Pet Passport, Package and Planning for Portugal!

Are you excited? I'm excited. Why am I excited? I'm going to Portugal, mofuggah, that's why!

Updates: Sunday dinner was tasty and successfully not that expensive. People were nice and things, yay!

Monday I went by the vet's office and got some info on what needs to happen to take my Gypsy King home. It's gonna be pricey, but today I went and got things started. First, the vet cleaned his ears and showed me the mites in them through a microscope. EW. Then she gave him a few vaccines and clipped his nails and gave me his pet passport! Hilarity!

I actually carried him to the vet since I haven't bought a carrier yet, which was a little ridiculous but he handled it well. The vet told me to get a carrier, but... I'm being a cheapskate. I don't wanna buy a carrier until I know what specifications the airline has for me! She said I could just get a cheap one and then get the airline one but ten euros is still ten euros...Urgh. She was also a little baffled by his name.

In other news that is great, I got a lovely, lovely, wonderful, amazing package in the mail today from the combined efforts of my mama and my lover! The contents:

Sriracha hot sauce, tasty little mini hot sauces, green tea and Duchess gray tea, 90% cocoa dark chocolate, hot cocoa mixes and an assortment of tights and leggings along with an adorable little worry doll and a lucky bean! THEY ARE THE CUTEST!

Speaking of cute, I have to leave my Gypsy King in the hands of my housemates for a week whilst in Portugal, and I was nervous about how thorough their care taking would be so I made a chart to make sure he gets water, food, and a freshly cleaned poop box everyday. Behold:

Agua/comida/caca.

I even added an extra day in case of some weird unexpected delay. Ugh, I hate to leave him. I wish he could be a traveling kitty! I mean, he has a passport, after all...

Well, tomorrow is my last day to wrap up some homework stuff, pack, and (knock on wood) go sign my new lease(!!) before heading off to Porto and Lisbon! Wish me luck!

Vestiges of Dreaming

You compressed yourself and stuck your hand down the back of my pants and I called in a fake emergency call from a stolen cell phone, not really certain why. In class I looked at the grain of my wooden desk and all around my the students groaned, like falling trees, the teachers face was set hard as stone, she left us without a backward glance. There was a dog; I felt responsible when the skin opened up on his haunches, but he didn’t complain. I tried to hold his body together, I could see the underside of his bare flesh, and there was a yellow smell. I carried him in a plastic bag.

Spainsgiving 2.0 and Subpar Saturday

It appears that lately I've spent my Sundays raving about how cool my life is, and let's face it, my life is awesome. Sometimes, though, it's not. I was thinking to myself that it was probably pretty unnecessary to write a post about how incredibly subpar yesterday was, but at the same time, it's all part of the experience, right?

Friday was Spainsgiving 2.0, our program had a "free" dinner for us. I say "free" because obviously we all paid like thousands of dollars to be a part of this program, so...free is not quite correct. Pre-paid, perhaps? For this reason I was determined to get my money's worth, especially of the open bar, so by the end of the night I was double-fisting wine glasses. There was just too  much classiness to be handled by one hand alone, okay?! Dinner was dope though, they even gave us veg kids an option, so even though our salad sucked ass and had fish in it, our main course was yummy roasted veggies with garlic, and desert was pretty yummy even though it was supposed to be pumpkin pie and it was really like...citrus-raisin pie. I guess they thought that after the wine we wouldn't notice. INCORRECT. It was tasty though. After dinner we powered up with a little more wine and went to Vogue, a club I'd never been to before. The first like three to five songs we're GREAT. Old school wonderfulness. Then the club got obnoxiously packed and the music got really bad really fast. Also, I spent a portion of the night fairly upset, thinking that someone had stolen the 20 euro bill I brought with me as emergency money, not remembering that I had stuffed it into my bra before entering the club to avoid that very danger. So I'm an idiot, but an idiot who plans ahead, at least. Or something.

