jesus inside, and it smells of church incense as it is burning throughout. Flowers of all colors adorn all walls. It's quite remarkable. However, when we entered it was scalding hot and very stuffy. The bar was packed (it's a small space) and there was nowhere to stand nor sit. It was also filled with older people (50 and up, I'd say). Some old man even hissed at me...what??? We got to the back of the bar and thought of just getting a beer and leaving, but it was so hot, stuffy, and overall uncomfortable in there that we just decided to bail. We took a bunch of pictures, however. It's a shame because it was really awesome in there. Oh well, at least we can say we went. It's kind of sad that during Semana Santa I never really experienced it fully. I mean, I saw fragments of processions, but I never really saw the whole thing...ya know, the main parts. I did get to see a bunch of Nazarenos, people out all night, see the Semana Santa bar, and eat Semana Santa sweets. But I never really saw it ALL. I don't know, I guess I wasn't really feeling it, ya know? The whole procession thing just seems overly staged and this big worshipping of idols troubles my Hebrew School Jewish education. I guess that I saw what I needed to see. We then went to Alfalfa which was so empty! It was so weird to see it like that. We went to Robotica, the bar in Alfalfa that serves the big 3 euro beers and 1 euro shots. It was so weird--there was barely anybody there so we were able to get seats and fast service. We decided to all get a shot and we settled on an Orgasmo (Orgasm...obviously). It was tequila, creme de coco, and grenadine. It sounded really good on the menu, looked really pretty in the shot glasses (like strawberries and cream), but tasted like crap. Blech. That was a bad orgasmo. Then everyone got big beers. Well, Stacey and I split one while Katie and Melissa got their own. We then went outside to see Alfalfa begin to fill up...however it was quite obvious that it was just foreigners there. We ran into Evan from our program who is the soberest drunk guy I've ever known. He kept commenting about how drunk he was but I swear you'd never know it. We didn't believe him. He also went to Amsterdam over Semana Santa, and then Prague. He looooved Amsterdam and actually didn't like Prague too much. So Katie and I chatted it up with Evan and raved about our newfound love for Amsterdam. We then ended up talking to some other Americans from other programs who were all really cool. Then we saw some half-naked dude walking around in a souvenir flamenco hat and flamenco dress-apron. He was surrounded by a bunch of buff guys wearing brown shirts that said "London" on the back. Spain is oh so silly...always full of surprises. Well, we soon ended up talking to some of these buff London guys, all of which were quite attractive. They were a rowing team from the U.K. here for a few days (unfortunately leaving the next day). One of their friends who didn't wear a shirt was from Ireland and he was the cutest one of all of them so I had a target. I weasled my way in to talk to him and he was cool...in fact, all of them were cool. Then this weird Italian girl abruptly broke up our conversation, wrangled all of the boys up and took them somewhere. It was like she had them whipped or something, it was kind of obnoxious. So much for the British/Irish boys. Turns out that they were all between 28 and 30-years-old as Melissa found out; one of them said that he was too old for her. Oh man. Whatevs. We hung out more at Alfalfa having a great time as usual. Then we saw this one American guy who Melissa has a distant crush on although they've never spoken. We just always see him at Alfalfa. Katie was drunk and therefore had the guts to just walk right up to him and introduce herself. I played it cool by striking up a conversation with one of his friends. After about 3 minutes Katie walked back and we decided to go home. What happened was he introduced himself to Katie as Michaelangelo. Katie told him that she didn't believe that that was his name and he yelled at her about it! So weird. Must be an angry drunk. But it was hilarious. I tell ya, every Alfalfa trip always guarantees something weird and unexpected. That's what I love about Spain: ya just never know. We walked all the way home and Stacey and I were in bed and asleep by 4:30am. What a silly night...but yet awesome. Just like every night here in Sevilla: silly, and therefore great.