So that night was actually pretty fun, especially because I went out with a group I haven't really hung out with as much, and they are all a lot of fun. But for some reason, I woke up Saturday morning feeling gloomy as fuck. Inexplicably gloomy; I was supposed to go sign the lease for my new place, which should be exciting, but I just felt like a big puddle of ick. It didn't help that some guy was supposed to come look at my current room and got super mixed up and never came. Actually, I'm fairly certain that he was looking for an apartment in Madrid and just got extremely fucking confused. So I spent a really obscene portion of my day sitting on my ass and waiting, and on occasion hiding Gypsy in Lucas' room and then realizing it was just his friend at the door, not the guy. For some reason, I just kept getting more and more anxious and uncomfortable and antsy and grumpy and sad. I don't know why, just sometimes bad feelings feed off each other and grow in your guts, and for whatever reason, I'm highly susceptible to weird anxiety.

I'm proud of myself, though, because I was able to recognize that cycle, so I laid face down on my bed for a bit and concentrated on breathing, and Gypsy came and laid on my head so I felt much better. I still had two hours before I had to be at the new house but I figured I should get up and moving or I'd fall asleep, so I went and got some cash and then stopped at a thrift store on my way and got a couple cheap sweaters, which was nice. I also heard these girls speaking English and discovered that they are also CA kids studying here. Funny enough, one of them was actually from Watsonville (which is right by Santa Cruz.) Unfortunately, as I was shopping, my new housemates texted me to cancel because they apparently need more info or something before writing the contract up. Frustration!

I was really sleepy all day and didn't really want to go out, but Leticia, this really awesome Spanish girl, invited me to go see a show with her, and I agreed because I've been wanting to hang out; she's female and Spanish and badass, which is pretty much the trifecta of characteristics that are exactly what I need in my life right now. However the details weren't really clear so she told me to keep my Facebook open and she'd keep me updated. At like ten something she told me her friends were coming to get her at like midnight or one, so I tried to take a nap, but Lucas had friends over and one of them for some reason was Skyping with his friend and the combination of our bad Internet connection, the TV being on, and noise four other dudes playing poker was causing him to literally SCREAM at these girls, so I gave up after forty-five minutes and decided to come hang out in the living room and make the boys pregame with me. These kids are not used to taking shots, let me just say. We drank the same amount (although they actually put this like blackberry flavoring crap in theirs) and they ended up having a pushup contest. Who does that? Leticia kept updating me on the show but things kept getting pushed back later and later so when she finally called me at 3:30am I was over it and decided to go to bed. Not her fault at all, but after being sleepy all day, 3:30am seemed like quite the late starting point for my night. So basically I spent my entire Saturday waiting for shit that never happened. COOL.

Anyway, I'm doing the whole "being a giant lazy blob" thing today, and Gypsy already knocked a glass off my desk and broke it, which did not start things off wonderfully, but I'm supposed to go out to a sushi dinner with Karim and some of his friends and Christina. I'm a little nervous about it monetarily speaking, especially since he told us he reserved a table and that there was a menu thing that would be 25 euros a person! That's like slightly over $33 dollars! But luckily Christina and I talked to him and told him we are way too poor for that to be an option, so I'm planning on not being that hungry and just getting something really minimal... It's also a beautiful day and I kinda wanna go be in the sun, but at the same time I should also get some homework done before our Portugal trip.

Oh, and I haven't gotten to speak to Casey so I'm not sure what his Friday gift thing was yet.

Highlights from a Thanksgiving in Spain

Explaining a turducken, that look of simultaneous amazed confusion and understanding; ah, this is why Americans are so fat.

The question, "What do American people do in Thanksgiving? What do they eat? Same than films?"

Deciding to make apple crisp, opening a brand new flour package and discovering bugs living in it.

Running extremely late, feeling like a jerk, arriving to find everyone is a panicked whirlwind in the kitchen and running even later.

Dinner that was scheduled for 9pm occurring at 11pm.

Tortilla de patatas as a Thanksgiving dish.

Spanish people trying a sweet potato dish for the first time.

Spanish people failing to properly grasp the concept of Thanksgiving gluttony; consequently eating more than all the boys.

Explaining appropriate and inappropriate uses of the word "swallow."

Being asked if American people always invite a homeless person over for Thanksgiving, also due to movies.

Hilarious impressions of American "bros" or "gangsters." Imagine: "What's up, bro! Oh fuck yeah, my man!" etc with a (impressively diminished) Spanish accent.

Spanish kids attempting to steal Leah's red solo cups because they are the cups from American Pie, the ultimate party cup. Spanish kids examining and admiring said solo cups.

Hilarious impressions of French accents in order to achieve "sexiness."

Laughing so hard I wanted to die.

Things wrapping up at 3:30am; getting shit from Spaniards for not going to the discoteca afterwards.

Thanksgiving

I am thankful for a season that has crimson red and crisp clean air, yellow leaves and brown and blue yarn. I am thankful for a place that is a little labyrinth, a place like home, but older, but newer. I am thankful for thrift shop sweaters, for incense, plane tickets and technology, for chocolate, for rosemary and for Polaroid photographs. I am thankful for two long legs, for lungs and something similar to freedom, at least. I am thankful for the stirring, shuddering, all across the world, and the people who have thrown themselves headlong into hopefulness, and been hurt for it, too. I am thankful for boots, for five-subject notebooks, for salt. I am thankful for Gypsy King, my MishkaMoo, Daisy Dooper Dog, serious Buster with his mustache, and Badger with his blue eyes, too. I am thankful for markers, cereal boxes, scissors. I am thankful for open-late Chinos, full of beer and bobby pins, chili sauce and glue sticks, full of junk and everything else. I am thankful for my tongue, for words and words and words, even if they never seem like enough. I’m thankful for a boy who is patient, that dog whispering boy, for breakfast in bed and shower sex. I am thankful for blankets, for poetry, for literacy, for tomatoes, music, what little patience I have, for the redwoods. I am thankful for the ocean, for dreaming, for dish soap, body lotion, for driers, when I had them. I am thankful for a best-friend mother, that unbreakable bond made of different kinds of love, for four parents, really, strange and different and wonderful people, artists and adventurers, I am thankful for their logic and their passion, for their quirks and their lessons, for their homes and their heads. I am thankful for twenty years and almost one more, for waking up, for phone calls, I am thankful for a voice, for my copper ship necklace, for comfortable silences, raspberries, collarbones, chapstick, and cider. I am thankful for windows, for eggs, for leggings. I am thankful for a grandmother who read me Nancy Drew and taught me how to knit, I am thankful for my family, for a spider-web of support, for love that comes steady even miles away, even though I am as strange as a deep sea creature, and almost as pale, too. I am thankful for a brother with big deer eyes, a brother with a mind as raging and curious as the sea, who can draw airplanes and tanks, volcanoes and castles, a wild drumming fiend. I am thankful for wings, for films that make my heart ache, for friendship, mail, my faraway car, reusable grocery bags, freshly made bread, graffiti, strangers, sales, coincidences, surprises. I am thankful for open eyes.

Moving, Mexican Food and Movies

Dear everyone, I'm moving! I found a house in the upper Albaycín with a big kitchen, an awesome basement, a huge terrace with a beautiful view of the entire city, with a cat and a dog and housemates that seem super chill. I didn't wanna write about it until I knew for sure what was going on but it looks like next week I'll be signing my new contract and I've already spoken to my current landlord so it looks like things are working out! Gypsy King and I will have an adorable new house and he'll be able to go outside again and things!

My soon-to-be neighborhood!

In other news, here is a list of weekend wonders:

Thursday night: Mexican sleepover! Leah made Spanish rice and grilled veggies, Hannah made salsa, Mauna made guacamole, Courtney brought tortillas and cheese and I brought chipotle refried beans and we smoked a few spliffs and ate until we were dying and watched American Psycho.

Friday morning we woke up late but went to Monachil and hiked and ate sandwiches, then I came home, did some knitting and was generally lazy and cozy. I talked to Casey and he got:

There's not really a reason behind this... Mostly, it was just the correct size and we have sweet teeth.

Saturday morning I did more knitting and lazing and then met up with Christina, who lives in the lower Albaycín and we decided to take a walk and see if I could find my new neighborhood by foot (since I'd only bussed there before.) We ended up getting turned around but it was all kinds of adventurous fun. We ended up hiking up this big hill where tons of ghetto cave houses and lean-to type homes were set up, and we eventually came to this old city wall and realized we were on the wrong side of it and decided to climb it, since it was crumbling in such a way that created all kinds of foot and hand holds. Sitting on top of the wall was so exhilarating and it had an amazing view. We found my neighborhood, too!

Saturday night I met up with Courtney and we went and hung out with Christina at Laurel's and then went to Felipe's and watched a Spanish movie called Noviembre, which was a bit difficult to understand but really interesting.

Today is the epitome of a lazy Sunday. I was going to go see the theater again, but Valentina isn't in tonight's show, so the cold won and I stayed home and drank tea, instead. This weather may mean significantly less interesting things to talk about, because I really can't be bothered to leave the house when I'm cold...

Monachil

We woke up late, of course. The blinds shut tightly, the room was dark as a warm tomb, I stretched my legs. The sky was a rippling velvet, brightest blue and blackest gray, mist and heat. We sat at the back of the bus.

The pueblo was sleepy silent, I looked into the river and saw a bright circus poster slumped against the rocks, water rushing over the elephants and tigers, over the big bold letters. It was a sad thing to see, but the mountains reached up all around us, and there was a bright blue café with a chalkboard menu, and we walked with brisk legs and the air felt clean.

My boots felt solid on the dirt pathways, we walked past neat little farms and beautiful persimmon trees, we came upon a shed of goats. There was a dog by the gate, he saw us and leaned against it—he looked like a sad tiger. When I came up to him he stood up and pawed at the gate with one hefty paw, he stood up on his back feet and shoved his nose through the bars. He was soft between the ears and his eyes were dark and sweet.

As we climbed the hills we were thankful for the chill. We came upon a square government building and a block of cement with three different sides, all strange and wonderful street art. We passed more persimmon trees and a man drove by on a motorcycle with a black lamb draped across his lap. It lifted its head to look at us as they passed. Up high in the hills were lonely crumbling buildings, they looked beautiful and serious.

We climbed cement slab steps, nervously crossed swaying suspension bridges and waddled under big overhanging stones along the river. The water looked clean, blue and cold. We found two big stones in a little cave of foliage and sat to eat sandwiches and mandarins and pastries and then the sky opened up, just a little, and sprinkled us with water, and we cleaned up quickly and scrambled back along with big overhanging stones, the belly of the mountain.

When we came back to the swaying bridge, it was raining on the rock climbers, it was raining on their black dog. When we came to the stone steps, we parted ways and wound around and up in an unexpected spurt of chilly exhilaration. We scrambled up a jagged path and reached a little plateau, we raised our arms and looked up into the gray sky and down at the glistening tree tops, we looked down at that fiery autumnal red, at green and green and green. From up top we could see two little figures huddled together beneath a tree. We whooped and waved, and they danced back up at us.

We made a circle of warm bodies and with stiff fingers lit a sturdy little spliff, warmed our lungs with the tang of tobacco and weed. I clambered down the hill with it perched between my lips, exhaled into the sky and felt my own skin with a definite lucidity as the little drips of water slid down my nose. 


The way back is always quicker. We were back on the sidewalk, we walked past the circus poster, dissolving in the wet, we stood at the bus stop with our hands in our pockets.

Helping Hands

Things are good. Friday was surprisingly sunny and beautiful and warm, so Laurel and I met up and took a walk up to the Alhambra and wandering around this beautiful secret garden type place. We got a pretty late start, though, so we caught a lovely sunset but it got dark pretty quickly. Leah had promised to make dinner do to the moneylessness thing, so Courtney and I went over to her place and we had an excellent feast of stir fry veggies with tofu, rice and bok choy. I got a migraine that night and went home to sleep, but Casey was online so we Skyped but with my lights turned off, since I was super light sensitive. The funny and tragic thing is that he was also really sick, like feverish and whatnot, so we were both just really unhappy and unwell, laying in bed and complaining to each other. Sometimes that's just what you need, I guess.

The snowy mountains look so beautiful at sunset!

So much yum!

Saturday I met up with Valentina to watch a movie, but it was beautiful day so we went on a walk instead and she went with me to the phone store to kind of decide what I'd want ahead of time and then we hung out at her place for a good while. I feel so lucky to have people that are so useful and kind in my life! That night I went to Camborio and Ben talked to his boss about getting me a free bottle of vodka since I was robbed there, and they actually made me drinks all night with it, so I just fed all my friends a bunch of vodka and ended up staying until the place closed. Needless to say, I was having a good time. Sunday I was that kinda goofy post-late night partying sort of sleepy and I went and hung out at Leah's and convinced her to go see a show at Vladimir Tzekov, which due to sleepiness we had a hard time understanding but it was really interesting, anyway. Next Sunday is an Alice in Wonderland show, so I'm really excited to check that out. Gotta get there early, though, this week it was PACKED.

This lady is all kinds of wonderful.

Despite the fact that Case and I were both basically incapacitated Friday night, he did open his weekly gift...

Pac Man candies! These reminded me of Casey because before I left, when we were working on a screen printing project with my mom and brother, he made a Pac Man T-Shirt.

In other news, I was finally able to buy groceries, thanks to my mom transferring money to Courtney's account, and Courtney getting money out for me! I was in pure edible bliss until I got home and realized that my kitchen is a shithole again. Thus far I have not had the will to deal with it, and so I am blogging instead of making my normal eggs and potatoes for breakfast.

Also, I want to say a huge thank you to my lovely aunt, Sis, who actually donated to the feed my travelin' belly fund, specifically to help me out with taking care of Gypsy. Thank you, Sis! Gypsy and I really appreciate it and it will really, really come in handy, especially since I'm hoping to take him home and I know that vet fees and stuff might be a little bit of a nightmare.

Do you see what I mean about being lucky? The Universe has surrounded me with amazing, generous people.

Waking up Wonderful

Last night we sang poetry in my dreams,

really though, it was beautiful, breathing,

and there was a child I’d never seen before,

a strange woman who laid in the river

and picked flowers for her funeral, shaved her head.

And it’s amazing that on the grayest day with nothing

like certainty hovering around your sleepy head

that you can open your eyes everything can settle right

in that heavy happy chest, hollow places humming.

It’s amazing that everything can be just right,

and not even touch perfection.

It’s amazing that with all the questions in the world,

body wide open, full of holes,

permeable as lace,

you can be okay.

Listen to this:

Love Is

Someone recently read my blog Love is Not and asked me what I thought love is. I told them that I would think about it "when I have time" and then half way through my Spanish Lit class, only a few hours later, as the unfocused drone of my mumbling professor began to invade my soul, the question came back to me, and I wrote this in the back of my notebook:

Love is more than a light bulb moment—it’s a slow flood of heat from toes upward. It’s a backward black hole blinded dive; love is a decision, a mixing up and sorting out of self, a process. Love is negotiating skin and soul, a chemistry, all the feathers of a drooping phoenix, a thing that lives and breathes, goes up in flames, and is reborn inside you as naked and vulnerable as an egg. Love is made of steely bird bones. Love is an inconvenient tumor, the most beautiful disease. It’s holding hands and growing up, words, warm blankets and low light. Love is learning, reading flesh and eyes, a kind of literature, history, psychology, it’s manual labor. Love is a place to cry, an open wound, a puzzle piece, an ocean. It’s an accumulation of little things that stack up in your bones and hold you up, weigh you down, peek out of your pores. Love is dissolving voluntarily, a jelly soft shudder through your stupid, incomplete soul, a contract, a pathway, a box overflowing with dirt and twigs, rusted nails and bits of cotton, cardboard, glue, wood and temptation. Love is a child’s toy, something made with care, it’s a thing that’s not been practiced, drawn, planned; love is an accident as startling as the Earth. Love is gray clay and warm hands. Love is a dirty habit, groggy contentment and messy hair, the taste of sweat, an unraveling.

Bartleby, Wall Street and Not Having Bread

Have you ever read "Bartleby, The Scrivener" by Herman Melville? I've read it a few times, and even though it makes me anxious and uncomfortable, I find it really, really interesting. We read it again for my North American Lit class, and as always, the discussion we had was pretty simplistic, one-sided and boring. The professor had decided that Bartleby was a metaphor for Melville, and that since he'd written it after the relative failure of  his masterpiece, Moby-Dick, it was a commentary on his refusal to continue "copying" old literary forms, etc. I'm sure there's some validity in that argument, but I definitely don't think that it's the only valid reading and she was really dismissive to other students' attempts to look at the story in different ways. Plus she has this really weird way of talking about authors in an over familiar way. "Poe was this like, really shy guy," for example. So, naturally, I just stopped paying attention, and instead decided to expand a joke I'd made about Bartleby being the original Occupy Wall Street movement with the following contemplation:

Bartleby, living dead man, died alone and lived again, in pages, in pages. You were a machine man, zombie blank, computing capitalism since the beginning, sorting through the ruins of a system born broken, born jagged and cold as an upturned car. Your hands charred and stained with dead words, dead ink, dead paper, thoughts extracted and fallen short, you were put to the task of recreating the dead place all around you, cloning and copying the dead ideologies, dry word after dry word, your very ink blotted out the sun. You were a solemn gray shadow, persistently eating through the lawyer soul; you laid heavily against those profitable brands of apathy, and with all the weight of your whole, evaporating existence, stood. Stood as the brick walls climbed up, closed in, crushed your thin flesh, weak bones, and consumed your disturbed, subversive soul. You were a skeletal occupation, a haunt as white and persistent as breath. You preferred not to exist within the parameters available to you, and therefore you became a person disordered, out of order, unwell; you became as broken as the brick garden you were born into. Spindly and steadfast, Bartleby, you died when they dragged your passive, certain body away from the white walls and ideals to which you’d fused your soul. You occupied with the slender bulk of your inconvenient body, preferred to waste away in passive resistance instead of working your bones into the tomb—still as gray in wealth as in poverty.

As you maybe can tell, I'm having trouble deciding how funny or serious this idea is, but I think Bartleby is kind of like that. Absurd and funny but deeply disturbing and kind of tragic.

Anyway, Monday was my last day with my favorite professor, because there is someone else coming to teach the second half of Pragmatics today, which makes me kind of nervous. It's a complicated subject and I was really excited about the old professor's teaching style. She was awesome, friendly and also easy to understand and really careful to make sure I knew what was going on. So. We'll see how that goes.

In other news, not having money sucks. As far as food goes its come down to half a tomato, half a jar of aioli (pretty useless without bread) and some noodles. Time to chip into my savings! (By savings I mean the five euros I found in my jacket pocket. )

Theft and Theater

Well after all that build up of fantasticness, a little bummer was definitely in order and, of course, it came. I done got robbed. Saturday night I went to Camborio and when I left I noticed I didn't have my phone. I was bummed about it but thought maybe it'd turn up. However, on Sunday, Ben mentioned that several people had reported missing phones that night, and suddenly it hit me that I'd had my wallet in my purse on Saturday, too. And lo and behold, it was gone. Giant sigh. Apparently the thieving bastards attempted to withdraw like $200 from my account, but it didn't work, so basically they got the ten euro that was in my wallet and just made my life a little less fun for the month. In all honesty, the biggest pain from the theft was the phone, because even though it was literally the cheapest phone I could possibly have bought, I had just put twenty euros worth of minutes on it. Hopefully there's a way of transferring that money to a new phone or something but let's be real, chances are slim.

It's funny how unfazed I am about this whole thing, but I've lost my shit or been robbed a decent amount of times and it seems clear to me that getting worked up about it just isn't worth the time or effort. Plus I found five euros in my jacket pocket yesterday. Also, maybe being extra broke will be useful and make me sit down and finish knitting the hat I started instead of going out. Silver lining? Eh?

The rest of my weekend was actually quite nice, regardless. I had a fun time at Camborio and was really stoked to go out with Christina and Laurel since it feels like it's been decades. I also had this funny interaction with this German guy; I've literally seen this guy EVERYWHERE, at school in the library, in the cafeteria, halls, and then random places like by the resedencia, in the centro, in the Albaycín and last night at Camborio. I think he must stand out because everyone is super short here and he's really tall. Anyway, I decided the Universe wanted me to at least say hello to this person, so I did, and he was pretty nice but we didn't really talk much, but the really funny thing was that once we all left, and I had to walk home alone because no one lives on my end of town (except Leah, and she was in Barcelona), I went and got some felafel and as I was nomming the shit out of it, I heard someone say hello and I turned around and the same freaking guy was also walking home alone in the same direction. Turns out we leave in the some area, which could kind of explain me seeing him so much, but doesn't really explain me seeing him in random spots. My mom suggested that perhaps the Universe was intervening, and had I not run into him something horrible would have happened to me as I walked home alone, but I had already been robbed at this point so the worse that could have happened is someone taking my iPhone with it's horribly shattered screen and taking like two or three euros worth of change. And my Burts Bees chapstick.

Sunday, Michelle and I went to another theater performance at Vladimir Tzekov which was insane and interesting and sad and hilarious. I won't even try to describe it, but I will say it involved nudity and song-and-dance about menstrual cycles. I will also say that a drunk guy kept yelling at everyone to get naked and half the audience thought it was part of the experimental type of performance, since some of the scenes had a lot to do with distraction and multiple focuses and things like that. Afterwards, we went to Valentina's for tea and/or beer with Antonio and this girl Maria Jose, who was really sweet. I really love Valentina's, her place is yellow and cheerful and she always puts on this nice low light and plays us good music (yesterday it was Bon Iver.)

In other news, I almost died of being freezing fucking cold last night. It's not raining today but DAMN I'm an icicle person and we have no idea how to turn on the heat... I'm definitely pining for my mama's cozy fireplace and some of Karen's tasty vegetable soup right about now!

Visits!

CASEY IS COMING TO SPAIN!

Last week we finally got his ticket! He'll actually be leaving California ON Christmas, because it'll save us money, so I won't get him on my birthday but the day after Christmas, and then he'll stay until January 13th. I'm so fucking exciting, there are no words. Basically, all my Christmas money is going towards this ticket, but having him here is the best present I could imagine.

In other exciting news, SatAmrit and Mailee came to visit this week, and it was glorious. I discovered that I was definitely not prepared to be a very effective tour guide, and I feel like I may have been a little bit of a failure, but I did manage to take them to see the Alhambra and to get paella and I took them out to Camborio and to La Sal (randomly) and they got to meet Karim and Leto and we got to Skype with Zella and it was almost like being back together with my favorite Santa Cruz ladies.

It was generally just kind of surreal and awesome having them here with me. Made home somehow seem further away, though, especially since they're going back to CA in December, which seems so close compared to my return date. If I hadn't extended, my trip would already be a third over. Weird. It's also strange to think about the fact that they, and many other friends, are graduating, so by the time I come back people are going to be scattering. It's easy to forget that college isn't real life and that all your friends will scatter and do different things with their lives. I'm really glad I'll have Casey in Santa Cruz with me, though. House hunting with a dog is going to suck, but once we find a place life will be lovely.

Aaaanyway, yesterday was Friday, so Casey got:

Super strong manly mints! Not for girly men. Why? Because he has a mint addiction, and these are funny.

Well, it's a cold sleepy Saturday and I'm on the verge of either going back to sleep or making some tea, but either way I will be thrifting my life away in a while because the thrift shop down the street is having an everything for ONE EURO sale. I need some man-sweaters in my life, yesiree I do.

In closing, I leave you with this fabulous drawing that SatAmrit made of Gypsy, who is apparently a boy kitty: